A Generous Harvest

It would astonish an English farmer to see how lavishly everything grows here in this land of America. We did nothing toward enriching the soil when our corn was planted, and yet the harvest was so great as to astonish every one, save the savages who were accustomed to such generous bounty from the earth.

Not only did we gather of corn, from the fields which the brown-skinned man had planted and from those which we ourselves put under cultivation, as much as would serve our entire company a full year, however generous they might be in the use of it, but we had fifteen hundred bushels to spare.

The storehouse which we had built was all too small to contain this bountiful supply, and our people cast about to know what might be done with it.

Governor Calvert sent a message to the people at Jamestown, asking if it would please them to buy corn from us in payment of the goods we had already purchased from them, and the reply came back that the settlers of Virginia had ample store and to spare, therefore we could not hope to dispose of the grain near at home.

Then it was my uncle proposed that the Dove  be, laden with a thousand bushels of corn, and sent to those Englishmen who had settled in Plymouth, for, so some of the people in Virginia said, the harvest at that place had been scanty, therefore it would be a deed of charity, as well as a matter of business, to send there the grain which we ourselves could not use, trusting that those settlers would be willing to pay a fair price either in money, wampum, or goods.

This plan seemed to Governor Calvert a good one, and once the Dove  was fully laden, which is to say when we had put one thousand bushels of corn in her, Christopher Marten was chosen to act as merchant in selling the cargo.

He, together with the crew of the pinnace, set sail without delay, bearing letters to Master Winthrop of Plymouth, to the effect that we of Maryland were eager to open trade between the provinces.