Fun_People Archive
22 Jan
QOTD - the Pilgrims

Date: Mon, 22 Jan 96 18:14:08 -0800
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: QOTD - the Pilgrims

[This is a good one to keep in mind the next time you're packing for a  
vacation in the woods...  -psl]

Forwarded-by: bostic@bsdi.com (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: Travis Corcoran <tjic@OpenMarket.com>
Forwarded-by: qotd-request@ensu.ucalgary.ca (Quote of the day)

On the topic of the Pilgrims:

It would be difficult to imagine a group of people more ill-suited to a life
in the wilderness.  They packed as if they had misunderstood the purpose of
the trip.  They found room for sundials and candle-snuffers, a drum, a
trumpet, and a complete history of Turkey.  One William Mullins packed 126
pairs of shoes and thirteen pairs of boots.  Yet they failed to bring a
single cow or horse, plow or fishing line.

[ ... ]

They were, in short, dangerously unprepared for the rigors ahead, and
they demonstrated their incompetence in the most dramatic way possible:
by dying in droves.

	-- from Made in America: an informal history of the English
	   Language in the United States, by Bill Bryson

© 1996 Peter Langston