The story of their landing is told in Mourt's Relation, written by one of the actors in this great historical drama. After describing their explorations and hasty selection of the place, he continues: "So, in the morning, after we had called on God for direction, we came to this resolution, to go presently ashore again, and to take a better view of two places which we thought most fitting for us; for we could not now take time for further search or consideration, our victuals being much spent, especially our beer, and it being now the 19th of December. After our landing and viewing the places so well as we could, we came to a conclusion, by most voices, to set on a high ground, where there is a great deal of land cleared, and hath been planted with corn three or four years ago; and there is a very sweet brook runs under the hillside, and many delicate springs of as good water as can be drunk, and where we may harbor our shallops and boats exceeding well; and in this brook fish in their season; on the further side of the river also much corn-ground cleared. In one field is a great hill on which we point to make a platform and plant our ordnance, which will command all around about. From thence we may see into the bay and far into the sea, and we may see thence Cape Cod. Our greatest labor will be the fetching of our wood, which is half a quarter of an English mile; but there is enough so far off. What people inhabit here we know not, for as yet we have seen none. So there we made our rendezvous, and a place for some of our people, about twenty, resolving in the morning to come all ashore and to build houses." About a week after landing they began constructing their first fort on the hill, and allotted the plots of land on their street, subsequently named Leyden. Thus the town was begun, and behind it rose two hills, the one now known as the Burial Hill being at the head of this street, and elevated about one hundred and fifty feet above the sea. Miles Standish, with his military eye, for he had seen veteran service in Flanders, selected this hill for the fort, and here in 1622 was built the square timber block-house that made them both a fort and a church, the entire settlement as it then existed being enclosed with a stockade for further protection. This caused the hill to be named Fort Hill, and it was not until long afterward that it was used as a cemetery and called Burial Hill, the first interred being some of the original Pilgrims after the graveyard on Cole's Hill, down by the waterside, had been abandoned.

Upon Fort Hill was built the "Watch House," where an outlook was kept for the Indians. Stones now mark the locations both of the fort and the watchhouse, and surrounding them are the graves of several of the "Mayflower" Pilgrims, with many of their descendants, the dark slate gravestones having been brought out from England. There is a fine outlook from Burial Hill, far over the sea to the distant yellow sand-streak of Cape Cod. About a half-mile northward is the other hill, rising somewhat higher, and upon it is the National Monument to the Pilgrims, dedicated in 1889. This is a massive granite pedestal forty-five feet high, surmounted by the largest stone statue in existence, a colossal figure of Faith, thirty-six feet high, and adorned by large seated statues emblematic of the principles upon which the settlement was founded, representing Law, Morality, Freedom and Education. Upon this great monument are also representations of the landing of the Pilgrims, their names, and the "Mayflower Compact." It was into this infant colony of Plymouth, after some weeks of careful parley and investigation, there strode the stalwart Indian Samoset, making their acquaintance and paving the way for the subsequent treaty and alliance with Massasoit, which for many years was scrupulously observed by both parties, and not broken until after he died. Canonicus, of the Narragansetts, to the southward, sent to the colony after Massasoit's death a sheaf of arrows bound with a rattlesnake's skin as a token of hostility. Governor Bradford did not want war, but he knew they must maintain a brave outlook, so he promptly filled the skin with powder and shot and sent it back to Canonicus, who understood the grim challenge, and fearing the deadly musketry, prudently restrained the hostile instincts of his tribe. The privations of the first year, which killed half the settlers, and were only relieved by succor from England, are said to have originated the New England Thanksgiving Festival Day, which has since spread over the whole country. In December, 1621, they had their first Thanksgiving, upon the arrival of a relief ship from abroad. Such was the dawning of the ruling race of the American nation.

DUXBURY AND MILES STANDISH.

