On November 27th, 1620, the Pilgrims of the Mayflower sent over thirty colonists and sailors on a third expedition for a settlement site. Led by Shipmaster Christopher Jones, they piled into the newly repaired shallop (their small expedition boat). The winds lashed their faces as they clutched their coats tight against the chill.
As evening came, Master Jones, his bones aching from an endless march through snowy dunes, ordered the men to stop and make camp, though a few settlers wanted to keep searching. A few blasts from their muskets, and the famished men, who had not eaten all day, satisfied their rumbling bellies with three geese and six ducks before they bedded down beneath the pines. After a night huddled on the freezing shore, they awoke to six inches of snow.
They soon found even more buried corn, and two abandoned wetus – native houses made from bent saplings and covered with bark. Recognizing some were too ill to continue, Jones headed back with the corn and sick men as the others pressed on. The explorers knew the corn was stored by the native people, but in their desperation, they considered it a blessing of God. Now that winter was already upon them, planting their own crops was impossible, and they promised themselves that they would repay the land’s residents at a later date.
When they finally returned to the ship, the men found that some of their party had already died in the frigid cold of Cape Cod.
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“He giveth snow like wool, and scattereth the hoary frost like ashes. He casteth forth his ice like morsels: who can abide the cold thereof?”
(Psalms 147:16-17, 1599 Geneva Bible)
“When they wandered in the desert and wilderness out of the way, and found no city to dwell in, both hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them.”
(Psalms 107:4-5, 1599 Geneva Bible)
