West! About the close of the sixteenth century a number of poor dissenters scattered through the North of England, especially in the counties of Nottingham, Lincoln and York, began to join themselves together for the purposes of free religious worship. Politically, they were patriotic subjects of the English king; religiously, they were rebels against the authority of the English Church. Their rebellion, however, only extended to the declaration that every man has a right to discover and apply the truth as revealed in the Scriptures without the interposition of any power other than his own reason and conscience. Such a doctrine was very repugnant to the Church of England. Queen Elizabeth herself declared such teaching to be subversive of the principles on which her monarchy was founded. King James was not more tolerant; and from time to time violent persecutions broke out against the feeble and dispersed Christians of the north. Despairing of rest in their own country, the Puritans finally determined to go into exile, and to seek in another land the freedom of worship which their own had denied them. They turned their faces toward Holland, made one unsuccessful attempt to get away, were brought back and thrown into prisons. Again they gathered together on a bleak heath in Lincolnshire, and in the spring of 1608 embarked from the mouth of the Humber. Their ship brought them in safety to Amsterdam, where, under the care of their heroic pastor, John Robinson, they passed one winter, and then removed to Leyden. Such was the beginning of their wandering. They took the name of PILGRIMS, and grew content to have no home or resting-place. Privation and exile could be endured when sweetened with liberty. But the love of native land is a universal passion. The Puritans in Holland did not forget-could not forget-that they were Englishmen. During their ten years of residence at Leyden they did not cease to long for a return to the country which had cast them out. Though ruled by a heartless monarch and a bigoted priesthood, England was their country still. The unfamiliar language of the Dutch grated harshly on their ears. They pined with unrest, conscious of their ability and willingness to dosomething which should convince even King James of their patriotism and worth. It was in this condition of mind that about the year 1617 the Puritans began to meditate a removal to the wilds of the New World. There, with honest purpose and prudent zeal, they would extend the dominions of the English king. They would forget the past, and be at peace with their country. Accordingly, John Carver and Robert Cushman were despatched to England to ask permission for the church of Leyden to settle in America. The agents of the London Company and the Council of Plymouth gave some encouragement to the request, but the king and his ministers, especially Lord Bacon, set their faces against any project which might seem to favor heretics. The most that King James would do was to make an informal promise to let the Pilgrims alone in America. Such has always been the despicable attitude of bigotry toward every liberal enterprise. The Puritans were not discouraged. With or without permission, protected or not protected by the terms of a charter which might at best be violated, they would seek asylum and rest in the Western wilderness. Out of their own resources, and with the help of a few faithful friends, they provided the scanty means of departure and set their faces toward the sea. The Speedwell, a small vessel of sixty tons, was purchased at Amsterdam, and the Mayflower, a larger and more substantial ship, was hired for the voyage. The former was to carry the emigrants from Leyden to Southampton, where they were to be joined by the Mayflower, with another company from London. Assembling at the harbor of Delft, on the River Meuse, fifteen miles south of Leyden, as many of the Pilgrims as could be accommodated went on board the Speedwell. The whole congregation accompanied them to the shore. There Robinson gave them a consoling farewell address, and the blessings and prayers of those who were left behind followed the vessel out of sight. Both ships came safely to Southampton, and within two weeks the emigrants were ready for the voyage. On the 5th of August, 1620, the vessels left the harbor; but after a few days' sailing the Speedwell was found to be shattered, old and leaky. On this account both ships anchored in the port of Dartmouth, and eight days were spent in making the needed repairs. Again the sails were set; but scarcely had the land receded from sight before the captain of the Speedwell declared his vessel unfit to breast the ocean, and then, to the great grief and discouragement of the emigrants, put back to Plymouth. Here the bad ship was abandoned; but the Pilgrims were encouraged and feasted by the citizens, and the more zealous went on board the Mayflower, ready and anxious for a final effort. On the 6th day of September the first colony of New England, numbering one hundred and two souls, saw the shores of Old England grow dim and sink behind the sea. The voyage was long and perilous. For sixty-three days the ship was buffeted by storms and driven. It had been the intention of the Pilgrims to found their colony in the beautiful country of the Hudson; but the tempest carried them out of their course, and the first land seen was the desolate Cape Cod. On the 9th of November the vessel was anchored in the bay; then a meeting was held on board and the colony organized under a solemn compact. In the charter which they there made for themselves the emigrants declared their loyalty to the English Crown, and covenanted together to live in peace and harmony, with equal rights to all, obedient to just laws made for the common good. Such was the simple but sublime constitution of the oldest New England State. A nobler document is not to be found among the records of the world.