Upon the upper side of Plymouth Bay, enclosing its northern portion, is one of those long peninsulas of sand and rocks, abounding upon the Massachusetts coasts, which projects about six miles southeastward into the sea and terminates in a high knob, called the Gurnet, with a hook turned inward. This elongated sand-strip is Duxbury Beach, the town of Duxbury being upon the mainland inside, a fishing village probably best known as the terminus of the French Atlantic Cable. It was at Duxbury that the first regular pastor was Ralph Partridge, whom Cotton Mather described as having "the innocence of a dove and the loftiness of an eagle." The Pilgrims allotted this district to Miles Standish and to their youngest member, John Alden. Standish named it from Duxbury Hall, in Lancashire, the seat of his English ancestors. The brave Miles was not a Puritan and did not belong to their church, but as he was an experienced warrior, they made him the commander of their standing army of twelve men. Is is said that there have been only two renowned military chieftains in history who were personally acquainted with all their soldiers—Julius Cæsar and Miles Standish. The redoubtable old captain lost his wife Rose soon after the landing, and he then engaged the fascinating and youthful Alden to do his courtship for him and woo the gentle Priscilla Mullins, with the usual result that the maiden preferred the more attractive Alden to the grim old soldier. Standish has been described as "a short man, very brave, but impetuous and choleric, and his name soon became a terror to all hostile Indians." His is the romance of early Plymouth, for he has been made the hero of Longfellow's poem, and of renowned operas and many New England tales, while the fair Priscilla gave her name to the great Long Island Sound steamer. Standish lived upon the "Captain's Hill," out on the Duxbury peninsula, the highest land thereabout, rising one hundred and eighty feet, upon a broad point projecting into Plymouth Bay. His monument is near the site of his house upon the bare-topped, oval-shaped hill, a rather bleak place, however, to have selected for a home. Beyond it the projecting Duxbury Beach ends in the high Gurnet, with twin lighthouses, and then hooks inward to another bold terminating bulb, the headland of Saquish. To the northward is Clark's Island, where the Pilgrims first landed, a similarly round-topped mass rising from the water. Thus is Plymouth Bay environed, for to the southward its long guarding ridge on that side, Manomet, projects far into the sea.

CAPE COD.

The Old Bay State presents a front to the rough Atlantic like a gladiator at bay. She has in Cape Cod one defensive forearm boldly extended, and she likewise is prepared, if necessary, to thrust out the other, which keeps close guard upon her rugged granite breast in Cape Ann. These capes are the portals of Massachusetts Bay, and of the ocean entrance to Boston. Everyone, in viewing the map, marvels at the extraordinary formation of Cape Cod. Thoreau, who in days gone by tramped all over the Cape, says, "A man may stand there and put all America behind him." This great sandy headland stretches eastward from the mainland at Sandwich about thirty miles, then turns north and northwest thirty miles more, finally terminating in a huge hook, bent around to the south and east again, and forming the spacious landlocked harbor of Provincetown. At Harwich and Chatham the elbow sharply bends, the shoulder is at Buzzard's Bay, the wrist at Truro, and the closing fingers make Provincetown's haven. The Cape is nearly all white sand, with boulders occasionally appearing, particularly near the extremity. Thin layers of soil extend as far as Truro, but the sand is seen through many rents, and the extremity is completely bare, being a wilderness of sand, kept in partial motion by the winds, and making constantly shifting dunes. The prevalent northeast winds and surf are regarded as having made the hooked end of the Cape by gradually moving the sands upon the shore around to the west and south. This hooked end impressed the Colonial navigators, and the ancient Dutch maps call it Staaten Hoeck, and the enclosed waters Staaten Bay. The extremely white sand, in contrast with the darker rocks of more northern shores, led Champlain to name it Cape Blanc. Gosnold, as already announced, from the abundance of codfish named it Cape Cod, whereof the faithful historian, Cotton Mather, who records the fact, writes naïvely that he supposes it will never lose its name "till swarms of codfish be seen swimming on the highest hills."

This remarkable cape came near being an island, Buzzard's Bay on the south and Cape Cod bay on the north being so deeply indented that their waters approach within about seven miles. The isthmus is a low, broad alluvial valley stretching between, having Monumet River flowing from Herring Pond south into Buzzard's Bay, and the Scusset River north from the divide, their headwaters only a thousand yards apart, so that this narrow neck of land, nowhere elevated more than twenty-five feet, is all that saves the famous Cape from being an island. A canal was projected there as early as 1676, and the proposed "Cape Cod Ship Canal" has been regularly agitated ever since, and may at some time be constructed, saving the shipping from the long detour around the Cape. This neck has been called "the collar of the Cape," and beyond was the Indian domain of Monomoy. Chatham then was Nauset, and Barnstable was Cummaquid, these, as indeed every village on the Cape, being famous nurseries of sailors and fishermen. Here is some agriculture, the farms and towns having roomy old houses, and the extensive cranberry bogs showing one of the chief industries of the people. Along the southern shore are Marshpee, Cotuit, and Hyannis, all changing from fishing-ports to modern fashionable watering-places. The surface is composed of sharply defined hills of white sand, having broad sandy levels between that are almost desert plains. There are some trees, but the growth becomes gradually stunted, as the journey is made out upon the Cape, and villages are less frequent and population sparser. Modern cottages crown the hilltops, and the frequent cranberry bogs are as level as a floor, being thickly grown with the myriad runners and sombre foliage of the prolific plant.

