90 



was the first to receive upon her shores, a few persecuted and 

 care worn emigrants, the avant couriers of liberty, from the 

 far ofi' British Isle, voluntary exiles from the civilized world, 

 bent upon the accomplishment of a noble enterprise, but without 

 home or shelter where to recruit their exhausted strength after 

 the usual privations and sufferings experienced by landsmen on 

 a protracted sea voyage. Here^ amid the solitude of the pri- 

 meval forests, were heard the first sounds of civilized life in the 

 colony. iJere, upon the skirts of the same dark and forbidding 

 forests, and in fearful proximity to their remorseless tenants, 

 were seen slowly rising the first rude log cabins and mud 

 hovels of the settlers, scarcely deserving the name of human 

 habitations, being inferior in many respects to the Avigwams of 

 the native savages. 



" Their brown log huts peered rudely forth, 



Mid copse and thicket gray ; 

 With fragile tents, that scarcely kept 



The mocking storms at bay." 



Here were planted the first cornfields, and here were made the 

 first graves. Here famine and pestilent disease stalked abroad 

 at noon day, numbering among their victims, during the first 

 winter, nearly one half the entire population. Beneath her 

 soil repose the sainted remains of the Lady Arbella, and the 

 pious and godlike Higginson. Here was established the first 

 independent church, the mother of all the congregational 

 churches in New England, and here was organized the first 

 civil and ecclesiastical government in the "Mattachusetts." 

 iiZere, the bold, excentric, persecuted Roger Williams, sustained 

 by the people of Salem, stood manfully forth in defence of his 

 peculiar views of religious freedom and liberty of conscience. 

 Here the energetic, ill-fated Hugh Peters, "reasoned of right- 

 eousness, temperance and judgment to come," while the neigh- 

 boring hills resounded with the glad tidings of the gospel.* 

 Here the choleric magistrate flourished aloft his trusty rapier, 

 and regardless of personal consequences, struck the first blow 

 in defiance of Koyal authority, by cutting the offending cross 

 from the King's colours. 



* His first sermon here was preached at Enon, now Wenham, but 

 then a part of Salem. The place of his preaching was on a hill which 

 overlooked a spacious pond. — FelVs Annals. 



