"The Lord is in His Holy Temple; Let all the earth keep silence before Him."
The new land had been claimed for an earthly potentate; he now claimed it for the King of kings. Immediately "all hands fell to work." Every article, every utensil, was removed from the ships, which were to be no longer the homes of the colonists. The stores were brought on land and covered with old sails; a hasty barricade was thrown up for defence against the savages; tents were set up; but we are told that the soft May air was so delicious, the men elected to lie upon the warm earth; and there, having set their watch to "ward all the night," with nothing but the whispering leaves between them and the stars, they slept the sweet sleep of weariness of body and contentment of soul.
When the colonists looked around them on the first day in their new home, they beheld a scene which will never again in the history of this world be spread before the eyes of man.
Before them lay a vast land just as God made it. No furrow had followed the plough or wheel of civilization. The earth had been pressed by nothing sterner than the light hoof of the reindeer or the moccasined foot of the Indian. No seed had ever drifted hither on the winds, or been brought by a bird wanderer from a distant country. The land was bounded by vast, untravelled seas. The earth had been stirred in cultivation only by the hands of women and children, unaided by any implement of steel or iron. In the forests and fields the great mystery of birth and death and birth again had silently gone on unmarked for countless ages. There was literally no known past, no record of a yesterday which might explain the problems of to-day.
Of course the English colonist would be keenly curious as to the fauna and flora of the new land. There were "such faire meadowes and goodly tall trees," says Percy,[15] "with such Fresh-waters running through the woods, as I was almost ravished at the first sight thereof. My selfe and three or foure more walking into the Woods, by chance we espied a path-way like to an Irish pace. We were desirous to knowe whither it would bring us. Wee traced along some foure miles, all the way as wee went having the pleasantest Suckles, the ground all bespred and flowing over with faire flowers of sundry colours and kindes as though it had been any Garden or Orchard in England."