Passing Yarmouth and Harwich, the railway turns northward at the elbow of the cape, where Chatham is on the ocean shore. Brewster is northward, and Eastham, noted for its fortified church, whose colonial pastor received by law, for his salary, part of every stranded whale coming upon the shore. To the left is Welfleet, on the bay shore, and to the right the triple lighthouses of Nauset Beach, in front of which the ocean tides divide, moving in opposite directions, one current south to Nantucket Sound, and the other north, to go around the Cape into Massachusetts Bay. Northward is the sandy desert of Truro, the "Dangerfield" of early days, regarded as the most fatal coast in New England. This town of Truro has been described as "a village where its able-bodied men are all ploughing the ocean together as a common field," while in North Truro "the women and girls may sit at their doors and see where their husbands and brothers are harvesting their mackerel fifteen to twenty miles off on the sea, with hundreds of white harvest-wagons." Here, upon the high hill making the ocean shore, where the headland curves from north around to the west, is the guardian beacon of Cape Cod, the lofty Highland Light, forty-one miles southeast of Boston Light, and whose powerful white rays shine for twenty miles over the ocean without, and the bay within. The tower stands on a hill one hundred and forty-two feet high, and the light is elevated nearly two hundred feet. Along here Thoreau walked on the "sand-bar in the midst of the sea," and as he gazed far over the ocean, thus reflected: "The nearest beach to us on the east was on the coast of Galicia in Spain, whose capital is Santiago, though by old poets' reckoning it should have been Atlantis, or the Hesperides; but Heaven is found to be farther west now. At first we were abreast of that part of Portugal entre Douro e Mino, and then Galicia and the port of Pontevedro opened to us as we walked along, but we did not enter, the breakers ran so high. The bold headland of Cape Finisterre, a little north of east, jutted toward us next with its vain brag; for we flung back 'Here is Cape Cod, Cape Land's Beginning.' A little indentation toward the north—for the land loomed to our imaginations like a common mirage—we knew was the Bay of Biscay, and we sang, 'There we lay, till next day, in the Bay of Biscay, O!' A little south of east was Palos, where Columbus weighed anchor, and further yet the pillars which Hercules set up."

THE PURITAN COMPACT.

At the extremity of Cape Cod is Provincetown, among the sand dunes, a town with about forty-five hundred inhabitants, encircling the harbor on its western verge, a long, narrow settlement between the high white sand-hills and the beach. There are two main streets, one along the beach and the other parallel to it back among the hills. Upon the highest hill is the Town Hall, the mariner's landmark entering the harbor, and from it are good views over ocean and bay, displaying the curious end of the Cape sweeping grandly around and enclosing the spacious harbor with room enough for anchoring an enormous fleet. To the west and south is the great bended hook having Race Point on its northwesterly verge and a lighthouse on the southern termination, whence a tongue of beach juts over towards Truro. This is a haven for many fishermen, and the people, who are among the purest descendants of the original Puritans, devote their energies largely to catching mackerel and cod, curing and stacking the fish all around the bay. The first appearance of Provincetown in history was when the "Mayflower" entered the harbor with the Pilgrims in November, 1620. Cape Cod was the first land they saw after leaving the English Channel, then not bare as now, but wooded down to the shore. They anchored in the bay, and the men were forced to wade "a bow-shoot" to the shore to make a landing, and it was this wading and subsequent exposure which gave them the colds and sickness resulting in the deaths of so many during the subsequent winter. It is recorded that upon Monday, November 23, 1620, the women went ashore to wash, and thus they inaugurated that universal institution which has extended all over the country, the great American Monday washing-day. It was while anchored in Provincetown harbor the Pilgrims framed and signed the celebrated Puritan Compact, so long ruling Plymouth, which is regarded as the foundation of constitutional government. John Quincy Adams said of it: "This is perhaps the only instance in human history of that positive original social compact which speculative philosophers imagined as the only legitimate source of government." It was signed by forty-one Pilgrims, of whom twenty-one died during the ensuing four months. It reads: