Three Visitors to Early Plymouth

We all know what the Pilgrim Fathers wrote about themselves and their settlements on the (not so) “stern and rockbound coast”; but how many people know that they were visited thrice, between 1622 and 1627, by outsiders who left on record candid accounts of what they saw? That is the reason for this book. 

Pory’s account is valuable for the vivid description of the bounties of nature at Plymouth and along the coast of Maine. We are sorry he did not have time to investigate the Indians’ tall tale of mammoth Massachusetts oysters. He confirms Edward Winslow’s story about Governor Bradford’s exchange of diplomatic messages (snakeskin and bullets) with Canonicus, somewhat suggesting what now goes on between Washington and viiiMoscow. Bradford refers pleasantly to Pory’s visit in his Of Plymouth Plantation chapter xiii, and notes that he borrowed the Governor’s copy of Henry Ainsworth’s Annotations upon the Fourth Book of Moses for shipboard reading on his passage to England.