of 53 tons,
which crossed the ocean the following year, and arrived at Plymouth also
the 9th of November, bringing Mr. Cushman and the rest of the passengers
left by the _Speedwell_ the year before. Gosnold had crossed the ocean
and explored the eastern coasts of America in 1602 in a "small bark;"
Martin Pring had done the same in 1603 in the bark _Discovery_, of 26
tons; Frobisher, in northern and dangerous coasts, in a vessel of 25
tons burden; and two of the vessels of Columbus were from 15 to 30 tons
burden, and without decks on which to "float" the "engulfing floods"
under which the _Mayflower_ "staggered" so marvellously. All these
vessels long preceded the _Mayflower_ across the "unknown ocean;" but
never inspired the lofty eloquence which Mr. Everett and a host of
inferior rhapsodists have bestowed upon the _Mayflower_ and her voyage.
Bancroft fills several pages of his elaborate history to the same
effect, and in similar style with the passages above quoted. I will give
a single sentence, as follows:--"The Pilgrims having selected for their
settlement the country near the Hudson, the best position on the whole
coast, were conducted to the most barren and inhospitable part of
Massachusetts." (History of the United States, Vol. 1., p. 309.)

There was certainly little self-abnegation, but much sound and worldly
wisdom, in the Pilgrims selecting "the best position on the whole coast"
of America for their settlement; and there is as little truth in the
statement, though a good antithesis--the delight of Mr. Bancroft--that
the Pilgrims were conducted to "the most barren and inhospitable part of
Massachusetts" for "actual settlement," as appears from the descriptions
given of it by Governors Winslow and Bradford and other Pilgrim Fathers,
written after the first and during the subsequent years of their
settlement. I will give but two illustrations. Mr. Winslow was one of
the passengers in the _Mayflower_, and was, by annual election, several
years Governor of the Plymouth colony. It has been stated above that the
ship _Fortune_, of 53 tons burden, brought in the autumn of 1621 the
Pilgrim passengers who had been left in England the year before by the
sea-unworthiness of the _Speedwell_. The _Fortune_ anchored in Plymouth
Bay the 9th of November--just a year from the day on which the
_Mayflower_ spied the land of Cape Cod. Mr. Winslow prepared and sent
back by the _Fortune_ an elaborate "Relation" of the state and pro