i3|| jlfl 1 '1 1 |ll 1 '¦Ipi- 4k Historic Pilgrimages IN New England AMONG LANDMARKS OF PILGRIM AND PURITAN DATS AND OF THE PROVINCIAL AND REVOLUTIONARY PERIODS BY EDWIN M. BACON AUTHOR OF "bacon's DICTIONARY OF BOSTON," "WALKS AND RIDES IN THE COUNTRY ROUND ABOUT BOSTON," ETC., ETC. ^^©^ SILVER, BURDETT & COMPANY New York. BOSTON. Chicago. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. The Start CHAPTER II. Massachusetts Bay, Provincetown, Cape Cod .... 5 From Boston to Cape Cod tip. — Historic points along the waterway.— The Pilgrims in Boston Harbor before the Puritans came. — The expedi tion up from Plymouth led by Standish in 1621 : Winslow's minute nar rative. — The Norsemen's explorations of 1000-1004: legend of Thorvald's "Krossaness." — Early comers to Cape Cod. — The Mayflower in Prov- Incetown Harbor. — The Compact signed in its cabin. — First landing- place of the Pilgrims. — Quaint Provincetown and its weird sand-hills. — The path of the first Pilgrim exploration party. — By Cape Cod to Plymouth. — Pilgrim traces along shore. CHAPTER III. Plymouth . 28 First impressions of the oldest town in New England. — Forefathers' Rock and its story. — Clark's Island, first landing-place of the Pilgrims in Plymouth Harbor. — The voyage of the shallop which brought them here. — The subsequent coming of the Mayflower's passengers. — Cole's HUl and Leyden Street. — Sites ot the first houses. — The sad first win ter. — The sailing away of the Mayflower. — The town seven years after the landing : the procession to Sunday service. — Town Square. — Burial Hill and Its memorials. — Sites of the first fort and the watch-house. — Watson's Hill, where the first Indians appeared. — Town Brook. -CHAPTER IV. About Plymouth Town 52 Old Colony mansions. — Historic manuscripts and documents in the Registry of Deeds. — Pilgrim Hall and its relics. — The national monument. — Au Old Colony ride. — • Plymouth Woods. — Billington Sea. — Head ot Town Brook. — Rare treasures in Plymouth homes. — Percy sits iu Governor Bradford's chair. viii CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. Kingston. 68 Governor Bradford's farm. — Sites of homes of early settlers. — Elder Cush- man's Spring. — Kingston's heroes of the Revolution. — A Revolutionary Cinciiinatus. — Reminiscences of King Philip's War: Caleb Cook and the death ot Philip. — Kingston Landing.— The ancient Major John Bradford's house: former home of the "Bradford Manuscript." —The Governor Bradford house. CHAPTER VI. Duxbury and Marshfield .... 84 Homes of Myles Standish, Elder Brewster, John and Priscilla Alden. — Captain's Hill and the Standish monument. — " Eagle's Nest." — Graves of Standish and of other first settlers. — The legend ot the courtship of Myles Standish.— "Careswell " and the Winslows. — Peregrine White. — The Loyalists and the Marshfield affair ot 1775.— Daniel Webster's Marshfield farm. — The Webster tomb. CHAPTER VII. Cape Ann and the North Shore . . ... . . Ill To Gloucester by water. — Course of the incoming Puritan ships. — The " tyne and sweet harbour " where anchor was flrst cast. — The shore as it looked to Puritan eyes. — Winthrop's first landing-place. — The ancient " Stage Head." — First attempts at a settlement in 1624. — Roger Conant's plantation. — Steps to the founding ot the Bay Colony. — Removal ot the Old Planters to "Naumkeag." — The Old Shore Road. — Bass River Head settlement. CHAPTER VIII. Salem 125 Bounds of the earliest settlement. — Pictures ot the Puritan town. — Town- House Square. — Sites of Endicott's " faire house " and ot other homes ot first-comers. — The Puritan meeting-houses. — The Court House where the "witchcratt" trials were held. — Various " witchcr.aft " sites. — The jail and the way to Gallows Hill. — "Witchcratt" documents and relics. — Landmarks ot the Revolution. — Washington's reception in 1789. — The shop where Benjamin Thompson, afterward Count Bumtord, served ; his remarkable career. — The Old North Bridge and the affair of February, 1775. — Historic houses of various periods. — On Gallows Hill. CHAPTER IX. Salem, South Side 153 Old streets and sites. — The ancient " Burying-Point " and its historic graves. — Footprints ot Nathaniel Hawthorne. — The Custom House and Hawthorne's work-room. — The Old Crowninshield wwsion-house. — conj:ents. IX The stately region round about the Common. — Salem Athenaeum, the Essex Institute, and the Peabody Academy of Science. — The Willows and Salem Neck. — Winter Island and Its traditions. CHAPTER X. Peabody and Danvers 