All these vessels long preceded the _Mayflower_ across the "unknown ocean;" but never inspired the lofty eloquence which Mr.Everett and a host of inferior rhapsodists have bestowed upon the _Mayflower_ and her voyage.
Bancroft fills several pages of his elaborate history to the same effect, and in similar style with the passages above quoted.

I will give a single sentence, as follows:--"The Pilgrims having selected for their settlement the country near the Hudson, the best position on the whole coast, were conducted to the most barren and inhospitable part of Massachusetts." (History of the United States, Vol.1., p.

309.) There was certainly little self-abnegation, but much sound and worldly wisdom, in the Pilgrims selecting "the best position on the whole coast" of America for their settlement; and there is as little truth in the statement, though a good antithesis--the delight of Mr.Bancroft--that the Pilgrims were conducted to "the most barren and inhospitable part of Massachusetts" for "actual settlement," as appears from the descriptions given of it by Governors Winslow and Bradford and other Pilgrim Fathers, written after the first and during the subsequent years of their settlement.

I will give but two illustrations.

Mr.Winslow was one of the passengers in the _Mayflower_, and was, by annual election, several years Governor of the Plymouth colony.