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Crowded into one

their share of such hardships. vessel, badly provisioned, buffeted by rough weather, they had need to play the man at the very outset of their undertaking. One died during the passage, and one child was born. It was two months before they sighted land at Cape Cod, the most prominent and singular feature of the New England coast.

Their intention had been to settle near the Hudson River, and thither the vessel directed its course. But at this late season of the year the storms and shoals of the coast were not to be rashly encountered; they were all eager to get on land; so they resolved to bear up to the north and return to Cape Cod.

II.

A glance at the map will show how Massachusetts got its familiar name of "the Bay State." Almost all its rugged coast is bent into one great bay, the northern point of which is Cape Ann, originally christened by Captain Smith Cape Trabigzanda, after his Turkish patroness, while on the south Cape Cod stretches, in the shape of a sickle, nearly a hundred miles into the ocean, and curls its narrow point round a vast natural harbour where the largest navy in the world might ride safely. Into this harbour, on the 11th of November, 1620, crept the weather-beaten Mayflower, and the pilgrims fell on their knees and blessed the Lord, who had delivered them from all the perils and miseries of the ocean and brought them to the land where, as they trusted, they might at last dwell in peace and be free to serve Heaven as their conscience bade them.

Yet their worst troubles might have seemed only about to begin. Even in summer the aspect of that coast is little inviting to strangers; and the voyagers of the Mayflower found the severe winter of New England setting in, and saw their new home with its most cheerless looks. By the shore were bare heaps of drifting sand; beyond, sombre woods. No human habitation met their eyes. They could expect a welcome only from wild beasts, or from as wild savages, who, so far from entertaining them with the kindness shown to Paul by the barbarous people of Melita, might prove "readier to

Be

fill their sides full of arrows than otherwise." hind was the ocean, cutting them off from their friends and their country. Before them was this wilderness, full of untried dangers, in which the sailors were urging them to find a settlement without delay. These sole allies were already hinting at a desire to be rid of them; then the little band must shift for themselves as best they could, in the rigours of that season, and five hundred miles from the nearest dwellings of civilised men. Only the firm faith and high purpose of the Pilgrims could have given them courage to face such prospects. Well for them that theirs was no ordinary fortitude, which now, and throughout their coming trials, did not fail them and made theirs no ordinary history. We have seen what sort of tale must be told hitherto of almost all these pioneer settlements, a tale repeated most accurately by a writer of our own day, who is describing what took place within the time of men still living: "things went smoothly

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enough as long as the business of the colony was mainly confined to eating the provisions that had been brought in the ships; but as soon as the work became real, and the commons short, the whole community smouldered down into chronic mutiny." We are to see how the men bore themselves who came to the New World to seek first the kingdom of God and the true riches, and why the American Republic rightly dates its history from "that English settlement which," says Cotton Mather,

may, upon a thousand accounts, pretend unto more of true English than all the rest." He wrote when Old England and New England were still one.

Two of the chief persons of the company, Bradford and Winslow, kept a minute record of their proceedings from their arrival, and we may well follow every footstep with interest. Their first measure was to hold a meeting on board the Mayflower, and draw up an instrument, "solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one another,' constituting themselves a civil body politic, and promising obedience to whatever just and equal laws might be made for the general good. This constitution was signed by forty-one men, the rest being women and children; and Mr. John Carver was unanimously elected governor. Some such legal machinery seemed necessary, as there had been signs of unruliness and dissension only natural among the vexations of the long sea voyage. But it is to be noticed that the power of punishment had not to be exercised for four months, after which a certain John Billington was "convented before