be justly claimed that they made themselves the true founders of the
American Republic. Driven by persecution from their native England,
they took refuge in Holland; and from thence they sailed in two small
vessels, the _Speedwell_ and the _Mayflower_ on a July day in 1620, for
the new world. One hundred Puritans thus crossed the ocean.

[Sidenote: Settlement at Plymouth.]

After a tempestuous voyage of sixty-three days, the _Mayflower_ coasted
along Cape Cod, and landed, on the twenty-first day of December, at
Plymouth. The _Speedwell_ had been forced to put back in a disabled
condition. Before landing, the Puritans made a solemn compact of
government, purely republican in form, and to this they afterwards
religiously adhered. In 1629 another English Puritan colony, called the
"Massachusetts Bay Colony," settled at Salem; and in the following
year came Governor John Winthrop, with eight hundred emigrants. The
Massachusetts Bay Colony, thus re-enforced, and now numbering not far
from one thousand souls, settled Boston and its neighborhood.

[Sidenote: New England Colonized.]

New Hampshire began to be settled three years after the landing of the
Pilgrims at Plymouth. Maine was colonized not much later. Vermont,
having been explored by Champlain in 1609, was settled some years
after. The Rhode Island colony was founded by Roger Williams and five
companions, driven from the Boston and Plymouth colonies in succession,
in 1636; and Connecticut first became the seat of a settlement in 1635,
the colonial constitution being adopted in 1630. Next in point of time,
Delaware was settled by parties of Swedes and Finlanders in 1638, and
was called "New Sweden." The province passed into the hands of the Dutch