Southampton made their voyages three
or four weeks later. Seventeen in the whole came before winter,
bringing about a thousand passengers....
It is desirable to understand how this population, destined to be the
germ of a state, was constituted. Of members of the Massachusetts
Company, it cannot be ascertained that so many as twenty had come
over. That company, as has been explained, was one formed mainly for
the furtherance, not of any private interests, but of a great public
object. As a corporation, it had obtained the ownership of a large
American territory, on which it designed to place a colony which
should be a refuge for civil and religious freedom. By combined
counsels, it had arranged the method of ordering a settlement, and the
liberality of its members had provided the means of transporting those
who should compose it. This done, the greater portion were content to
remain and await the course of events at home, while a few of their
number embarked to attend to providing the asylum which very soon
might be needed by them all.
The reception of the newcomers was discouraging. More than a quarter
part of their predecessors at Salem had died during the previous
winter, and many of the survivors were ill or feeble. The faithful
Higginson was wasting with a hectic fever, which soon proved fatal.
There was a scarcity of all sorts of provisions, and not corn enough
for a fortnight's supply after the arrival of the fleet. "The
remainder of a hundred eighty servants," who, in the two preceding
years, had been conveyed over at heavy cost, were discharged from
their indentures, to escape the expense of their maintenance. Sickness
soon began to spread, and before the close of autumn had proved fatal
to two hundred of this year's emigration. Death aims at the "shining
mark" he is said to love. Lady Arbella Johnson, coming "from a
paradise of plenty and pleasure, which she enjoyed in the family of a
noble earldom, into a wilderness of wants," survived her arrival only
a month; and her husband, esteemed and beloved by the colonists, died
of grief a few weeks after. "He was a holy man and wise and died in
sweet peace."
[1] From Palfrey's "History of New England." By permission of and
by arrangement with the authorized publishers, Houghton, Mifflin
Co. Copyright, 1873.
LORD BALTIMORE IN MARYLAND
(1633)
BY CONTEMPORARY WRITERS[1]
On Friday the 22 of November 1633, a small gale of winde comm
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