At that period there were but six or eight dwellings in the town; and these were miserable hovels, with roofs of straw and wooden chimneys.  The passengers in the fleet either built huts with bark and branches of trees, or erected tents of cloth till they could provide themselves with better shelter.  Many of them went to form a settlement at Charlestown.  It was thought fit that the Lady Arbella should tarry in Salem for a time; she was probably received as a guest into the family of John Endicott.  He was the chief person in the plantation, and had the only comfortable house which the new comers had beheld since they left England.  So now, children, you must imagine Grandfather’s chair in the midst of a new scene.

Suppose it a hot summer’s day, and the lattice-windows of a chamber in Mr. Endicott’s house thrown wide open.  The Lady Arbella, looking paler than she did on shipboard, is sitting in her chair, and thinking mournfully of far-off England.  She rises and goes to the window.  There, amid patches of garden ground and cornfield, she sees the few wretched hovels of the settlers, with the still ruder wigwams and cloth tents of the passengers who had arrived in the same fleet with herself.  Far and near stretches the dismal forest of pine trees, which throw their black shadows over the whole land, and likewise over the heart of this poor lady.

All the inhabitants of the little village are busy.  One is clearing a spot on the verge of the forest for his homestead; another is hewing the trunk of a fallen pine tree, in order to build himself a dwelling; a third is hoeing in his field of Indian corn.  Here comes a huntsman out of the woods, dragging a bear which he has shot, and shouting to the neighbors to lend him a hand.  There goes a man to the sea-shore, with a spade and a bucket, to dig a mess of clams, which were a principal article of food with the first settlers.  Scattered here and there are two or three dusky figures, clad in mantles of fur, with ornaments of bone hanging from their ears, and the feathers of wild birds in their coal black hair.  They have belts of shell-work slung across their shoulders, and are armed with bows and arrows and flint-headed spears.  These are an Indian Sagamore and his attendants, who have come to gaze at the labors of the white men.  And now rises a cry, that a pack of wolves have seized a young calf in the pasture; and every man snatches up his gun or pike, and runs in chase of the marauding beasts.

Poor Lady Arbella watches all these sights, and feels that this new world is fit only for rough and hardy people.  None should be here but those who can struggle with wild beasts and wild men, and can toil in the heat or cold, and can keep their hearts firm against all difficulties and dangers.  But she is not one of these.  Her gentle and timid spirit sinks within her; and turning away from the window she sits down in the great chair, and wonders thereabouts in the wilderness her friends will dig her grave.