Yet though the Quakers maintained their own preachers, and as a religious sect, spite of all their “abominable heresies,” were tolerated in Maryland, yet they were not safe even here from suffering, but that for civil, rather than religious causes. Until the year 1688, the era of great revolutions, the Quakers were liable to fines and imprisonment, from their refusal to perform military duties and to take an oath. Otherwise the Quaker was warmly welcomed. The scattered dwellers in the wilderness, and on the hanks of the Maryland rivers, opened their souls to “the truth” as promulgated by George Fox and his friends; their simple hearts were as good soil into which the seed of the spirit fell and brought forth abundantly. Many a “heavenly meeting” had George Fox in this friendly colony. “His landing in the country,” he says, “was so ordered by the good providence of God, that he arrived just in time to be present at a farewell meeting which was held by John Burneyate, before his setting sail for old England. And a very large meeting this was, and held four days, to which came many of the world’s people, five or six justices of the peace, a speaker of the assembly, a member of the council, and divers others of note.” And not alone did “the world’s people” listen with joy to this “minister of the truth, but the emperor or sagamore of the Indians, and his subordinate chieftains, after a great debate with his council, came to hear him, and listened in the evening to that which he had to say to them from the Lord, and which he enjoined them to convey to their people,” and “they, carrying themselves courteously and lovingly inquired, where the next meeting would be, for that they would attend it.” As in Carolina and Virginia, we have many a graphic picture of the life of the settlers in the wilderness; of the stranger travelling through woods and bogs, sleeping out at night, or being hospitably entertained at some lonely dwelling, where “huge dogs” gave the first notice of their approach; or after having travelled all day through the woods, and seen “neither man nor woman, house nor dwelling-place, of their being lovingly entertained by some Indian king, who spread mats for them to lie on by the fire of their wigwam, and made the strangers welcome to their small store of provisions.” Again we see George Fox and his friends on their way to some great meeting, rowing in boats, “there being so many boats on the river at that time that it was almost like the Thames, there never having been seen before so many together at one time;” a thousand coming to the meeting at once, so that “never before was there seen such a concourse of people together,—people of the world, protestants of divers sorts, and some papists; and among them magistrates and their wives, and other people of chief account in the country, and of common people a great many.” These large meetings, which would last for four or five days, must have resembled the revivals