* To this instrument all the heads of families, forty-one in number, solemnly set their names. An election was held in which all had an equal voice, and John Carver was unanimously chosen governor of the colony. After two days the boat was lowered, but was found to be half rotten and useless. More than a fortnight of precious time was required to make the needed repairs. Standish, Bradford and a few other hardy spirits got to shore and explored the country; nothing was found but a heap of Indian corn under the snow. By the 6th of December the boat was ready for service, and the governor, with fifteen companions, went ashore. The weather was dreadful. Alternate rains and snow-storms converted the clothes of the Pilgrims into coats-of-mail. All day they wandered about, and then returned to the sea-shore. In the morning they were attacked by the Indians, but escaped to the ship with their lives, cheerful and giving thanks. Then the vessel was steered to the south and west for forty-five miles around the coast of what is now the county of Barnstable. At nightfall of Saturday a storm came on; the rudder was wrenched away, and the poor ship driven, half by accident and half by the skill of the pilot, into a safe haven on the west side of the bay. The next day, being the Sabbath, was spent in religious devotions, and on Monday, the 11th of December, Old Style, 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers landed on the Rock of Plymouth. It was now the dead of winter. There was an incessant storm of sleet and snow, and the houseless immigrants, already enfeebled by their sufferings, fell a-dying of hunger, cold and exposure. After a few days spent in explorations about the coast, a site was selected near the first landing, some trees were felled, the snow-drifts cleared away, and on the 9th of January the heroic toilers began to build New Plymouth. Every man took on himself the work of making his own house; but the ravages of disease grew daily worse, strong arms fell powerless, lung-fevers and consumptions wasted every family. At one time only seven men were able to work on the sheds which were building for shelter from the storms; and if an early spring had not brought relief, the colony must have perished to a man. Such were the privations and griefs of that terrible winter when New England began to be. * See Appendix, note B. 1699 THE CHAPTER VIII. VOYAGES AND SETTLEMENTS OF THE DUTCH. HE first Dutch settlement in America was made on Manhattan or New York Island. The colony resulted from the voyages and explorations of the illustrious SIR HENRY HUDSON. In the year 1607 this great British seaman was employed by a company of London merchants to sail into the North Atlantic and discover a route eastward or westward to the Indies. He made the voyage in a single ship, passed up the eastern coast of Greenland to a higher point of latitude than ever before attained, turned eastward to Spitzbergen, circumnavigated that island, and then was compelled by the icebergs to return to England. In the next year he renewed his efforts, hoping to find between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla an open way to the East. By this course he confidently expected to shorten the route to China by at least eight thousand miles. Again the voyage resulted in failure; his employers gave up the enterprise in despair, but his own spirits only rose to a higher determination. When the cautious merchants would furnish no more means, he quitted England and went to Amsterdam. Holland was at this time the foremost maritime nation of the world, and the eminent navigator did not long go begging for patronage in the busy marts of that country. The Dutch East India Company at once furnished him with a ship, a small yacht called the Half Moon, and in April of 1609 he set out on his third voyage to reach the Indies. About the seventy-second parallel of latitude, above the capes of Norway, he turned eastward, but between Lapland and Nova Zembla the ocean was filled with icebergs, and further sailing was impossible. Baffled but not discouraged, he immediately turned his prow toward the shores of America; somewhere between the Chesapeake and the North Pole he would find a passage into the Pacific ocean. In the month of July Hudson reached Newfoundland, and passing to the coast of Maine, spent some time in repairing his ship, which had been shattered in a storm. Sailing thence southward, he touched at Cape Cod, and by the middle of August found himself as far south as the Chesapeake. Again he turned to the north, determined to examine the coast more closely, and on the 28th of the month anchored in Delaware Bay. To explore the beautiful stream was now the pleasing task. For eight days the Half Moon sailed northward up the river. Such magnificent forests, such beautiful hills, such mountains rising in the distance, such fertile valleys, planted here and there with ripening corn, the Netherlanders had never seen before. On the 19th of September the vessel was moored at what is now the landing of Kinderhook; but an exploring party, still unsatisfied, took to the boats and rowed up the river beyond the site of Albany. After some days they returned to the ship, the moorings were loosed, the vessel dropped down the stream, and on the 4th of October the sails were spread for Holland. On the homeward voyage Hudson, not perhaps without a touch of national pride, put into the harbor of Dartmouth. Thereupon the government of King James, with characteristic illiberality, detained the Half Moon, and claimed the crew as Englishmen. All that Hudson could do was to forward to his employers of the East India Company an account of his successful voyage and of the delightful country which he had visited under the flag of Holland. Now were the English merchants ready to spend more money to find the north-west passage. In the summer of 1610, a ship, called the 16/0 Discovery, was given to Hudson; and with a vision of the Indies flitting before his imagination he left England, never to return. He had learned by this time that nowhere between Florida and Maine was there an open-ing through the continent to the Pacific. The famous pass must now be sought between the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the southern point of Greenland. Steering between Cape Farewell and Labrador, in the trackwhich Frobisher had taken, the vessel came, on the 2d day of August, into the mouth of the strait which bears the name of its discoverer. No ship had ever before entered these waters. For a while the way westward was barred with islands; but passing between them, the bay seemed to open, the ocean widened to the right and left, and the route to China was at last revealed. So believed the great captain and his crew; but sailing farther to the west, the inhospitable shores narrowed on the more inhospitable sea, and Hudson found himself environed with the terrors of winter in the frozen gulf of the North. With unfaltering courage he |