Obviously, none of these visitors had proved very satisfactory. It had been entertaining under difficulties, and if the entertainers had hoped for the "angels unawares," they had been decidedly disappointed. Therefore it is easy to believe that they took fresh courage and sincere delight when, in July, 1623, the Anne and the Little James arrived—no strangers, for they brought with them additional stores, and best of all, good friends and close kinsfolk from the church at Leyden. Yes, the Pilgrims were delighted, but, alas, tradition has it that when they pressed forward in glad greeting to their old acquaintances, these latter started back, nonplussed—aghast! Like Mr. Boughton they had fondly pictured an ideal rustic community, in which the happy, carefree colonists reveled in all the beauty of picturesque and snowy collars and cuffs in Arden-like freedom. Instead they saw a row of rough log cabins and a group of work-worn, shabby men and women, men and women whose faces were lined with exposure, and whose backs were bent with toil, and who, for their most hospitable feast, had only a bit of shellfish and water to offer. Many of the newcomers promptly burst into tears, and begged to return to England immediately. Poor Pilgrims! Rebuffed—and so unflatteringly—with each arriving maritime guest, who can doubt that there was born in them at that moment the constitutional dislike for unexpected company which has characterized New England ever since?
However, in a comparatively short time the colonists who had been brought over in the Anne and the Little James—those who stayed, for some did return at once—adjusted themselves to the new life. Many married—both Myles Standish and Governor Bradford found wives among them; and now the Plymouth Colony may be said to have fairly started.
Just as a trail which is first a mere thread leading to some out-of-the-way cabin becomes a path and then a road, and in due time a wide thoroughfare, so the way across the Atlantic from Old England to New became more charted—more traveled. At first there was only one boat and one net for fishing. In five years there was a fleet of fifty fishing vessels. Ten years later we have note of ten foreign vessels in the harbor in a single week. And to-day, if the Pilgrim man and maid whom we joined at the beginning of our reminiscences could gaze out over the harbor, they would see it as full of masts as a cornfield is of stalks. Every kind of boat finds its way in and out; and not only pleasure craft: Plymouth Harbor is second only to Boston among the Massachusetts ports of entry, receiving annual foreign imports valued at over $7,000,000. Into the harbor, where once a single shallop was the only visible sign of man's dominion over the water, now sail great vessels from Yucatan and the Philippines, bringing sisal and manila for the largest cordage company in the whole country—a company with an employees' list of two thousand names, and an annual output of $10,000,000. Furthermore, the flats in the harbor are planted with clams, which (through the utilization of shells for poultry feeding, and by means of canning for bouillon) yield a profit of from five hundred to eight hundred dollars an acre.
No, our Pilgrim man and maid would not recognize, in this Plymouth of factories and industries, the place where once stood the row of log cabins, with oiled-paper windows. And yet, after all, it is not the prosperous town of to-day, but the rude settlement of yesterday, which chiefly lives in the hearts of the American people. And it lives, not because of its economic importance, but because of its unique sentimental value. As John Fiske so admirably states: "Historically their enterprise [that of the Pilgrims at Plymouth] is interesting not so much for what it achieved as for what it suggested. Of itself the Plymouth Colony could hardly have become a wealthy and powerful state. Its growth was extremely slow. After ten years its numbers were but three hundred. In 1643, when the exodus had come to an end and the New England Confederacy was formed, the population of Plymouth was but three thousand. In an established community, indeed, such a rate of increase would be rapid, but was not sufficient to raise in New England a power which could overcome Indians and Dutchmen and Frenchmen and assert its will in opposition to the Crown. It is when we view the founding of Plymouth in relation to what came afterward, that it assumes the importance which belongs to the beginning of a new era."
For this reason the permanent position of Plymouth in our history is forever assured. Old age, which may diminish the joys of youth, preserves inviolate memories which nothing can destroy. The place whose quiet fame is made is surer of the future than the one which is on the brink of fabulous glory. It is impossible to overestimate the significance of this spot.
The Old Coast Road—the oldest in New England—began here and pushed its tortuous way up to Boston along the route we have so lightly followed. Inheritors of a nation which these pioneers strove manfully, worshipfully, to found, need we be ashamed of deep emotion as we stand here, on this shore, where they landed three hundred years ago?
FOOTNOTES:
[2] It is hoped that by the summer of 1921 a beautiful and dignified portico of granite will be raised as a final and permanent memorial over the rock, which will be moved for the last time—lowered to as near its original bed as possible. This work, which has been taken in charge by the National Society of Colonial Dames of America will be executed by McKim, Mead & White. The General Society of Mayflower Descendants are also working for the redemption of the first Pilgrim burial place on Cole's Hill. The Pilgrim Society is to assume the perpetual care of both memorial and lot.
