An American of high historical standing and learning has said: “Here lay a new world for the most part unoccupied, inviting colonization, and it was as natural for men to come and settle here as to embark in any other enterprise in life. The only wonder is that the work of colonization was not begun earlier and pursued by thousands rather than by hundreds.” This colonizing, this settling and developing a country, the desire to own the roof under which one sleeps “raise the personal importance and dignity of the subject or citizens,” and “it can never be too well understood that the generations of men sow and plant for their successors.” It seems to have been an entire and pushing necessity that these people should get away from Holland in order to secure a comfortable living and to make any provision for their posterity. Bradford says: “The country (Holland) was hard and many were discouraged. Grim and grizzled poverty was coming on them as an armed man, old age was coming upon them and no amelioration of their condition came with it.” That they should come to America, and for the reasons given, seems quite reasonable and natural when it is remembered that Captain Smith and others, returning to England, had expressed the opinion that the fisheries on the New England coast might be made profitable. And we know that this was one of the first industries engaged in by the Pilgrims. Smith states that in 1616 four ships of London and two of Plymouth and Sir Richard Hawkins were again in the fishing waters in the vicinity of Massachusetts and Maine. Early in 1620, also, six or seven sailing vessels set out for the western country for the same purpose and visited the country about the harbor where the Pilgrims landed in December following. That there was a Providence in their coming here is altogether probable. That the same Providence reached out and extended its ruling and benignant hand on the journey and after the arrival is certain. “There is no doubt, a great over-ruling power in all human affairs, but our concern (the emigration) is with second causes, and it is to be believed that we often deceive ourselves when we attempt to recover general principles from which things remarkable in the acts of men have sprung.” “And if we conclude that these people had mistaken the path or duty, or had imposed upon themselves a severer burthen than God ever intended for them, there it still a heroism in their conduct which forbids us to regard them with indifference, nay rather, which will call forth the sympathy of every generous mind.”