The history of it year after year is a beautiful illustration of brotherly kindness and mutual self-sacrifice among themselves and of forgiving patience toward enemies.

But the colony, beginning in extreme feebleness and penury, never became either strong or rich.

One hundred and two souls embarked in the "Mayflower," of whom nearly one half were dead before the end of four months.

At the end of four years the number had increased to one hundred and eighty.

At the end of ten years the settlement numbered three hundred persons.
It could not have been with joy wholly unalloyed with misgivings that this feeble folk learned of a powerful movement for planting a Puritan colony close in the neighborhood.