Free Penguin History of the United States of America by Hugh Brogan

Jamestown had acquired a sister.
    The Pilgrims’ case was grim enough. Bradford says:
    And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search an unknown coast. Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men – and what multitudes there might be of them they knew not… What could now sustain them but the Spirit of God and His grace? May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: ‘Our fathers were Englishmen, which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their voice and looked on their adversity,’ etc. ‘Let them therefore praise the Lord, because He is good: and His mercies endure forever.’
    The Pilgrims had to suffer: agony followed their arrival, an agony which did not abate until 1625, when, Bradford tells us, the settlers first tasted ‘the sweetness of the country’. But in some respects they were lucky. The winter was mild for the region, and the Indians, having been immensely reduced in number by a plague, were less dangerous than those of Virginia. Near-contemporary accounts, 14 though admittedly written as encouraging propaganda, do make it seem that conditions were less unbearable in Plymouth than they had been, ten years previously, in Virginia. For one thing, the Pilgrims were made of better stuff than the Virginians. They survived, and thus achieved their historic mission.
    For New Plymouth was not a colony that could easily or quickly grow. The Separatists were a minority of the inhabitants to begin with, but they early subdued their fellows to their ways; yet their ecclesiastical doctrines, which in effect denied the authenticity, the purity, of all other congregations whatever, except those of the remaining exiles in Leyden and Amsterdam, were bound to repel many, even many other Puritans, who might have joined them. Then, the economic basis of the colony was too weak and narrow to support any ambitious edifice: not until 1648 did the Pilgrims pay off the debts in which their voyage had involved them. Farming and fishing (the soil being thin and Plymouth far from the best fishing-grounds) alike at first disappointed the hopes that had been placed in them: only the fur-trade kept the infant colony in being. In a small way, it is true, it throve: in 1628 the town presented a respectable appearance to a Dutch visitor, who has left us details of the well-built wooden houses, the gardens, the stockade and the cannon; by 1630 its population stood at nearly 300, by 1637 it was nearly 550. But Virginia, at the same dates, had a population of more than 2,500 and more than 5,000 respectively. Plymouth, with its population of, in the main, unintellectual and socially undistinguished zealots, could save itself, indeed prosper, by its exertions; its influence could spread only by example. There would be nothing like the steady march of population across country from the first settlement that so strongly characterized the Virginian development; though it is worth noting that in other respects the common features of American experience made themselves felt. Thus, in Plymouth, as in Jamestown, an attempt to have all things in common was made, and failed. Bradford tells us:
    So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Governor 15 (with the advice of the chief-est among them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust themselves… And so assigned every family a parcel of land… This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much corn was planted than otherwise would have