NORTH STREET.
CANOPY OVER PLYMOUTH ROCK—COLE’S HILL.
It remained there until 1834, when at a celebration of the Fourth of July it was carried in procession to Pilgrim Hall, deposited in the front area, and inclosed by an iron fence. Here the separated part of the Rock remained forty-six years, its incongruous position away from the water not being understood by visitors without lengthy explanation. Mr. Stickney, the gentleman by whose liberality the alterations in Pilgrim Hall were being made in the summer of 1880, recognized the impropriety of this condition, and proposed reuniting the parts at the original Landing-place. The Pilgrim Society readily acceded to this proposition, and accordingly on Monday, Sept. 27, 1880, without ceremony, this part of the Rock was placed beneath the Monumental Canopy at the waterside, the reunited pieces, after a separation of one hundred and six years, probably now presenting much the same appearance as when the Pilgrim shallop grazed its side. As to the identity of this Rock, and the certainty of its being the very one consecrated by the first touch of Pilgrim feet on this shore, there is not the slightest loophole for a doubt. Ancient records, now accessible, refer to it as an object of prominence on the shore, before the building of the wharf about it in the year 1741. Thomas Faunce, the elder of the church, who was born in 1647 and died in 1746, at the age of 99, was the son of John Faunce, who came over in the “Ann” in 1623. At the age of ninety-five years hearing that the Rock, which from youth he had venerated was to be disturbed, he visited the locality, related the history of the Rock as told him by his father and contemporary Pilgrims, and in the presence of many witnesses declared it to be that upon which the Forefathers landed in 1620. Thus it has been pointed out and identified from one generation to another, and from the days of the first comers to the present time. Not a shadow of distrust rests upon it as being the identical spot where the first landing was effected on the shore of Plymouth.
About a century and three-fourths have elapsed since Elder Faunce gave his personal testimony, and the lives of two or three elderly people cover that period, so the evidence is of positive rather than traditional character.
The Rock was originally a solid boulder of about seven tons, and undoubtedly a glacial deposit. It is greenish syenite, very hard, and bears high polish when its fragments are worked for various purposes.
The Landing
Let us picture to ourselves the scene on that Monday morning, when, after the rest on Clark’s Island they came in their shallop to inspect the new country that they had providentially found. The wharves and buildings and every trace of civilization vanish. All is wild and unknown. Across the harbor comes the boat and every eye anxiously and keenly scanning the strange shore to discover the presence of human beings, who will be sure to be enemies. They coast along the shore by cliff and lowland, hand on weapon, every sense alert for the expected warwhoop and attack, a steep and sandy cliff, (Cole’s Hill) the base of which is washed by the water meets their eyes; at its foot a great boulder, brought from some far-away coast by a glacier, in some long-gone age. Oval in form, with a flat top, it seems the very place to bring the great clumsy boat up to, as from its crest they can spring to the shore, dry-shod, a matter which, after their previous wading in the ice-cold water at the Cape, is of no small moment. The shallop is steered to its side; the company steps upon the Rock, and the Landing of the Forefathers, now so reverently commemorated, is completed. Look along the shore at this day, north or south, and you may see cliffs as Cole’s Hill was then, with the mouth of Town Brook near by the Rock, which later made a safe little harbor for their boats in the rear of the dwellings which they erected on the south side of Leyden Street. Divested of romance thrown around it by time, it should be remembered that the “Landing,” Dec. 21, 1620, was that of the exploring party which had coasted around the bay, the “Mayflower” then being in Cape Cod Harbor.