What the savages of Europe are, a hundred regions drenched in the blood of their native children can tell; that we deem you less savage than them, the very act of our coming to you testifies. Give us space amongst you, and let us live as brethren.” For a time, indeed, they acted as men who might be supposed thus to speak. The going out and landing in this new country of this band of religious adventurers, have been and continue to be celebrated as the setting forth and landing of “The Pilgrim Fathers.” It is in itself an interesting event: the pilgrimage of a little host of voluntary exiles, for the sake of their religion, from their native country, to establish a new country in the wilderness of the New World. It is more interesting from the fact, that their associates and descendants have grown into one of the most intelligent and powerful portions of the freest, and, perhaps, happiest nation on the globe. Their landing on the coast of Massachusets was effected under circumstances of peculiar hardship. It took place at a spot to which they gave the name of New Plymouth, on the 11th of November, 1620. The weather was extremely severe; and they were but badly prepared to contend with it. During the winter one half of their number perished through famine, and diseases brought on by their hardships. The natives, too, came down to oppose their settlement,[31] and it is difficult now to imagine how such religious people could reconcile to their consciences an entrance by force on the territories of a race on whom they had no claim. They had, indeed, purchased a tract of land of one of the chartered companies in England; but one is at a loss to conceive how any English company could sell a country in another hemisphere already inhabited, and to which they had not the slightest title to show, except “the Bucanier’s Post.” As well might a company of Indians sell some of their countrymen a slice of territory on the coast of Kent; and just as good a title would the Indians have to land, if they could, in spite of our Kentish yeomen, and establish themselves on the spot. Moreover, these Pilgrim Fathers had wandered from their original destination, and had not purchased this land at all of anybody at that time. No doubt the Fathers _thought_ that they had a right to settle in a wild country; and simply fell in with the customs and doctrines of the times. We might, however, have expected clearer notions of natural right from their acquaintance with the Bible; for we shall presently see that there were men of their own country, and in their own circumstances, that would not have been easy to have taken such possession in such a manner. We may safely believe that the Fathers did according to their knowledge; but the precedent is dangerous, and could not in these times be admitted: the Fathers did not, in fact, obtain any grant from the English till four years afterwards (1624). When they had once got a