It is supposed that about 8000
immigrants had arrived. This was a more rapid development than
was usual in the colonies of America. Massachusetts and Virginia
had been established slowly and with much privation and
suffering. But the settlement of Philadelphia was like a summer
outing. There were no dangers, the hardships were trifling, and
there was no sickness or famine. There was such an abundance of
game close at hand that hunger and famine were in nowise to be
feared. The climate was good and the Indians, kindly treated,
remained friendly for seventy years.
It is interesting to note that in that same year, 1682, in which
Penn and his friends with such ease and comfort founded their
great colony on the Delaware, the French explorers and voyageurs
from Canada, after years of incredible hardships, had traversed
the northern region of the Great Lakes with their canoes and had
passed down the Mississippi to its mouth, giving to the whole of
the Great West the name of Louisiana, and claiming it for France.
Already La Salle had taken his fleet of canoes down the
Mississippi River and had placed the arms of France on a post at
its mouth in April, 1682, only a few months before Penn reached
his newly acquired colony.
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