After explaining the reason for the Thanksgiving day feast, Edward Winslow went on to sing the praises of the colony in general. He may have been writing party for the benefit of the colonial investors back in the old world, but his beautiful description must have been for family and friends as well. In summing up the value and assets of a business, very few modern businessmen would have done as much. I particularly love the discussion of the roses:
Our bay is full of lobsters all the summer and affordeth variety of other fish; in September we can take a hogshead of eels in a night, with small labor, and can dig them out of their beds all the winter. We have mussels ... at our doors. Oysters we have none near, but we can have them brought by the Indians when we will; all the spring-time the earth sendeth forth naturally very good sallet herbs. Here are grapes, white and red, and very sweet and strong also. Strawberries, gooseberries, raspas, etc. Plums of tree sorts, with black and red, being almost as good as a damson; abundance of roses, white, red, and damask; single, but very sweet indeed… These things I thought good to let you understand, being the truth of things as near as I could experimentally take knowledge of, and that you might on our behalf give God thanks who hath dealt so favorably with us.
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