ind. George Percy, fresh from Northumberland, tells in a
language as simple as Defoe's the piteous tale of five months of illness
and starvation, watched by "those wild and cruel Pagans." John Pory,
of "the strong potations," who thinks that "good company is the soul
of this life," nevertheless comforts himself in his solitude among the
"crystal rivers and odoriferous woods" by reflecting that he is escaping
envy and expense. George Sandys, scholar and poet, finds his solace
during a Virginia exile in continuing his translation of Ovid's
"Metamorphoses." Colonel Norwood, an adventurer who belongs to a
somewhat later day, since he speaks of having "read Mr. Smith's
travels," draws the long bow of narrative quite as powerfully as the
redoubtable Smith, and far more smoothly, as witness his accounts of
starvation on shipboard and cannibalism on shore. This Colonel is an
artist who would have delighted Stevenson.

All of these early tellers of Virginia tales were Englishmen, and most
of them returned to England, where their books were printed and their
remaining lives were passed. But far to the north east of Virginia
there were two colonies of men who earned the right to say, in William
Bradford's quiet words, "It is not with us as with other men, whom small
things can discourage, or small discontentments cause to wish themselves
at home again." One was the colony of Pilgrims at Plymouth, headed by
Bradford himself. The other was the Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay,
with John Winthrop as governor.

Bradford and Winthrop have left journals which are more than chronicles
of adventure. They record the growth and government of a commonwealth.
Both Bradford and Winthrop were natural leaders of men, grave,
dignified, solid, endowed with a spirit that bred confidence. Each was
learned. Winthrop, a lawyer and man of property, had a higher social
standing than Bradford, who was one of the Separatists of Robinson's
flock at Leyden. But the Pilgrim of the Mayflower and the well-to-do
Puritan of the Bay Colony both wrote their annals like gentlemen and
scholars. Bradford's "History of Plymouth Plantation" runs from 1620
to 1647. Winthrop's diary, now printed as the "History of New England,"
begins with his voyage in 1630 and closes in the year of his death,
1649. As records of an Anglo-Saxon experiment in self-government under
pioneer conditions these books are priceless; as human documents, they
illuminate the Puritan character;