The landing. On a chain of slender accidents hung the existence of New England. Had the claims of Guiana prevailed, had the tempting offers of the Dutch changed the allegiance of the Robinsonian Independents, had the Mayflower reached her destination in what is now New Jersey, the current of American history would not have flowed as it has. A South American New England, a Dutch New England, or a non-peninsular community of English Puritans west of the Hudson with good wheat fields and no fisheries or foreign trade, would have been different in destiny from what we call New England, and its influence on events and national character could not have been the same. Morton's Memorial, 6th edition, p. 22, note. It will always remain doubtful whether or not Jones, the captain of the Mayflower, was bribed by the Dutch, as the Plymouth people came to believe. Compare Asher's History of W. I. Company in Bibl. Essay. Nothing could be more probable in view of the general bad character of the seamen of that time and the eagerness of one political party in Holland to secure a foothold for the Dutch in America; but whether Jones, who seems to have borne a bad reputation, was bribed, or, as he pretended, became entangled in the shoals of Cape Cod and turned back in real despair of finding his way, is of no moment. [Note 7.] He turned back and came to anchor in Provincetown Harbor. Here the threats of the brutal seamen, unwilling to go farther, and the clamor of the overcrowded and sea-weary passengers did the rest. To continue longer closely cabined in the little ship was misery and perhaps death. Here was land, and that was enough. And so, after exploration of the whole coast of Cape Cod Bay, the place already named Plymouth on John Smith's map was selected for a settlement. Here the landing was made on the 10th of November, O.S., 1620. [Note 8.]
Elements of New England. Camden has preserved to us an old English saying accepted in the days of the Pilgrims, to the effect that "a barren country is a great whet to the industry of a people." It was the wedding of an austere creed to an austere soil under an austere sky that gave the people of New England their marked character, and the severe economic conditions imposed by the soil and climate were even more potent than Puritanism in producing the traits that go to make up the New England of history.
X.
Earlier attempts to colonize New England. The unwise management that ruined nearly all projects for colonization in that age and that produced such disasters in Virginia, had defeated every earlier attempt to plant English people on the New England coast. Gosnold had taken a colony to Elizabeth Island in Buzzard's Bay in 1602, but the men went back in the ship in order to share the profit of a cargo of sassafras. Captain George Popham was the head of a party that undertook to colonize the coast of Maine in 1607, but having suffered "extreme extremities" during the winter, the colonists returned the following year. In 1615 Captain John Smith himself set out with sixteen men, only to be taken by a French privateer. These and other attempts ending in failure, and many disastrous trading voyages, led to a belief that the Indian conjurers, who were known to be the devil's own, had laid a spell on the northern coast to keep the white people away. This enchanted land might long have lain waste if Captain Jones of the Mayflower, sailing to Hudson River or the region south of it, had not run foul of the shoals of Cape Cod.
XI.
Sufferings at Plymouth. The Pilgrims suffered, like their predecessors, from the prevailing unskillfulness in colony-planting. They had escaped from the horrors of the Mayflower, but how much better was the wild land than the wild sea; the rude, overcrowded forest cabins than the too populous ship? "All things stared upon them with a weather-beaten face," says Bradford. The horrors of the first winter in Virginia were repeated; here, as at Jamestown, nearly all were ill at once, and nearly half of the people died before the coming of spring. The same system of partnership with mercenary shareholders or "adventurers" in England that had brought disaster in Virginia was tried with similar results at Plymouth, and a similar attempt at communism in labor and supply was made, this time under the most favorable conditions, among a people conscientious and bound together by strong religious enthusiasm. It resulted, as such sinking of personal interest must ever result, in dissensions and insubordination, in unthrift and famine.
Bradford. The colony was saved from the prolonged misery that makes the early history of Virginia horrible by the wise head and strong hand of its leader. William Bradford, who had been chosen governor on the death of Carver, a few months after the arrival at Plymouth, had been a youth but eighteen years old when he fled with the rest of the Scrooby church to Holland. He was bred to husbandry and had inherited some property. In Holland he became a silk worker and on attaining his majority set up for himself in that trade. He was still a young man when first chosen governor of the little colony, and he ruled New Plymouth almost continuously till his death—that is, for about thirty-seven years. He was of a magnanimous temper, resolute but patient, devotedly religious, but neither intolerant nor austere. He had a genius for quaintly vivid expression in writing that marked him as a man endowed with the literary gift, which comes as Heaven pleases where one would least look for it.