Michael R. H. Swanson, Ph. D.
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READ. Chapter I. A Relation or Iornall of the Proceedings of the Plantation Settled at Plimoth in New England. pp. 1 - 40 (p. 159-as Adobe Acrobat counts them.)
It is more difficult for me to explain what I want you to do than it will be foryou to do it. This reading actually constitutes the first forty pages of the actual Mourt's Relation, minus its dedication and original introduction. (Read those, if you want. It will be good for you.) The place where all this starts in the Adobe version is on p. 62. All the material previous constitutes covers, the frontispieces and various editors introductions.
Pages 62-159, covers a lot more than forty pages. Yes it does. BUT most of the extra length is made up of extensive--VERY extensive footnotes added by the nineteenth century editors. The notes are longer than the actual text. you'll be able to tell the difference: the notes are in double columns, the text in single colums. You're responsible for the single column materials only.
For years I provided a version of Mourt's Relation provided by Caleb Johnson, a descendant of the Pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower. He had his own website provided by AOL, and frovided there a mammoth collection of materials related to the first New England Settlement. Alas, AOL no longer hosts websites, and I haven't found where Mr. Johnson is currently hiding. Google to the rescue!
Much as Google provides the facisimile version of Wood to which I point you above, it also provides a facsimile version of Mourt. So you're going to have a chance to read those long esses and other strange typography after all. Lucky you. Mourts Relation is a compound effort, written by several Pilgrims, among them William Bradford and Edward Winslo, and it records events at Plymouth from the Mayflower's arrival in November 1620 through the First Thanksgiving in October 1621. The dowload is a long one. Unfortunately the book isn't divided. The first section is a series of introductions--you can skip these nineteenth century editors' remarks unless you have a special interest in that sort of thing.
We're going to spend some time comparing the way the Pilgrims of Plymouth and the Puritans of Boston encountered their new environments. The two places are not far apart as distance is concerned, and about a decade separates the dates of the first organizaed settlements. So what differences and similarities can we note about they way these two English groups encountered their new environments?
