bark hath yet returned. Under his charge traveled Desire
Minter, loudly proclaiming her joy at returning to regions "where a body
might at least look for decent victual," and Humility Cooper, Elizabeth
Tilley's little cousin. The two seamen, Trevor and Ely, also returned,
their year of service having expired; but in spite of the dearth of
provision, already imminent owing to the unprovided condition of the
new-comers, not one of the Pilgrims embraced this opportunity of escape.

Besides her passengers, the Fortune carried valuable freight consigned
to Weston as agent of the Adventurers. The best room was given to
sassafras root, of which the colonists had gathered great store, and
with much rejoicing, for being just then the panacea of both French and
English physicians, it was worth something like forty dollars of our
present money per pound. Besides the sassafras were several hogsheads of
beaver skins, also very valuable at that time, and the rest of the hold
was filled with clapboards and other finished lumber, the whole cargo
worth at least twenty-five hundred dollars. The most precious thing on
board that little vessel however, if we except human life, was a
manuscript journal written by William Bradford and Edward Winslow, and
sent home to their friend George Morton in London, who, finding it too
good to be kept to himself, had it printed the very same year by "John
Bellamy at his shop at the Two Greyhounds, near the Royal Exchange,
London," and as he did not give the names of its authors, nor bestow any
distinctive title upon it, it came to be called "Mourt's Relation," and
was the first book ever printed about that insignificant knot of
emigrants in whom we now glory as the Forefathers of New England. But
alas for human hopes, alas for the honest rejoicings of the Pilgrims in
their goodly cargo, just before the Fortune sighted the English coast
she was captured by a French cruiser and carried into Isle Dieu. Two
weeks later the vessel, crew, and passengers were released, but the
sassafras, the beaver skins, and the lumber went to heal and warm and
house Frenchmen instead of Englishmen, and Thomas Weston's pockets still
cried out with their emptiness. Happily for the world, however, the
Frenchmen did not appreciate the "Relation," and it went peacefully on
in Robert Cushman's mails, and reached good George Morton's hands.

About a week after the sailing of the Fortune came Christmas Day, and
Bradford doing on hi