ship to Pennsylvania. On the 18th of March, 1710, the exiles departed from Bern; on the 28th, with their vessel, they reached Manheim, and on the 6th of April Nimeguen; and when they touched Netherland soil, their sufferings came to an end at last; they were free, and their useless guards could return to Switzerland. Laurens Hendriks, the preacher of our community at Nimeguen, wrote in his letter of April 9th: “It happened that very harsh decrees were issued by the rulers at Bern to search for our friends in all corners of the land, and put them in the prisons at Bern, by which means within the last two years about sixty persons were thrown into dungeons, where some of them underwent much misery in the great cold last winter, while their feet were fast in the iron shackles. The Council at Bern were still very much at variance as to what punishment should be inflicted on them, and so they have the longer lain in prison; for some would have them put to death, but others could not consent to such cruelty, so finally they determined in the Council to send them as prisoners to Pennsylvania. Therefore they put them on a vessel, well watched by a guard of soldiers, to send them on the Rhine to Holland; but on coming to Manheim, a city of the Palatinate, they put out all the old, the sick, and the women, but with twenty-three men floated further down the Rhine, and en the 6th of April came here to Nimeguen. When they heard that their fellow-believers lived here, one of them came to me, guarded by two soldiers. The soldiers then went away and left the man with me. After I, with the other preachers, had talked with him, we went together to the ship, and there found our other brethren. We then spoke to the officers of the guard, and arranged with them that these men should receive some refreshment, since they had been on the water for twenty days in
