Mistress Bradstreet Read Free

crops to help support the
Arbella
’s passengers when they arrived. But Winthrop and Dudley had received only a few letters from these pioneers, and although they had been optimistic and full of good cheer, no word had been received for many months, triggering concerns that the little group had not survived the winter. Perhaps the new arrivals would find only a shattered village and the dismal remains of their comrades.
    No one could discern the settlement’s condition from the
Arbella
’s anchorage. The great ship had lowered its sails about a mile away from shore to avoid any mishaps with hidden rocks or shallow waters. As a result, they would have to row for nearly an hour to find out what had happened in Salem. Anne may have been one of the few to hope that she would
not
be on this first exploratory mission ashore. However, it soon became clear that her father expected her, her mother, and her three younger sisters to climb down into the tiny skiff that lay tossing up and down in the waves. None of them could swim. But in Anne’s world, a good daughter was, by definition, someone who obeyed her parents without question, and so she had little choice but to sweep her sisters along and guide them over the rails of the ship.
    Over the years, Anne had become accustomed to yielding to Dudley’s outrageous commands, whether they were spurred by his Puritan piety or by his innate sense of adventure. Still, this particular challenge was worse than usual. The tiny boat, or “shallop,” was frighteningly unsteady, and these smaller vessels were notorious for their frequent capsizing. In fact, in the months to come, as boat after boat arrived from England, a few unfortunate individuals who had survived the months at sea would suffer the indignity of drowning a few hundred feet from dry land when their shallops overturned en route to the shore.
    The sharp, whitened rocks of New England’s ragged coastline seemed inhospitable and foreign to Anne and her family, but in the years leading up to their migration, these travelers had been prepared by their ministers to view their arrival in the New World as a return of sorts. It was a leap in logic that made sense to a people who had been taught to compare their “bondage” in England to the Israelites’ in Egypt, and who saw their journey to the New World as a reprise of the Jews’ famous exodus to the promised land.
    In fact, to seal their intimate relationship with God, some of the most devout Puritans suggested that everyone learn Hebrew, so that the only language spoken in New England would be the same as in Scripture. 3 This proposal soon faded away, probably because the non-Puritans onboard complained bitterly. At any rate, such an ambitious project was far too steep for a people who would have to till fields, saw boards, dig wells, slaughter pigs, and fend off diseases, wolves, and other wild creatures from the moment they stepped ashore.
    As the water splashed over the bow of the flimsy boat and a strange land loomed ahead, Anne knew she was not supposed to be yearning for the Old World. But for someone who had loved her life in England as much as Anne had, this was a difficult proposition. 4 Even if the Old World had truly been the “Egypt” of her captivity, as they drew closer to the shore, America gave no evidence of being the biblical land of vineyards, honey, and olive trees that her father had promised her. Instead, it soon became clear that a disaster had occurred.
    The tiny colony had all but collapsed during the winter. What remained was truly a pitiful sight: just a few acres of cleared land, littered with a motley collection of thatch-roofed huts and hovels. The surrounding forest contained the tallest, widest trees Anne had ever seen, and the two-hundred-foot pines seemed like gigantic monstrosities, terrible deviations that bore little resemblance to the slender poplars, willows, and ashes back home. If the size of the trees was any indication, what of the