they found themselves landed. With a lively prescience of coming evil our Lord said to His disciples: "Pray that your flight be not in the winter." So cold was the season, that it is told of the first party of explorers that the spray of the sea froze as it fell on them, and made their clothes like coats of iron. Their strength was greatly reduced by the hardships which they had undergone during their rough and inclement voyage, especially with the scanty supply of food.

'Short allowance of victual and plenty of nothing but gospel;"

and now with their retreat cut off by the ocean on one side, and their progress by the wilderness on the other, especially such a waste howling wilderness as it must then have seemed, their condition was as hopeless and desperate as could well be imagined. "Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh-pots, and when we did eat bread to the full "might have been the language of the angry remonstrants had there been some Moses to whom they could affix the responsibility of their position; but this was not the temper of the gallant, intrepid, God-fearing band of men and women who came out, like Abraham of old, not knowing whither they were going, except that they were going at the bidding of Abraham's God. The next day was the Sabbath, and according to their invariable custom they rested, and observed it as a day of worship. day had no sooner dawned than the women were astir, improving the opportunity with housewifely zeal. "Joyful

Mon

was that washing day,-odours of pine and sassafras in the air, and coals of juniper' under their kettles,—not less joyful than toilsome, for their feet were at last on the soil of New England." Two explorations into the adjacent country-one by land and the other by seawere conducted without leading to any satisfactory result. They resolved to make one more attempt to find a suitable harbour, and, after braving hardships and dangers which made them well-nigh give up in despair, they ran their boat aground in Plymouth Bay. The Mayflower furled her tattered sails" in Plymouth Bay just five weeks after she had anchored in Cape Cod. The name Plymouth had been given to the bay six years before by an earlier explorer, Captain John Smith, and seeing that they had set sail from Plymouth, the pilgrims concurred in the retention of the name.

It was on the 21st of December 1620 that the pilgrims disembarked in Plymouth Bay. There is probably no more sacred spot in the world than Plymouth Rock, which commemorates the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers on the wild New England shore.

". . . Plymouth Rock, that had been to their feet as a doorstep Into a wild unknown, the corner-stone of a nation."

Setting rhetorical exaggeration aside, we need not doubt that in watching that sad yet hopeful procession of men, women, and children, we are witnessing one of the great events and one of the heroic scenes of history.”1 "The consequences of that day," says the historian of the United States, "are constantly unfolding themselves as

1 The United States: An Outline of Political History, 1492-1871, by Goldwin Smith, D.C.L., p. 4.

time advances. It was the origin of New England; it was the planting of New England institutions as the pilgrims landed. Their institutions were already perfected. Democratic liberty and independent Christian worship at once existed in America." Plymouth Rock, famous throughout the world as the stepping-stone upon which the pilgrims landed, still occupies the same position as when the pilgrims' shallop first grazed its side. The only alteration is that it has been raised somewhat, and is now covered by an architectural canopy of granite. De Tocqueville says: "This rock has become an object of veneration in the United States. I have seen bits of it preserved in several towns of the Union. Does not this sufficiently show that all human power and greatness is in the soul of man? Here is a stone which the feet of outcasts pressed for an instant; and this stone has become famous; it is treasured by a great nation; its very dust is shared as a relic. what has become of the gateways of a thousand palaces? Who cares for them ?" 1

And

The numbers of the little company had been greatly reduced by disease and death, and those who were spared, unprovided with anything but the barest necessaries of life, were ill-fitted to encounter the cold and rigour of the New England winter. So rapid was the mortality, that, when spring returned, and "the birds sang in the woods most pleasantly," scarce fifty of the original hundred remained. "In those hard and difficult beginnings there were discontents and murmurings among some, and mutinous speeches and carriage in others; but 1 De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. i. p. 29.

they were soon quelled and overcome by the wisdom, patience, and just and equal carriage of things by the governor and better part." So passed the sorrowful first winter in Plymouth, but the spirit of the little company was unbroken. In April the Mayflower was despatched home to England, yet, notwithstanding the losses they had sustained, and the hardships and privations they were still enduring, not one of the brave company signified their willingness to return.

"Oh, strong hearts and true! not one went back in the Mayflower. No! not one looked back who had set his hand to that ploughing."

Governor Carver was among those who had succumbed to the fatal cold and hardships, and William Bradford, who had been a member of the little Church in Scrooby, was chosen to fill his place. He was governor of Plymouth for nearly thirty years, and to his graphic and picturesque chronicle we are indebted chiefly for what we know of the migration from Scrooby, the transplanting of the Church to Holland, and the settlement of the Fathers in New Plymouth. The other notable leaders in the colony were-William Brewster, the hospitable provider of the first place of meeting in Scrooby, and the stout Puritan soldier, Miles Standish, whose courtship is so quaintly related by Longfellow.

The Pilgrims entered into friendly relations with the various tribes of Indians round about them. One tribe alone refused their overtures, and showed their hostile intentions by sending a bundle of new arrows tied up in a rattlesnake's skin. The said skin was stuffed by Miles Standish full of powder and shot, and sent back as the response and challenge of the young colony,

and this the messenger was directed to carry back to the Indian sachem. Yet it would appear that at one time the colonists were only saved from extermination by an epidemic of sickness which broke out among the Indians; but for this they had all probably been tomahawked to death. Their number increased very slowly, as compared with what might have been expected. At the end of ten years the colony contained no more than three hundred souls. It was all the settlers could do to wring from the infertile soil the means of subsistence. Inured to hardship and privation by their sojourn in Holland, as well as by their previous manner of life, they were well-fitted-better fitted probably than any similar number of men that could have been selected from the population of England-to encounter the rigour of the climate, and to perform the hard task of colonisation. Such heartening as the friends they had left behind had it in their power to give, they received from time to time. "Let it not be grievous to you that you have been instrumental to break the ice for others. The honour shall be yours to the world's end." 1 'Out of small beginnings," said Bradford, "great things have been produced; and as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone to many; yea, in some sort, to our whole nation."

The Pilgrim Fathers the founders of a new empire. -The attempt has sometimes been made to belittle the

1"To the world's end the honour is theirs. If Columbus discovered the New Continent, they discovered the New World.”—The United States: An Outline of Political History, by Goldwin Smith, p. 5.