108

CHAP.

Nov.

THE MAYFLOWER AT CAPE COD.

Of the troubles that befell them after their arrival, VIII. with sundry other particulars concerning their transact1620. ings with the merchant adventurers, and many other passages not so pertinent to this present discourse, I shall refer the reader to New England's Memorial, and unto Mr. Bradford's book, where they are at large penned to his plentiful satisfaction."

appear, think ye, but in a mourning
weed, with ashes upon her head,
and tears abundantly flowing from
her eyes, to behold so many of her
children exposed at once, and thrust
from things of dearest necessity,
because their conscience could not
assent to things which the bishops
thought indifferent? Let the astrol-
oger be dismayed at the portentous
blaze of comets, and impressions
in the air, as foretelling troubles
and changes to states; I shall be-
lieve there cannot be a more ill-
boding sign to a nation, (God turn
the omen from us!) than when the
inhabitants, to avoid insufferable

grievances at home, are enforced by heaps to forsake their native country." Works, i. 37, (Symmons's ed.)

Here we take leave of Morton's copy of Gov. Bradford's History. As the rest of it is lost, except the few scattered passages preserved by Prince and Hutchinson, and as we have a Journal of "the troubles that befell them after their arrival," written at the time, and chiefly, as I conceive, by Gov. Bradford, and much more copious and minute than the account in Morton's Memorial, the narrative will proceed in the words of that Journal.

BRADFORD'S AND WINSLOW'S

JOURNAL.

"Relation or Iournal of the beginning and proceedings of the English Plantation settled at Plimoth in NEW-ENGLAND, by certaine English Adventurers both Merchants and others. With their difficult passage, their safe arrivall, their ioyfull building of, and comfortable planting themselves in the now well defended Towne of NEW PLIMOTH.

As also a Relation of Foure severall discoveries since made by some of the same English Planters there resident.

I. In a journey to Packanokick, the habitation of the Indians greatest King Massasoyt; as also their message, the answer and entertainment they had of him.

II. In a voyage made by ten of them to the Kingdome of Nawset, to seeke a boy that had lost himselfe in the woods: with such accidents as befell them in that voyage.

III. In their iourney to the Kingdome of Namaschet, in defence of their greatest King Massasoyt, against the Narrohiggansets, and to revenge the supposed death of their Interpreter Tisquantum. IIII. Their voyage to the Massachusetts, and their entertainment there.

With an answer to all such objections as are any way made against the lawfulnesse of English plantations in those parts.

LONDON. Printed for Iohn Bellamie, and are to be sold at his shop at the two Greyhounds in Cornhill neere the Royall Exchange. 1622."

TO THE READER.

COURTEOUS READER,

BE entreated to make a favorable construction of my forwardness in publishing these ensuing discourses. The desire of carrying the Gospel of Christ into those foreign parts, amongst those people that as yet have had no knowledge nor taste of God, as also to procure unto themselves and others a quiet and comfortable habitation, were, amongst other things, the inducements unto these undertakers of the then hopeful, and now experimentally known good enterprise for plantation in New England, to set afoot and prosecute the same. And though it fared with them, as it is common to the most actions of this nature, that the first attempts prove difficult, as the sequel more at large expresseth, yet it hath pleased God, even beyond our expectation in so short a time, to give hope of letting some of them see (though some he hath taken out of this vale of tears)1 some grounds of hope of the accomplishment of both those ends by them at first propounded.

'The writer studiously suppresses the discouraging fact that more

than half of the first Colonists had already perished.

112

GEORGE MORTON'S PREFACE.

And as myself then much desired, and shortly hope to effect, if the Lord will, the putting to of my shoulder in this hopeful business, and in the mean time these Relations coming to my hand from my both known and faithful friends, on whose writings I do much rely, I thought it not amiss to make them more general, hoping of a cheerful proceeding both of adventurers and planters; entreating that the example of the honorable Virginia and Bermudas' Companies, encountering with so many disasters, and that for divers years together, with an unwearied resolution, the good effects whereof are now eminent, may prevail as a spur of preparation also touching this no less hopeful country, though yet an infant, the extent and commodities whereof are as yet not fully known after time will unfold more. Such as desire to take knowledge of things, may inform themselves by this ensuing treatise, and, if they please, also by such as have been there a first and second time. My hearty prayer to God is that the event of this and all other honorable and honest undertakings, may be for the furtherance of the kingdom of Christ, the enlarging of the bounds of our sovereign lord King James, and the good and profit of those who, either by

By the third patent of the Virginia Company, granted in 1612, the Bermudas, and all islands within three hundred leagues of the coast, were included within the limits of their jurisdiction. These islands they sold to 120 of their own members, who became a distinct corporation, under the name of the Somer Islands Company. See Stith's Virginia, p. 127, App.

24.

2 After the failure of Popham's colony at Sagadahoc in 1608, North

2

Virginia, or New England had been branded as "a cold, barren, mountainous, rocky desert," and had been abandoned as "uninhabitable by Englishmen." See Gorges in Mass. Hist. Coll. xxvi. 56; and Capt. John Smith in his Gen. Hist. ii. 174.

Cushman had just returned from Plymouth, and Clark and Coppin, the mates or pilots of the Mayflower, had been on the coast twice.