CHARACTER OF THE COLONISTS. 251 XVI. Dec. Our company are, for most part, very religious, hon- CHAP. est people; the word of God sincerely taught us every Sabbath; so that I know not any thing a con- 1621. tented mind can here want: I desire your friendly care to send my wife and children' to me, where I wish all the friends I have in England; and so I rest Your loving kinsman, His wife and two children came in the next ship, the Ann, which arrived at Plymouth in the summer of 1623. See Prince, p. 220, and Morton, p. 379. 2 I insert this letter, because it was written by one of the passengers in the Fortune. It was first WILLIAM HILTON.2] printed in 1622, in Smith's New CHAPTER XVII. OF THE STATE OF THE COLONY, AND THE NEED OF PUBLIC XVII. NEW ENGLAND, so called not only (to avoid novel- CHAP. ties) because Captain Smith hath so entitled it in his Description, but because of the resemblance that is in 1621. it of England, the native soil of Englishmen; it being muchwhat the same for heat and cold in summer and winter, it being champaign ground, but not high mountains; somewhat like the soil in Kent and Essex, full of dales and meadow ground, full of rivers and sweet springs, as England is. But principally, so far as we 1 In the course of Robert Cushman's short residence of a month at Plymouth he delivered a discourse to the colonists on the Sin and Danger of Self-Love, from 1 Cor. x. 24, "Let no man seek his own, but every man another's wealth;" which was printed at London in 1622, but without his name. In a tract printed at London in 1644, entitled "A Brief Narration of some Church Courses in New England," I find the following allusion to this discourse; "There is a book printed, called A Sermon preached at Plymouth, in New England, which, as I am certified, was made there by a comber of wool." Dr. Belknap remarks, that "this discourse may be considered as a specimen of the prophesyings of the brethren. The occasion was singular; the exhortations and reproofs are not less so, but were adapted to the existing state of the colony." Judge Davis says that "the late Isaac Lothrop, of Plymouth, often mentioned an intimation, received from an aged relative, as to the spot where this sermon was delivered. It was at the common house of the Plantation, which is understood to have been erected on the southerly side of the bank, where the town brook meets the harbour. Mr. Lothrop died in 1808, aged seventy-three. Not many |