163 Along the way to " Salem Village " of " witchcraft " times. —Monument to Danvers men of the Revolution. — George Peabody's benefactions : story of his life. — The ancient Downing farm : boyhood home of George Down ing, for whom Downing Street in London was named. — House of John Procter of the "witchcraft" victims. — Over "Govemor's Plain." — Governor Endicott's "Orchard Farm." — The Collins mansion-house: Gage's headquarters iu 1774. — The old Nurse farm and its history: monument to Rebecca Nurse. — Birthplace of Judge Holten, patriot, statesman, jurist. — The old training-place of the yeoman soldiery. — Central point of the "witchcraft" outbreak. — Sites of the parsonage, Deacon IngersoU's house, and the meeting-house of 1692. — Scenes of the delusion recalled. — Danvers historic houses of later periods. — Oak Knoll and the poet Whittier. — Homesteads of the Putnams. — Birthplace of General Israel Putnam. — Old Danversport landmarks. CHAPTER XI. Marblehead 189 Site first proposed for the college which became Harvard. — The "Dun geons." — Site of the Darby Fort of 1629. ^- Eighteenth century landmarks. — Marblehead in the Revolutionary period and Its heroes. — In the war of 1812. — The fight between the Chesapeake and the Shannon off Marble head Neck. — The Constitution chased into the harbor. — The old-time fishers, their characteristics and their dialect. — The Mugford monu ment. — Old St. Michael's Church. — The Lee mansion-house. — Homes of the "sea-kings." — The old Custom House. — The historic Town House. — Birthplaces ot eminent men. — Elbridge Gerry. — Story of the "Gerrymander." — The Glovers, Jonathan and General John. — The Old North Church. — Ancient Fort Sewall. — Quaint by-ways. — The "Moll Pitcher house." — The island parsonage. — Site of the Fountain Inn. — Burying Hill. — The monument to lost fishers. — Peach's Point, place of the Puritan fishing-stages. — True story of " Old Flood Ireson." CHAPTER XII. Colonial Boston 213 First movements of Winthrop's company. — The Charlestown settlement. — Blaxton's invitation to Winthrop. — The beginning of Boston. — The peninsula as it appeared to the Puritans. — Bounds of the original settle ment. — Site of the governor's house. — The first meeting-house. — The X CONTENTS. Market Place. — The flrst Town House and its successors. — Sites of early homesteads. — Home ot Anna Hibbens, hanged for "witchcraft " on Bos ton Common. — Birthplace ot Franklin. — The first South meeting-house : scene of some remarkable happenings. — John Alden (2d) and the " witch cratt" delusion. —Home of Anne Hutchinson. — The "Antinomian Con troversy." — Sir Harry Vane. —The flrst schoolhouse. — The first King's Chapel. — Sir Edmund Andros : the Revolution of 1689. — The ancient burying-grounds. — Blaxton's cottage and garden. — The Bellingham mansion-house. — The John Cotton e'state. — John Endicott's house. — Persecution ot the Quakers. — The " King's Missive."— Old Dock Square. — The Brasier Inn. CHAPTER XIII. Provincial Boston . 248 The germ of Independence. — Faneuil Hall and its memories. — A bunch ot old landmarks. — The "Green Dragon Tavern,'' headquarters of the Revolution. — North End historic sites. — Home ot Paul Revere. — The "Red Lyon Inn" and Quaker Upsall. — The Old North Church.- The Frankland house. — Hutchinson's house, sacked by the Stamp Act mob. — " Salutation Inn.'' — Home ot Sir William Phips, the first royal gov ernor: his romantic career. — Christ Church. — Revere's signal lanterns on the " Old North." — The real Major Pitcairn. — Copp's Hill Burying- ground : ancient tombs : marks of British bullets. — The affair of Han cock's sloop Liberty. CHAPTER XIV. The Pre-Revolutionary Period 281 The Old State House and its associations. — The Council Chamber: head quarters of the royal governors. — Steps to the Revolution, 1761-1775. — The Writs ot Assistance ; the Stamp Act ; the Revenue Acts ; the Boston Massacre; the Boston Tea-Party; the Boston Port Bill. — The "Sanc- -tuary ot Freedom" and the great town-meetings. — The Province House. — Home ot Samuel Adams. — The Hancock mansion-house. — The "Bul finch Front." — King's Chapel. CHAPTER XV. Lexington 332 Events preceding the " battle-day " of 1773. — Organization of the minute- men. — The Alarm. — The rides ot Paul Revere and William Dawes. — Samuel Adams and Hancock at the parsonage. — Assembling of Captain Parker's company. — Lexington Green. — Revere, Dawes, and Prescott on the Concord road. — Capture ol Revere and his final release. — The British march out from