literature was then in existence, and people might well con their Bibles, for, in the English tongue, there was little else to read. Meanwhile the North American continent was an unbroken wilderness, with here and there, few and far between, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf, scattered specks of struggling civilization, hundreds of leagues apart, dotting the skirts of the green, primeval forest. It was at not the least famous of these scattered specks,--at the neighboring town of Plymouth,--that the history of Weymouth opened on a day towards the latter part of the month of May, in the year 1622. The little colony had then been established in its new home some seventeen months. They had just struggled through their second winter, and now, sadly reduced in number, with supplies wholly exhausted, and sorely distressed in spirit, the Pilgrims were anxiously looking for the arrival of some ship from England. The Mayflower had left them, starting on her homeward voyage a year before, and once only during their weary sojourn, in the month of the previous November, had these homesick wanderers on the sandy Plymouth shores been cheered by any tidings from the living world. On this particular day, however, the whole settlement was alive with excitement. There had been great trouble with the neighboring Indians, and the magistrates were on the point of delivering one of them up to the emissaries of his sachem to be put to death, when suddenly a boat was seen to cross the mouth of the bay and disappear behind the next headland.[1] There had been rumors of trouble between the English and the French, and the first idea of the settlers was that some connection existed between the sachem’s emissaries and those on board the boat. The delivery of the prisoner was consequently deferred. At the same time, a shot was fired as a signal, in response to which the boat changed her course, and came into the bay. When at last it touched the shore it was found to contain ten persons, who announced themselves as being in the service of one Mr. Thomas Weston, a London merchant, well known to the elders of Plymouth. They were cordially welcomed with a salute of three volleys of musketry, and thus finished a somewhat dangerous voyage.[2] It appeared they had been dispatched from England some months before, on board a vessel named the Sparrow, which belonged to Mr. Weston, and was bound to the fishing grounds off the coast of Maine: they were, in fact, the forerunners of a larger party which Weston was organizing in London, with the design of establishing a trading settlement somewhere on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. They brought with them letters to the Plymouth magistrates, but they were wholly unprovided with either food or outfit. The Sparrow was one of the fishing fleet which yearly visited those waters, and apparently Weston’s plan had been for these people to leave her near the Damariscove Islands, and thence to find