Mr.Dermer, employed by Sir F.
Gorges and others for purposes of discovery and trade, visited this place about four months before the arrival of the Pilgrims, and significantly said, "I would that Plymouth [in England] had the like commodities.

I would that the first plantation might here be seated if there come to the number of fifty persons or upward."] [Footnote 9: See following Note:-- NOTE _on the Inflated American Accounts of the Voyage and Settlement of the Pilgrim Fathers_ .-- Everything relating to the character, voyage, and settlement of the Pilgrims in New England has been invested with the marvellous, if not supernatural, by most American writers.

One of them says, "God not only sifted the three kingdoms to get the seed of this enterprise, but sifted that seed over again.

Every person whom He would not have go at that time, to plant the first colony of New England, He sent back even from mid-ocean in the _Speedwell_." (Rev.Dr.Cheever's Journal of the Pilgrims.) The simple fact was, that the _Mayflower_ could not carry any more passengers than she brought, and therefore most of the passengers of the _Speedwell_, which was a vessel of 50 tons and proved to be unseaworthy, were compelled to remain until the following year, and came over in the _Fortune_; and among these Robert Cushman, with his family, one of the most distinguished and honoured of the Pilgrim Fathers.

And there was doubtless as good "seed" in "the three kingdoms" after this "sifting" of them for the New England enterprise as there was before.
In one of his speeches, the late eloquent Governor Everett, of Massachusetts, describes their voyage as the "long, cold, dreary autumnal passage, in that one solitary, adventurous vessel, the _Mayflower_ of forlorn hope, freighted with prospects of a future state, and bound across the unknown sea, pursuing, with a thousand misgivings, the uncertain, the tedious voyage, suns rise and set, and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore.