About ten years since, a company of English, part out of the Low Countries, and some out of London and other parts, associating themselves into one body, with an intention to plant in Virginia, in their passage thither being taken short by the wind, in the depth of winter, the whole ground being under snow, were forced with their provisions to land themselves in New-England, upon a small bay beyond Mattachusets, in the place which they now inhabit, and call by the name of New Plymouth. The ground being covered a foot thick with snow, and they being without shelter, and having amongst them divers women and children, no marvel if they lost some of their company; it may be wondered how they saved the rest. But notwithstanding this sharp encounter at the first, and some miscarriages afterward, yet, conceiving God's providence had directed them unto that place, and finding great charge and difficulty in removing, they resolved to fix themselves there; and being assisted by some of their friends in London, having passed over most of the greatest difficulties that usually encounter new planters, they began to subsist at length in a reasonably comfortable manner; being, notwithstanding, men but of mean and weak estates of themselves; and after a year's experience or two of the soil and inhabitants, sent home tidings of both, and of their well-being there, which occasioned other men to take knowledge of the place, and to take it into consideration. About the year 1623, some western merchants, who had continued a trade of fishing for cod and bartering for furs in those parts for divers years before, conceiving that a Colony planted on the coast might further them in those employments, bethought themselves how they might bring that project to effect, and communicated their purpose to others, alleging the conveniency of compassing their project with a small charge, by the opportunity of their fishing trade, in which they accustomed to double-man their ships, that, by the help of many hands, they might dispatch their voyage and lade their ship with fish while the fishing season lasted; which could not be done with a bare sailing company. Now it was conceived that, the fishing being ended, the spare men that were above their necessary sailors, might be left behind with provisions for a year; and when that ship returned the next year, they might assist them in fishing, as they had done the former year; and, in the mean time, might employ themselves in building, and planting corn, which, with the provisions of fish, fowl, and venison, that the land yielded, would afford them the chief of their food. This proposition of theirs took so well, that it drew on divers persons to join with them in this project; the rather because it was conceived, that not only their own fishermen, but the rest of our nation that went thither on the same errand, might be much advantaged, not only by fresh victual, which that Colony might spare them in time, but withal, and more, by