CHAPTER I.
HOMESICKNESS.
"Hame!—hame!—hame!
Oh! it's hame, hame, I fain wad be;
Hame—hame—hame—
In my ain countrie!"
t was midwinter in New England, the
very commencement of the year 1679—a year made ever memorable to the little colony settled along the shores of the Massachusetts Bay, as one of the coldest, hardest, and most disastrous which the new dwellers on that rugged and inhospitable coast had yet encountered. Storm and shipwreck had walked in devastation upon the angry and tumultuous waters, and cold, famine, and sickness had desolated the land, and threatened to depopulate its shores. Many of the older settlers trembled for the success of their costly experiment, fearing the land was too sterile and
