“The place they had thoughts on were some of those unpeopled countries of America, which are fruitful and fit for habitation, being devoid of all civil inhabitants, where there are only savage and bruitish people, which range up and down little otherwise than the wild beasts. This proposition being made public, and coming to the scanning of all, it raised many variable opinions amongst men, and caused many fears and doubts amongst themselves. Some from their reasons and hopes conceived, labored to stir up and encourage the rest to undertake and prosecute the same; others again, out of their fears, objected against it, and sought to divert from it, alleging many things, and those neither unreasonable nor unprobable: as that it was a great design, and subject to many inconceivable perils and dangers; as, besides the casualties of the seas, (which none can be freed from,) the length of the voyage was such as the weak bodies of women and other persons worn out with age and travail, (as many of them were,) could never be able to endure; and yet if they should, the miseries of the land which they should be exposed unto would be too hard to be borne, and likely, some or all of them, to consume and utterly to ruinate them. For there they should be liable to famine, and nakedness, and the want, in the manner, of all things.” [Illustration: Destruction of Brewster’s printing shop] “It was answered, that all great and honorable actions were accomplished with great difficulties, and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courages. It was granted the dangers were great, but not desperate, and the difficulties were many, but not invincible; for although there were many of them likely, yet they were not certain. It might be that some of the things feared might never befall them; others, by providence, care and use good of means, might in a great measure be prevented; and all of them through the help of God, by fortitude and patience, might either be borne or overcome. True it was that such attempts were not to be made and undertaken but upon good ground and reason, not rashly or lightly, as many have done for curiosity or hope of gain, etc. But their condition was not ordinary. Their ends were good and honorable, their calling lawful and urgent, and therefore they might expect a blessing of God in their proceeding; yea, although they should lose their lives in this action, yet they might have comfort in the same; and their endeavours would be honorable.”[4] “They lived here but as men in exile and in a poor condition; and as great miseries might possibly befall them in this place; for the twelve years of truce were now out,[5] and there was nothing but beating of drums and preparing for war, the events whereof are always uncertain. The Spaniard might prove as cruel as the savages of America, and the famine and pestilence are sore here and there, and their liberty less to look out for remedy.”