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CHAPTER III.
CHRISTMAS TIDE IN PLYMOUTH HARBOR.
For the rest of that month of November the _Mayflower_ lay at anchor in
Cape Cod harbor, and formed a floating home for the women and children,
while the men were out exploring the country, with a careful and steady
shrewdness and good sense, to determine where should be the site of the
future colony. The record of their adventures is given in their journals
with that sweet homeliness of phrase which hangs about the Old English of
that period like the smell of rosemary in an ancient cabinet.
We are told of a sort of picnic day, when "our women went on shore to
wash and all to refresh themselves;" and fancy the times there must have
been among the little company, while the mothers sorted and washed and
dried the linen, and the children, under the keeping of the old mastiffs
and with many cautions against the wolves and wild cubs, once more had
liberty to play in the green wood. For it appears in these journals how,
in one case, the little spaniel of John Goodman was chased by two wolves,
and was fain to take refuge between his master's legs for shelter.
Goodman "had nothing in hand," says the journal, "but took up a stick and
threw at one of them and hit him, and they presently ran away, but came
again.
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