“Quit ye as men; be true then, who would fightIn this so holy cause; think ye a soulWeighed down by beggarly lusts can have a rightTo urge God’s ark of freedom to its goal?They must be holy who’re ordained to beThe high priests of a people’s liberty.”Wilson.
“Quit ye as men; be true then, who would fightIn this so holy cause; think ye a soulWeighed down by beggarly lusts can have a rightTo urge God’s ark of freedom to its goal?They must be holy who’re ordained to beThe high priests of a people’s liberty.”Wilson.
“Quit ye as men; be true then, who would fight
In this so holy cause; think ye a soul
Weighed down by beggarly lusts can have a right
To urge God’s ark of freedom to its goal?
They must be holy who’re ordained to be
The high priests of a people’s liberty.”
Wilson.
A short survey of the surrounding country convinced the Pilgrim pioneers that the long-sought spot had at last been found. They determined to plant their settlement on Plymouth Rock, with no other seal than the broad one of the Divine sanction. Entering their shallop, they soon regained the “Mayflower.” Carver recited the story of their adventures to the clustering voyagers; and when he said that a spot had been found where they might erect their Ebenezer, devoutly all thanked God.
At once the “Mayflower’s” course was shaped for Plymouth harbor, where she dropped anchor on the 16th of December.[150]The first law on the Pilgrim statute-book was, that each man should build his own house.[151]
A few days after the arrival of the ship, “a party of colonists went ashore to fell timber, to saw, to rive, to carry, and prepare for the importantwork of building; and that day every man worked with a will, hopefully and heartily. A new home, a pleasant refuge, future security, was the aim of every one, and while each cheered the other, the axes rang out in harmony with their hopes; their strokes were as heavy as their hearts were light. The crowned oaks of the forest did homage, and yielded their riches to found the infant state.” After sufficient timber had been secured for present want, “many went to work on an adjacent hill[152]to prepare fortifications; others measured the land, and allotted the lots for building.”[153]
The houses were ranged in a double row along one street;[154]and for economic reasons the community was divided into nineteen families, an arrangement which necessitated fewer buildings and less outlay.[155]Yet despite the energetic labors of the settlers, they made haste slowly. At that inclement season it was almost impossible to build. Happily the weather was moderate for December;[156]but rain fell incessantly, which was disastrous to the health of men already wasting away under consumptions and lung-fevers.[157]It was remembered that “a green Christmas makes a fat church-yard.”
The Pilgrims were well satisfied with the site of their settlement, hard and sterile as it was. Indeed, they had a devout habit of looking on the good, rather than the evil of events, and this madeeven their crosses easier to be borne. “This harbor,” they said, “is a bay greater than Cape Cod, compassed with goodly land; and in the bay are two fine islands,[158]uninhabited, wherein are nothing but woods, oaks, pines, walnuts, beech, sassafras, vines, and other trees which we know not. The bay is a most hopeful place, and has innumerable store of fowl and excellent food; it cannot but contain fish in their seasons; skate, cod, turbot, and herring, we have tasted of. Here is abundance of muscles, the greatest and best we ever saw, also crabs and lobsters in their time, infinite. The place is in fashion like a sickle or fish-hook. The land for the crust of the earth is a spit’s depth, excellent black mould, and fat in many places; and vines are everywhere, and cherry-trees, plum-trees, and many others whose names we know not. Many kinds of herbs we find in winter hereabouts, as strawberry-leaves innumerable, sorrel, yarrow, carrot, brook-lime, liverwort, water-cresses, great store of leeks, and an excellent strong kind of flax or hemp. Here is sand, gravel, an excellent clay, no better in the world, exceeding good for pots, and it will wash like soap; we have the best water that ever we drank, and the brooks will soon be full of fish.”[159]
So runs the journal of the Pilgrims. Hopeful and thankful for what they had, they seemed anxious to be pleased, and to make the best even oftheir ills. It was in no sour and bitter spirit that they
“Leaned their cheeks against the thick-ribbed ice,And looked up with devout eyes to HimWho bade them bloom, unblanched, amid the wasteOf desolation.”
“Leaned their cheeks against the thick-ribbed ice,And looked up with devout eyes to HimWho bade them bloom, unblanched, amid the wasteOf desolation.”
“Leaned their cheeks against the thick-ribbed ice,
And looked up with devout eyes to Him
Who bade them bloom, unblanched, amid the waste
Of desolation.”
After all, perhaps it was well even for their present safety that they had landed on the bleak New England strand. “Had they been carried, according to their desire, unto Hudson’s river,” says Cotton Mather, “the Indians in those parts were at this time so many and so mighty and so sturdy, that in probability all this feeble number of Christians had been massacred by the bloody savages, as not long after some others were; whereas the good hand of God now brought them to a country wonderfully prepared for their entertainment by a sweeping mortality that had lately been among the natives. ‘We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work thou didst in their days, in the times of old; how thou dravest out the heathen with thy hand, and plantedst them; how thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out.’ The Indians in these parts had newly, even about a year or two before, been visited with such a prodigious pestilence, as carried away not a tenth, but nine parts of ten; yea, ’tis said, nineteen of twenty among them; so that the woods were almost cleared to make room for a better growth.
