to say, in William Bradford's quiet words, "It is not with us as
with other men, whom small things can discourage, or small
discontentments cause to wish themselves at home again." One was
the colony of Pilgrims at Plymouth, headed by Bradford himself.
The other was the Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay, with John
Winthrop as governor.

Bradford and Winthrop have left journals which are more than
chronicles of adventure. They record the growth and government of
a commonwealth. Both Bradford and Winthrop were natural leaders
of men, grave, dignified, solid, endowed with a spirit that bred
confidence. Each was learned. Winthrop, a lawyer and man of
property, had a higher social standing than Bradford, who was one
of the Separatists of Robinson's flock at Leyden. But the Pilgrim
of the Mayflower and the well-to-do Puritan of the Bay Colony
both wrote their annals like gentlemen and scholars. Bradford's
"History of Plymouth Plantation" runs from 1620 to 1647.
Winthrop's diary, now printed as the "History of New England,"
begins with his voyage in 1630 and closes in the year of his
death, 1649. As records of an Anglo-Saxon experiment in
self-government under pioneer conditions these books are
priceless; as human documents, they illuminate the Puritan
character; as for "literary" value in the narrow sense of that
word, neither Bradford nor Winthrop seems to have thought of
literary effect. Yet the leader of the Pilgrims has passages of
grave sweetness and charm, and his sketch of his associate, Elder
Brewster, will bear comparison with the best English biographical
writing of that century. Winthrop is perhaps more varied in tone,
as he is in matter, but he writes throughout as a ruler of men
should write, with "decent plainness and manly freedom." His best