the Christian faith, and honor of our king and country, a voy. age to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do, by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof, to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most convenient for the general good of the colony. Unto which we promise all due sub

mission and obedience."

9. This instrument was signed by the whole body of men, forty-one in number, who, with their families, constituted the one hundred and two, the whole colony, "the proper democracy," that arrived in New England. This was the birth of popular constitutional liberty. The middle age had been

familiar with charters and constitutions; but they had been merely compacts for immunities, partial enfranchisements", patents of nobility, concessions of municipal privileges, or limitations of the sovereign power in favor of feudal institutions. In the cabin of the Mayflower humanity recovered its rights, and instituted government on the basis of "equal laws" for the "general good." John Carver was immediately and unanimously chosen governor for the year.

The Settlement of Plymouth.—Palfrey.

[Extract from the "History of New England," by John G. Palfrey.]

1. As soon as the state of the weather permitted, a party of ten, including Carver, Bradford, and others of the principal men, set off with eight seamen in the shallop' on what proved to be the final expedition of discovery. The severity of the cold was extreme. "The water froze on their clothes, and made them many times like coats of iron." Coasting along the cape in a southerly direction for six or seven leagues, they landed and slept at a place where ten or twelve Indians had appeared on the shore.

2. The Indians ran away on being approached, and at night it was supposed that it was their fires which appeared at four or five miles' distance. The next day, while part of the company in the shallop examined the shore, the rest, ranging about the country where are now the towns of Wellfleet and Eastham, found a burial-place, some old wigwams, and a small store of parched acorns buried in the ground; but they met with no inhabitants. The following morning, at daylight, they had just ended their prayers, and were preparing breakfast at their camp on the beach, when they heard a yell, and a flight of arrows fell among them. The assailants turned out to be thirty or forty Indians, who, being fired upon, retired. Neither side had been harmed. A number of the arrows were picked up, "some whereof were headed with brass, others with hart's horn, and others with eagles' claws."

3. Getting on board, they sailed all day along the shore in a storm of snow and sleet, making, by their estimate, a distance of forty or fifty miles without discovering a harbor. In the afternoon, the gale having increased, their rudder was disabled, and they had to steer with oars. At length the mast was carried away, and they drifted in the dark with a flood tide. With difficulty they brought up under the lee of a "small rise of land." Here a part of the company, suffering from wet and cold, went on shore, though not without fear of hostile neighbors, and lighted a fire by which to pass the inclement night. In the morning, "they found themselves to be on an island,* secure from the Indians, where they might dry their stuff, fix their pieces, and rest themselves; and this being the last day of the week, they prepared there to keep the Sabbath."

4. "On Monday, they sounded the harbor, and found it fit for shipping, and marched also into the land, and found divers corn-fields, and little running brooks, a place, as they supposed, fit for situation; . . . so they returned to their ship again with this news to the rest of the people, which did much

* Clark's Island, in Plymouth Harbor, said to have been afterward so named from the mate of the Mayflower. Some authors give 101 as the number of the Mayflower's passengers.

comfort their hearts." Such is the record of that event which has made the twenty-second of December a memorable day in the calendar.*

5. No time was now lost. By the end of the week the Mayflower had brought her company to keep their Sabbath by their future home. Further examination confirmed the agreeable impressions which had been received. There was found a convenient harbor, "compassed with a goodly land." The country was well wooded. It had clay, sand, and shells, for bricks, mortar, and pottery, and stone for wells and chimneys. The sea and beach promised abundance of fish and fowl, and "four or five small running brooks" brought a supply of "very sweet, fresh water."

6. After prayer for further divine guidance, they fixed upon a spot for the erection of their dwellings, in the neighborhood. of a brook" and many delicate springs," and of a hill suitable. for a look-out and a defence. A storm interrupted their proceeding. When it was passed, "so many of them as could, went on shore, felled and carried timber, to provide themselves stuff for building." Then came Sunday, when "the people on shore heard a cry of some savages, as they thought, which caused an alarm and to stand on their guard, expecting an assault; but all was quiet."