“It is remarkable that a Frenchman, who, not long before the Pilgrim settlement, had by a shipwreckbeen made captive among the Indians of New England, did, as the survivors report, just before he died in their hands, tell these tawny pagans that ‘God, being angry with them for their wickedness, would not only destroy them all, but also people the place with another nation, which would not live after their brutish manner.’ Those infidels then blasphemously said, ‘God could not kill them,’ which was confuted by a horrible and unusual plague, whereby they were consumed in such vast multitudes, that our first ancestors found the land almost covered with their unburied carcasses; and they that were alive were smitten into awful and humble regard of the English by the terrors which the remembrance of the Frenchman’s prophecy had imprinted on them.”[160]
During the first few months of their wilderness life, little occurred of special public interest among the Pilgrims. The routine of their days was undisturbed. Engrossed by the pressing present duties of the hour, they labored to complete their preparations for the winter. Their existence was that which is common in all pioneer settlements, which has been led a thousand times since on our western prairies, and which is led to-day by the settler who rears his log-cabin under the shadow of the Rocky mountains.
The country seemed lonely and monotonous.[161]“Among the few recorded incidents,” says Elliot,“we gather here and there some facts which serve to illustrate the social and moral condition of the exiles during these initial months of their western life. On the 21st of January, 1621, they celebrated public worship for the first time on shore. On the 17th of February, Standish was chosen captain, and all were arranged in military orders. This may be called their first legislative act, the first communal life of men who believed in and were forced to act out the principle of self-government; every man could vote, and the ballot of the lowest colonist counted the same as Governor Carver’s. Births and deaths varied the monotony of existence. Peregrine White, the first born in New England, had appeared in November, and six persons had died in December, among whom was Dorothy, Bradford’s wife, who was drowned. This was the beginning of a mortality which carried dismay and destruction into the weakened ranks.”[162]
Measures were taken for the military protection of the colony. “A minion, a saker, and two other guns, were mounted on Fort Hill,” where a block-citadel had been erected.[163]Standish was thebeau idealof a soldier—alert, provident, tireless. The words which Longfellow has put into his mouth exhibit his genial humor and quaint wisdom:
“‘Serve yourself, would you be well served, is an excellent adage;So I take care of my arms, as scribes of their pens and their ink-horns.Then, too, there are my soldiers, my great, invincible army,Twelve men, all equipped, having each his rest and his matchlock,Eighteen shillings a month, together with diet and pillage,And, like Cæsar, I know the name of each of my soldiers.’This he said with a smile, that danced in his eyes, as the sunbeamsDance on the waves of the sea, and vanish again in a moment.”[164]
“‘Serve yourself, would you be well served, is an excellent adage;So I take care of my arms, as scribes of their pens and their ink-horns.Then, too, there are my soldiers, my great, invincible army,Twelve men, all equipped, having each his rest and his matchlock,Eighteen shillings a month, together with diet and pillage,And, like Cæsar, I know the name of each of my soldiers.’This he said with a smile, that danced in his eyes, as the sunbeamsDance on the waves of the sea, and vanish again in a moment.”[164]
“‘Serve yourself, would you be well served, is an excellent adage;
So I take care of my arms, as scribes of their pens and their ink-horns.
Then, too, there are my soldiers, my great, invincible army,
Twelve men, all equipped, having each his rest and his matchlock,
Eighteen shillings a month, together with diet and pillage,
And, like Cæsar, I know the name of each of my soldiers.’
This he said with a smile, that danced in his eyes, as the sunbeams
Dance on the waves of the sea, and vanish again in a moment.”[164]
The peculiar situation of the Pilgrims tended to increase that rugged individuality, that self-confident earnestness, that somewhat dogmatic vigor, which already characterized them, and which is still a salient trait of their descendants. There they stood on a bleak and desolate shore; bereaved of sympathy at home, without friends in the wilderness, “with none to show them kindness or to bid them welcome.” The nearest French settlement was at Port Royal; it was five hundred miles and more of trackless forest to the English plantation of Virginia.[165]The exiles were obliged to be self-centred; cut off from the outer world and isolated, they could entertain no friends but God and each other.
We can hardly be sufficiently thankful for the singular combination of circumstances which produced the Plymouth settlement in 1620. “Had New England been colonized immediately on the discovery of the American continent, the old English institutions would have been planted under the powerful influence of the Roman religion; had the settlement been made under Elizabeth, it wouldhave been before activity of the public mind in religion had conducted to a corresponding activity of mind in politics.” God builded better than men knew; and when the time was ripe, he chose “the Pilgrims, Englishmen, Protestants, exiles for religion, men disciplined by misfortune, cultivated by opportunities of extensive observation, equal in rank as in rights, bound by no code but that of religion and the public will,”[166]and with these elements He planted a model state, and bade it grow into a democratic, Christian commonwealth, that it might be at once an exemplar and a benefactor to mankind.
The Pilgrims cheerfully accepted peril and discomfort to build such a state. Peace under liberty—sub libertate quietem—this was their aspiration, and they said,
“We ask a shrine for faith and simple prayer,Freedom’s sweet waters, and untainted air.”[167]
“We ask a shrine for faith and simple prayer,Freedom’s sweet waters, and untainted air.”[167]
“We ask a shrine for faith and simple prayer,
Freedom’s sweet waters, and untainted air.”[167]