BURYING HILL.
Much has been said and written of the Sunday spent by the advanced guard of Pilgrims upon Clarke's Island, and a very modern tradition points to the great rock in the centre of the island as the scene of their devotions. Nothing, however, is less probable than that this handful of men, with no pastor or even presiding elder among them, should leave their encampment under the bluff, and the neighborhood of their boat, to travel inland to this bleak and exposed bowlder, there to set one of their number to exhort the rest. Carver certainly was a deacon of Robinson's congregation, yet this office gave him no spiritual authority, but rather the duties of a warden in the mother church, nor was the governor a man to assume any authority not his own; so although he led the informal service held in that sheltered nook, upon the shore, Winslow and Bradford and Hopkins were the chief speakers, while John Howland in his melodious and powerful voice raised a psalm that made the welkin ring, and Richard Warren stoutly cried Amen to all the rest.
Standish, his arms folded and one hand resting upon the hilt of Gideon, stood a little apart, his head reverently bared in the prayers, and with a rough attempt at melody echoing Howland's psalm; but during the exhortations or prophesyings, he strode softly up and down the beach, or mounting upon the bluff swept sea and land with the keen glances of eyes that nothing escaped. Occasionally a fervent word would be sped in his direction from one or another, and many a prayer, as before and after that hour, was urged that this bulwark of the church against her secular foes might become her obedient son. When thus exhorted or prayed for the captain's face became a study, sometimes so impenetrably obtuse, sometimes so rigid in its obstinacy, sometimes touched with shrewd amusement, and sometimes moved to tender sympathy, but never to conviction or even doubt, and as the years went on, those who loved him most, even Bradford and Alden and Brewster, ceased all effort to bring this precious comrade into their own fold, but learned to accept him as he was.
Monday broke with clear and gracious skies and a sea only pleasantly rippled with its late commotion. Refreshed and cheered by their long rest the Pilgrims were early afoot, and at a good hour the cleaned and furbished arms were packed in the shallop, the sail, bent to its new mast, was unfurled to its fullest spread, and the eighteen men, each at his own post, eager and hopeful. It had been resolved to proceed no farther in search of Coppin's harbor, which afterward proved to be Cut River and the site of Marshfield, but to explore the landlocked harbor lying before them.
Carefully sounding as she went, the shallop felt her way through the Cow Yard or Horse Market, around Beach Point, and having the flood tide with her rode triumphantly over Dick's Flat and Mother White's Guzzle, until finally, with furled sails and her head to the wind, she lay within a biscuit toss of the shore.
"See, there are cleared fields and a river full of fish, and all things ready to our hand," cried Howland excitedly.
"Bring her up to the beach, then, and we will land and explore," replied Carver, smiling at the young man's enthusiasm.
"There is a rock a few rods ahead set ready for a stepping-stone," announced Howland standing in the bows.
"Lay her up to it, men," growled English, and in a moment the bows of the shallop caressingly touched the cheek of that great gray Rock, itself a pilgrim, as has well been said, from some far northern shore, brought here by the vast forces of Nature, and laid to wait in grand patience, until the ages should bring it a name, a use, and a nation's love and honor.
"Jump then, lad, and see thou jump not five fadom deep, as thou didst out there in mid-seas!" cried Hopkins, and Howland leaping lightly from the boat to the rock cried in his blithe voice,—