The Pilgrims or Puritans, in November, 1620, after having organized with solemn vows to the defence of each other, and the maintenance of their civil liberty, made the harbor of Cape Cod, landing safely on “Plymouth Rock” December 20th, about one month subsequently. They were one hundred and one in number, and from the toils and hardships consequent to a severe season, in a strange country, in less than six months after their arrival, “forty persons, nearly one half of their original number,” had died. “In 1618, in the reign of James I., the British government established a regular trade on the coast of Africa. In the year 1620 negro slaves began to be imported into Virginia, a Dutch ship bringing twenty of them for sale.”--_Sampson’s Historical Dictionary_, p. 348. It will be seen by these historical reminiscences, that the Dutch ship landed her cargo at New Bedford, Massachusetts,--the whole coast, now comprising the old original states, then went by the name of Virginia, being so named by Sir Walter Raleigh, in honor of his royal mistress and patron, Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen of England, under whom he received the patent of his royal commission, to seize all the lands unoccupied by Christians. Beginning their preparations in the slave trade in 1618, just two years previous,--allowing time against the landing of the first emigrants for successfully carrying out the project,--the African captives and Puritan emigrants, singularly enough, landed upon the same section of the continent at the same time (1620), the Pilgrims at Plymouth, and the captive slaves at New Bedford, but a few miles, comparatively, south. “The country at this period was one vast wilderness. The continent of North America was then one continued forest … There were no horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, or tame beasts of any kind … There were no domestic poultry … There were no gardens, orchards, public roads, meadows, or cultivated fields … They often burned the woods that they could advantageously plant their corn … They had neither spice, salt, bread, butter, cheese, nor milk. They had no set meals, but eat when they were hungry, or could find anything to satisfy the cravings of nature. Very little of their food was derived from the earth, except what it spontaneously produced … The ground was both their seat and table … Their best bed was a skin … They had neither iron, steel, nor any metallic instruments.”--_Ramsay’s Hist._, pp. 39, 40.