between 1676 and 1681 about fourteen hundred had arrived and
settled; principally in the country bordering the eastern shore of the
Delaware. These immigrants suffered the privations and hardships
incident to beginning civilized life in an unbroken wilderness,
surrounded by savages, who were dependent in great measure upon the
uncertain supplies of the chase for their own sustenance, and who rarely
laid up much in store for future wants. But, by uniform uprightness in
all their dealings with these children of the forest, and their
Christian kindness towards them, they soon gained their good-will, and,
in times of scarcity, excited their sympathy; so that often they were
relieved by voluntary offerings of corn and meat from these untutored
red men, when it seemed as though otherwise they must have suffered for
food.

Proud, in the preface to his "History of Pennsylvania," gives in a note
an account of these trials, drawn up by one of the Friends who settled
in New Jersey, containing the following passages:

"A providential hand was very visible and remarkable in many instances
that might be mentioned, and the Indians were even rendered our
benefactors and protectors. Without any carnal weapon, we entered the
land and inhabited therein, as safe as if there had been thousands of
garrisons; for the Most High preserved us from harm, both of man and
beast." "The aforesaid people (Friends) were zealous in performing their
religious services; for having at first no meeting-house to keep a
public meeting in, they made a tent or covert of sail-cloth to meet
under; and after they got some little houses to dwell in, then they kept
their meetings in one of them till they could build a meeting-house."

In the course of the business which necessarily claimed his attention in
the colonization of the province of New Jersey, William Penn naturally
had his thoughts frequently directed towards the settlements of his
countrymen on the far-distant shores of America; and having been
disappointed in the part he took in English politics, in an unsuccessful
effort to procure the election of his friend, Algernon Sidney, to
Parliament, his interest in that part of the world increased, as his
mind became occupied with the idea of settling a free colony in the
pathless wilderness on the other side of the Atlantic; where men should
live under an elective government, enact the laws by which they were to
be controlled, admit of no master, but all sha