They have chosen a Captain, too, and appointed Military Orders; but who is there now to be armed and marched to battle? At the end of three months a full half of the Company are dead-of one hundred persons scarce fifty remain, and of those, the living are scarce able to bury the dead, the well not sufficient to tend the sick. Were there no graves in England, that they have thus come out to die in the wilderness?

But, doubtless, the diminution of their numbers has, at least, saved them from all fear of famine. Their little cornfields have yielded a tolerable crop, and the autumn finds such as have survived, in comparative health and plenty. And now, the first arrival of a ship from England rejoices them not a little. Once more they are to hear from home, from those dear families and friends which they have left behind them, to receive tokens of their remembrance in supplies sent to their relief, perhaps to behold some of them face to face coming over to share in their lonely exile. Alas! one of the best friends to their enterprise has, indeed, come over, and brought five-and-thirty persons to live in their plantation-but the ship is so poorly furnished with provisions, that they are forced to spare her some of theirs to carry her back, while not her passengers only, but themselves too, are soon threatened with starvation. The whole Company are forthwith put upon half allowance ;-but the famine, notwithstanding, begins to pinch. They look hard for a supply, but none arrives. They spy

a boat at sea; it is nearing the shore; it comes to land ;-it brings-a letter ;-it brings more; it brings seven passengers to join them; - more mouths to eat, but no food, no hope of any. But they have begged, at last, of a fisherman at the Eastward, as much bread as amounts to a quarter of a pound per day till harvest, and with that they are sustained and satisfied.

And now, the Narragansetts, many thousands strong, begin to breathe forth threatenings and slaughter against them, mocking at their weakness and challenging them to the contest. And when they look for the arrival of more friends from England, to strengthen them in this hour of peril, they find a disorderly, unruly band of fifty or sixty worthless fellows coming amongst them to devour their substance, to waste and steal their corn, and by their thefts and outrages upon the natives, also, to excite them to fresh and fiercer hostilities.

Turn to the fate of their first mercantile adventure. The ship which arrived in their harbor next after the Mayflower had departed, and which, as we have seen, involved them in the dangers and distresses of a famine, has been laden with the proceeds of their traffic with the Indians, and with the fruits of their own personal toil. The little cargo consists of two hogsheads of beaver and other skins, and good clapboards as full as she can hold the freight estimated in all at near five hundred pounds.-What emotions of pride, what expectations of profit, went forth with that little

outfit! And how were they doomed to be dashed and disappointed! Just as the ship was approaching the English coast, she was seized by a French freebooter, and robbed of all she had worth taking!

View them in a happier hour, in a scene of prosperity and success. They have a gallant warrior in their company, whose name, albeit it was the name of a little man, (for Miles Standish was hardly more than five feet high,) has become the very synonyme of a great Captain. An alarm has been given of a conspiracy among the natives, and he has been empowered to enlist as many men as he thinks sufficient to make his party good against all the Indians in the Massachusetts Bay. He has done so, has put an end to the conspiracy, and comes home laden with the spoils of an achievement which has been styled by his biographer his 'most capital exploit.'-How long a list of killed and wounded, think you, is reported as the credentials of his bloody prowess, and how many men does he bring with him to share in the honors of the triumph? The whole number of Indians slain in this expedition was six, and though the Pilgrim hero brought back with him in safety every man that he carried out, the returning host numbered but eight beside their leader. He did not take more with him, we are told, in order to prevent that jealousy of military power, which, it seems, had already found its way to a soil it has never since left. But his proceedings, notwithstanding, by no means escaped censure. When the pious

6

Robinson heard of this transaction in Holland, he wrote to the Pilgrims to consider the disposition of their Captain, who was of a warm temper,' adding, however, this beautiful sentiment in relation to the wretched race to which the victims of the expedition belonged-it would have been happy, if they had converted some, before they had killed any.'

Inconceivable Fortune! Unimaginable Destiny! Inscrutable Providence! Are these the details of an event from which such all-important, all-pervading influences were to flow? Were these the means, and these the men, through which not New Plymouth only was to be planted, not New England only to be founded, not our whole Country only to be formed and moulded, but the whole Hemisphere to be shaped and the whole world shaken? Yes, Fellow Citizens, this was the event, these were the means, and these the men, by which these mighty impulses and momentous effects actually have been produced. And inadequate, unadapted, impotent, to such ends, as to outward appearances they may seem, there was a Power in them and a Power over them amply sufficient for their accomplishment, and the only powers that were thus sufficient. The direct and immediate influence of the passengers in the Mayflower, either upon the destinies of our own land or of others, may, indeed, have been less conspicuous than that of some of the New England Colonists who followed them. But it was the bright and shining wake they left upon

the waves, it was the clear and brilliant beacon they lighted upon the shores, that caused them to have any followers. They were the pioneers in that peculiar path of emigration which alone conducted to these great results. They, as was written to them by their brethren in the very outset of their enterprize, were the instruments to break the ice for others, and theirs shall be the honor unto the world's end!

When the Pilgrim Fathers landed upon Plymouth Rock, one hundred and twenty-eight years had elapsed since the discovery of the New World by Columbus. During this long period, the Southern Continent of America had been the main scene of European adventure and enterprise. And richly had it repaid the exertions which had been made to subdue and settle it. The Empires of Montezuma and the Incas had surrendered themselves at the first summons before the chivalrous energies of Cortes and Pizarro, and Brazil had mingled her diamonds with the gold and silver of Mexico and Peru, to deck the triumphs and crown the rapacity of the Spaniard and the Portuguese.

But the Northern Continent had been by no means neglected in the adventures of the day. Nor had those adventures been confined to the subjects of Portugal and Spain. The Monarchs of those two kingdoms, indeed, emboldened by their success at the South, had put forth pretensions to the sole jurisdiction of the whole New Hemisphere. But