7. They were still without the shelter of a roof. At the sharp winter solstice of New England, there was but

"A screen of leafless branches

Between them and the blast."

But it was the Lord's hallowed time, and the work of building must wait. Next followed the day (Christmas) solemnized, in the ancient fanes of the continent they had left, with the

By the old style of reckoning it was Dec. 11. When the practice of celebrating the anniversary at Plymouth began. in 1769, eleven days were erroneously added to the recorded date, to accommo. date it to the Gregorian style, which had been adopted in England in 1752. In 1620, however, the lerangement of the calendar only amounted to ten days, and consequently the landing described in the text occurred on the 21st of December. Mr. Palfrey remarks, in this connection, that an attempt has been made within a few years to substitute the true allowance of ten days; but the twenty-second day of December has taken a firm hold on the local thought and literature, which the twenty-first will scarcely displace."

most pompous ritual' of what they esteemed a vain will-worship. And the reader pauses to ponder and analyze the feeling of stern exultation with which its record was made: "Monday, the 25th day, we went on shore, some to fell timber, some to saw, some to rive, and some to carry; so no man rested all that day."

8. The first operations were the beginning of a platform for the ordnance and of a building, twenty feet square, for a storehouse and for common occupation. Nineteen plots for dwellings were laid out on the opposite sides of a way running along the north side of the brook. The number of plots corresponded to that of the families into which the company was now divided; the appropriation was made by lot; and the size of each plot was such as to allow half a rod in breadth and three rods in depth for each person included in the family. It was "agreed that every man should build his own house." "The frost and foul weather hindered them much." Time was lost in going to and from the vessel, to which, in the severe cold, they were obliged often to repair for lodging. They were delayed in unloading by want of boats; and stone, mortar, and thatch were slowly provided.

9. These were discouraging circumstances, but far worse troubles were to come. The labor of providing habitations had scarcely begun when sickness set in, the consequence of exposure and bad food. Within four months it carried off nearly half their number. Six died in December, eight in January, seventeen in February, and thirteen in March. At one time, during the winter, only six or seven had strength enough left to nurse the dying and bury the dead. Destitute of every provision which the weakness and the daintiness of the invalid require, the sick lay crowded in the unwholesome vessel, or in half-built cabins heaped round with snow-drifts.

10. The rude sailors refused them even a share of those coarse sea-stores which would have given a little variety to their diet, till disease spread among the crew, and the kind ministrations of those whom they had neglected and affronted brought them to a better temper. The dead were interred in

a bluff by the water-side, the marks of burial being carefully effaced, lest the natives should discover how the colony had been weakened. The imagination vainly tasks itself to comprehend the horrors of that fearful winter. The only mitigations were, that the cold was of less severity than is usual in the place, and that there was not an entire want of food and shelter.

11. Meantime, courage and fidelity never gave out. The men carried out the dead through the cold and snow, and then hastened back from the burial to wait on the sick; and as the sick began to recover, they took the places of those whose strength had been exhausted. There was no time and there was no inclination to despond. The lesson rehearsed at Leyden was not forgotten, "that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courages."

12. The dead had died in a good service, and the fit way for survivors to honor and lament them was to be true to one another, and to work together bravely for the cause to which dead and living had alike been consecrated. The devastation increased the necessity of preparations for defense; and it was at the time when the company was diminishing at the rate of one on every second day, that a military organization was formed, with Standish for the captain, and the humble fortification on the hill overlooking the dwellings was mounted with five guns. "Warm and fair weather" came at length, and "the birds sang in the woods most pleasantly." Never was spring more welcome than when it opened on this afflicted company.

13. As yet there had been no communication with the natives, though their fires had been observed at a distance, some tools had been lost by their thievery, and two of them had been seen on a neighboring hill, and been invited by signals to a conference. At length, on "a fine warm morning," an Indian came into the hamlet, and, passing along the row of huts, was intercepted before the common house, which he would have entered. In broken English he bade the strangers "Welcome," and said that his name was Samoset, and that he came from