Contentment in the midst of

possessed to a poor man, they saw a ship from England, with provisions, just entering the harbor.

A good many died of hardship and fatigue during the first year or two; but, after that, they grew quite hardships. healthy. They found the climate bracing; and one

Union of the two colonies.

said, that "a sup of New England's air was better than a whole draught of Old England's ale.” Even in their worst times, very few went back to England; and, notwithstanding their poverty, there was not an instance of theft among them for four years. Governor Winthrop wrote to his wife, "We here enjoy God and Jesus Christ; and is not that enough? I thank God I like so well to be here as [that] I do not repent my coming. I would not have altered my course, though I had foreseen all these afflictions. I had never more content of mind."

These two colonies, Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, were for many years independent of one another, but the Plymouth Colony, though the older of the two, grew far more slowly than the other, and was at last united with it in 1692, under the name of Massachusetts; the name being taken from one of the tribes of Indians inhabiting the soil. The meaning of the word is said to be "Blue Hills."

CHAPTER IX.

THE OTHER NEW ENGLAND COLONIES.

HE two colonies afterwards united under the

TH

name of Massachusetts have been described before the other New England colonies. This is because Massachusetts, being first settled, was in a manner the parent of these later colonies. Let us take up the rest in the ordinary geographical order.

tory of

Maine.

Maine was not for many years considered as a sepa- Early hisrate colony; and yet it was one of the first parts of the country to be visited and explored by Europeans. It was visited by the navigator Gosnold in 1602; and an English colony tried to establish itself there in 1607, as has already been told; and a French colony came soon after. But the English settlers went home; and the Frenchmen were driven away by the Virginia settlers, who did not wish to have them so near, and sent an expedition against them. Capt. John Smith ex- Capt. plored the coast of Maine, and wrote a description of it; and an Englishman, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, had a patent from the king, Charles I., for a part of it; and it was named Maine by him, probably in honor of Queen Henrietta Maria, who is said to have owned a French province of that name; though this is doubtful. Then the Massachusetts Colony claimed the whole; and so

Smith's ex

plorations.

Origin and slow

settle

ments.

there was a good deal of confusion about the ownership of that region. But Maine was, after all, reckoned a part of Massachusetts during almost all the colonial period, and for many years after.

The first settlements grew gradually out of fishinggrowth of stations; and it is hard to say when the earliest permanent town settlements were founded; before 1630, at any rate. People sought Maine for hunting and fishing, rather than for farming: so the villages grew slowly, and they suffered greatly in the Indian wars. The laws were milder in that part of New England than in Massachusetts and Connecticut. There was much religious freedom, and no persecution for opinion's sake; so that persecuted people often took refuge in Maine. But, on the other hand, the nearness to Canada was a disadvantage; because the French and Indians were for many years the great source of terror to the English colonists. So these settlements had much. to keep them back; and Maine was not counted as a separate colony among those that finally combined to form the United States.

Early history of New

New Hampshire was also visited very early, in Hampshire. 1603, by an explorer named Martin Pring; and Portsmouth and Dover were settled in 1623. Portsmouth was first called Strawberry Bank. The settlements made there were chiefly for fishing; and it is said that when a travelling preacher went among the people, ten years later, and told them that they must be religious, for that was their main end in coming thither, they replied, Sir, you are mistaken. You think you are speaking to the people of Massachusetts Bay. Our

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