A STRANGER IN PILGRIM-LAND, AND WHAT HE SAW.
The town of the Pilgrims—how often, in my far-off Western home, have I read its story, and the story of the stout-hearted who sailed across the sea to this very spot, then a wilderness, two hundred and fifty years ago!
And I have come at last to visit the town of my dreams; have actually set my foot upon its “holy ground.” This hill, planted thick with graves, is the ancient “Burial Hill.” Sitting among its mossy headstones, I look far across the bay to the cliffs of Cape Cod, where, before landing here, some of “The Mayflower’s” crew went ashore to get firewood. Just below me lies the town, sloping to the sea. Vessels sail in and out, and little boats skim over the water like white-winged birds. How can they skim so lightly over the hallowed waters of Plymouth Bay! Far less swiftly sped that “first boat,” laden with passengers from “The Mayflower.”
Two hundred and fifty years ago!—let me use for a while, not my real eyes, but my other pair, the eyes of my mind, my “dream eyes,” and see, or make believe that I see, this place just as it looked then.
And now I will suppose the town has vanished. No streets, no houses, no sail upon the sea. Stillness reigns over the land and over the dark waters of the bay.
A ship enters the harbor. Why should a ship come sailing to these desolate shores? A hundred and one passengers are on board. They have come three thousand miles, have been tossed upon the ocean one hundred days and nights; and now they find no friends to welcome them. Not a house, nor a single white person, in all this vast wilderness. What will they do—these men, women, and children—in so dreary a place? Can they keep from freezing in this bitter cold?
A boat puts off from the ship. Row, row, row. Nearer and nearer it comes. But how will they land? Will the sailors jump out, and pull her up high and dry? Ah! to be sure, there is a Rock, and the only one to be seen along the shore. They steer for that. And now I see Elder Brewster, their first minister, and Gov. Carver, their first governor, and Capt. Miles Standish, their first soldier, and Mary Chilton, the first woman who stepped upon the Rock. Now the boat goes back,—back for another load.
Where can all these people live? Out of doors this wintry weather? Let me see what they will do.
They cut down trees to build houses. First a “common house” is built; then the one hundred and one people are divided into nineteen families, and begin to construct nineteen log-huts, each family working upon its own. These are set in two rows, and are placed near together, on account of the Indians. The two rows form a street, which runs from a cliff by the water’s edge part way up this hill.