CHAPTER VIII.

Penn embarks for his Province. - Passage, Arrival, Landing Day, at New Castle. — Visits New York, Long Island, and the Jerseys. Holds Assembly at Chester. - Legislation. Unites the Territories.

Conference with Lord Baltimore. - Early Incidents. - Penn's Treaty with the Indians. The Treaty Tree, Pennsbury. - Philadelphia. - Survey and Division of the Province and Territories. - The Assembly Convened. New Frame of Government. Judicial Proceedings. — Witchcraft. Education. Interest in the Indians. Penn's Letter to the Free Society of Traders. Difficulties with Lord Baltimore. - Penn resolves to return to England. Preparations. -Assembly.- Prosperity of the Province.

ALL his arrangements being completed, William Penn, at the age of thirty-eight, well, strong, and hopeful of the best results, embarked for his colony, on board the ship Welcome, of three hundred tons, Robert Greenaway master, on the last of August, 1682. While in the Downs, he wrote a Farewell Letter to Friends, the Unfaithful and Inquir

ing in his native land,* dated August 30th, and probably many private letters. He had about one hundred fellow-passengers, mostly Friends from his own neighborhood in Sussex. The vessel sailed about the 1st of September, and almost immediately the smallpox, that desolating scourge of the passenger ships of those days, appeared among the passengers, and thirty fell victims to it. The trials of that voyage, told to illustrate the Christian spirit which submissively encountered them, were long repeated from father to son, and from mother to daughter.

In about six weeks the ship entered the Delaware River. The old inhabitants along the shores, which had been settled by the whites for about half a century, received Penn with equal respect and joy. He arrived at New Castle, on the 27th of October. The day was not commemorated by annual observances, until the year 1824, when a meeting for that purpose was held at an inn, in Lætitia Court,† where Penn had resided. While the ship and its company went up the river, the proprietor, on the next day, called the inhabitants, who were

* This is not given in the folio edition of Penn's Works.

↑ Watson's Annals of Philadelphia, Vol. I. p. 15.

principally Dutch and Swedes, to the CourtHouse, where, after addressing them, he assumed and received the formal possession of the country. He renewed the commissions of the old magistrates, who urged him to unite the Territories to his government.

After a visit of ceremony to the authorities at New York and Long Island, with a passing token to his friends in New Jersey, Penn went to Upland to hold the first Assembly, which opened on the 4th of December. Nicholas Moore, an English lawyer, and President of the Free Society of Traders, was made speaker. After three days' peaceful debate, the Assembly ratified, with modifications, the laws made in England, with about a score of new ones, of a local, moral, or religious character, in which not only the drinking of healths, but the talking of scandal, was forbidden. By suggestion of his friend and fellow-voyager Pearson, who came from Chester in England, Penn substituted that name for Upland. By an Act of Union, passed on the 7th of December, the three Lower Counties, or the Territories, were joined in the government, and the foreigners were naturalized at their own request.

On his arrival, Penn had sent two messengers to Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore, to pro

pose a meeting and conference with him about their boundaries. On the 19th of December,* they met at West River with courtesy and kindness; but, after three days, they concluded to wait for the more propitious weather of the coming year. Penn, on his way back, attended a religious meeting at a private house, and afterwards an official meeting at Choptank, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake, and reached Chester again by the 29th of December, where much business engaged him. About twenty-three ships had arrived by the close of the year; none of them met with disaster, and all had fair passages. The new comers found a comparatively easy sustenance. Provisions were obtained at a cheap rate of the Indians, and of the older settlers. But great hardships were endured by some, and special providences are commemorated. Many found their first shelter in caves scooped out in the steep bank of the river. When these caves were deserted by their first occupants, the poor or the vicious made them a refuge; and one of the earliest signs both of prosperity and of corruption, in the colony, is disclosed in the mention, that these rude coverts of the first

* Penn's Letter to Lords' Committee of Plantations.

devoted emigrants soon became tippling-houses and nuisances, in the misuse of the depraved.

There has been much discussion, of late years, concerning the far-famed treaty of Penn with the Indians. A circumstance, which has all the interest both of fact and of poetry, was confirmed by such unbroken testimony of tradition, that history seemed to have innumerable records of it in the hearts and memories of each generation. But as there appears no document or parchment of such criteria as to satisfy all inquirers, historical skepticism has ventured upon the absurd length of calling in question the fact of the treaty. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, with commendable zeal, has bestowed much labor upon the questions connected with the treaty; and the results which have been attained can scarcely fail to satisfy a candid inquirer. All claim to a peculiar distinction for William Penn, on account of the singularity of his just proceedings in this matter, is candidly waved, because the Swedes, the Dutch, and the English, had previously dealt thus justly with the natives. It is in comparison with Pizarro and Cortes, that the colonists of all other nations in America appear to an advantage; but the fame of William Penn stands, and ever will stand, preëmi