the first building raised at Harvard, although there were those who pronounced it "too gorgeous for the wilderness."

In glancing over the Colonies, North and South, there seems to have been no life more delightful than that of Maryland and Virginia. Handsome, spacious mansions, a fertile soil, genial climate, fine horses, and retinues of servants conspired to give the home life of the Southern planter many of the characteristics of English country living. Yet with all its advantages a discouraging record is that of the first efforts to colonize Virginia. John Quincy Adams said, in an oration delivered early in this century, that the final success of the Virginia settlements was largely due to the example of Massachusetts. As these settlements were started long before that of Plymouth, and as the places of those who failed were speedily filled by others, ready and willing to try the hazardous experiment, it seems as if the ultimate triumph of Virginia colonization might be fairly attributed to the courage and perseverance of the settlers themselves. When men equal to the un

.

dertaking were sent over, the settlement of the Colony became an assured success, despite pestilence, starvation, and the constant harrying of the borders by hostile Indians. Governor Dudley's pathetic letter to the Countess of Lincoln, written soon after he came to Salem, finds a parallel in the expressions of Lord Delaware, who says that if the "much cold comfort," in the way of bad news of the settlements, that met him upon his arrival in 1610 had not been accompanied by tidings of the coming over of Sir Thomas Gates, "it had binne sufficient to have broke my heart."

The story of rude beginnings and established prosperity is substantially the same all along the coast. In Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, fair and judicious dealings with the Indians insured peace between them and the settlers for many years. We read of a Mrs. Chandler, "who came to Philadelphia at the first landing, having lost her husband on shipboard [probably from small-pox], and who was left with eight or nine children. Her com

panions prepared her the usual settlement in a cave on the river-bank. So great was the sympathy felt for this lady that even the Indians brought her supplies and gifts, and later a Friend [meaning a Quaker] built a house and gave her a share of it." Yet how few complaints we find! how simply the record reads! The chronicler of the time dwells more upon the climate, productions of the country, characteristics of the natives, and improvements made up to 1696, which included "several good schools for the teaching of youth," than upon the --struggles and privations of the settlers. So much was this the case, that of the early voyages to Pennsylvania, when small-pox often ravaged the ship's company, we find almost no detailed account. Sometimes the fact is mentioned in a letter to a friend, as when James Claypoole writes to Robert Turner that he hears that thirtyone persons have died of small-pox in William Penn's ship, the Welcome. There were only one hundred passengers in all. Elsewhere, Townsend and Story tell us that the Proprietary himself assisted good

1

3

Dr. Thomas Wynne in the care of the sick and dying.

As an illustration of the primitiveness of this early living, we find the following story of little Rebecca Coleman, who came over with the first Pennsylvania settlers.' At the door of her cave, when one day sitting there eating her milk porridge, she was heard to say again and again, "Now thee shan't," and again, "Keep to thy part." Upon investigation it was discovered that the child's" thees" and "thous" were addressed to a snake with which, in the most confiding manner, and with strict regard to justice, she was sharing her supper of milk porridge from a bowl placed upon the ground. "Happy simplicity and peacefulness!" adds the chronicler, for these were days when no tale was complete without its moral, "reminding one strongly of the Bible promise, when the weaned child should put its hand on the cockatrice's den." The promise was literally fulfilled in the case of little Rebecca Coleman, as she suffered no injury, and, having survived the perils of the early settlement, lived

2

to within a few years of the Revolution. Great changes was she destined to witness in her life of ninety-two years! Philadelphia, then a high river-bank, with a dense forest back of it, was soon to be what Gabriel Thomas found it, a "noble and beautiful city," containing "a number of houses, all inhabited, and most of them stately and of brick, generally three stories high, after the mode of London." This in 1696, while in 1744, William Black wrote that Philadelphia far exceeded all descriptions he had heard of it. He was specially impressed by the number of privateers in the harbor, "the Considerable Traffick, in shipping and unshipping of Goods, mostly American Produce," and the comfort and even luxury in which dwelt Mr. Andrew Hamilton, Secretary Peters, Mr. Thomas Lawrence, and others who entertained him.

Mr. Black grows quite enthusiastic over the markets of Philadelphia, from which, he says, "You may be Supply'd with every Necessary for the Support of Life thro'ut the whole year, both Extraordinary Good