f British America.

A few years after the French crown had founded a state in Canada, a
handful of Puritan refugees founded a people in New England. They bore
with them from the mother country little beside a bitter hatred of the
existing government, and a stern resolve to perish or be free. One small
vessel--the Mayflower--held them, their wives, their children, and their
scanty stores. So ignorant were they of the country of their adoption,
that they sought its shores in the depth of winter, when nothing but a
snowy desert met their sight. Dire hardships assailed them; many
sickened and died, but those who lived still strove bravely. And bitter
was their trial; the scowling sky above their heads, the frozen earth
under their feet, and sorest of all, deep in their strong hearts the
unacknowledged love of that venerable land which they had abandoned
forever.

But brighter times soon came; the snowy desert changed into a fair scene
of life and vegetation. The woods rang with the cheerful sound of the
ax; the fields were tilled hopefully, the harvest gathered gratefully.
Other vessels arrived bearing more settlers, men, for the most part,
like those who had first landed. Their numbers swelled to hundreds,
thousands, tens of thousands. They formed themselves into a community;
they decreed laws, stern and quaint, but suited to their condition. They
had neither rich nor poor; they admitted of no superiority save in their
own gloomy estimate of merit; they persecuted all forms of faith
different from that which they themselves held, and yet they would have
died rather than suffer the religious interference of others. Far from
seeking or accepting aid from the government of England, they patiently
tolerated their nominal dependence only because they were virtually
independent. For protection against the savage; for relief in pestilence
or famine; for help to plenty and prosperity, they trusted alone to God
in heaven, and to their own right hand on earth.

Such, in the main, were the ancestors of the men of New England, and, in
spite of all subsequent admixture, such, in the main, were they
themselves. In the other British colonies also, hampered though they
were by charters, and proprietary rights, and alloyed by a Babel
congregation of French Huguenots, Dutch, Swedes, Quakers, Nobles,
Roundheads, Canadians, rogues, zealots, infidels, enthusiasts, and
felons, a general prosperity had created individual self-reliance, and
se