Boston. — Story of the "battle.'' — Monuments and landmarks. — The ancient Hancock-Clarke house. — Buckman's Tavern. — Memorial Hall. CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER XVI Concord 360 The American posts before the Fight. — Along the road to the battlefield. —The Old Manse. — At the Old North Bridge. — " The shot heard round the world." — The "plundering party" at the Barrett Farm. — Some historic houses. — Landmarks in the village centre. — Wright's Tavern. — Meeting-place ot the Provincial Congress. — Patriots' graves in the old burying-ground on the hill. — Graves of Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, the Alcotts, in Sleepy Hollow. CHAPTER XVII. The British Retreat 379 Prom Concord to Charlestown. — Historic points along the roads. — The "mile-long" Ridge. — Literary landmarks: homes of Emerson, Haw thorne, the Alcotts. — Merriam's CoiTier. — The " Bluff " on the Lexing ton road. — Lord Percy's detachment at Lexington. — Round about " Munroe 's Tavern." — Story of Lord Percy's outward march. — Adven tures ot some Boston schoolboys. — Capture ot Percy's baggage-train by the "old men of Menotomy." — The rout from "Menotomy " to Charles town Common. — First American council of war. CHAPTER XVIII. Bunker Hill 400 Formation of the "Great American Army." — The night march ot Colonel Prescott's detachment from Cambridge to Charlestown. — The council on the hill-top. — Choice of Breed's Hill, nearest Boston, for the fortifica tions. — The grounds as preserved to-day. — The towering obelisk. — The Prescott statue and its historic site. — Lines ot the redoubt. — The breast works of the rail-fence. — Landing-place of the British. — Story ot the battle. — The burning ot the town. — Death ot Warren. — His monument and statue. — Some Puritan landmarks. — The John Harvard monument. CHAPTER XIX. Cambridge 428 The American lines during the siege of Boston. — "Ploughed Hill," "Ten Hills," Winter-hill Fort, the Citadel, French's Redoubt, the right wing. — Hoisting the first flags. — Quarters ot Burgoyne's captured army. — General Lee's headquarters. — The Old Powder-House. — Cambridge Com mon. — The Washington Elm. — Washington iu Camp. — A little tour about the University City. — Puritan landmarks. — The Colleges. — " Tory Row." — Historic houses. — Tracings of the Norsemen. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Concord Bridge . . . Frontispiece Map of Boston Harbor 6 Captain John Smith 7 Looking up Boston Harbor from the Middle Brewster 8 Myles Standish's Sword 12 Norse Vessels 15 Mmot's Light 17 The Mayflower 21 Sand Hills of Provincetown ... 23 A Bit of Old Plymouth 29 Canopy Over Plymouth Rock 31 Clark's Island 34 Burial Hill, Plymouth . . . . 38 The Pilgrim Exilefe 4X Stockade 43 The Old 'Wmslow Mansjon-House . 53 Indian Bow and Arrows, etc. ... 56 Indian War Club 57 Indian Shell Axe 57 Elder Brewster's Chair ) Peregrine White's Cradle J ' * * Governor Carver's Chair \ Foot-wheel in Governor Brad- > 59 ford's Eamlly 1 National Monument . . . .65 Billington Sea Outlet . . .66 King Philip 74 Major John Bradford House ... 77 Captain Myles Standish . ... 88 Myles Standish's Grave ... .93 John Alden and Priscilla . . 96 Laying an Atlantic Cable . . 98 Webster's Study 103 Daniel Webster • 106 Pond on the Webster Estate . 107 Manoliester-by-the-Sea 113 Stage Head, Gloucester 117 Fish-Curing 122 First Meeting-House in Salem . . 127 PAGE " What a sad thing it is to see eight firebrands of hell hanging there ! " 131 Pillory and Stocks 135 Count Rumford 142 Parson Barnard, the Elder ... 145 Bertram Elm, Salem 149 Gallows Hill 151 Birthplace of Nathaniel Hawthorne 154 Hawthorne at Thirty-six .... 156 Salem Custom House 157 Marquis de Lafayette 159 The Old Governor Bradstreet House 160 Queen Victoria's Gift to George Peabody 166 George Peabody 168 Collins House (Headquarters of General Gage in 1774) . . . 173 Old Nurse House 176 John Greenleaf Whittier . . . 182 Oak Knoll, Whittier's Home . . 183 General Israel Putnam's Birth place 185 General Israel Putnam .... 187 Old Town Hall, Marblehead ... 192 Constitution (" Old Ironsides ") . 194 Tbe " I'latiron " 196 St. Michael's Church 198 General John Glover House . . 201 Birthplace of Elbridge Gerry . 202 The " Gerrymander" . . . 204 Burying-Hill, Marblehead .... 207 Governor John Winthrop . . . 216 First Town House, Boston .... 221 Birthplace of Benjamin Franklin . 226 Old South Meeting-House . . 227 Interior of Old South ... 228 Statue of Sir Harry Vane ... 232 Statue of Blaxton 240 Pine-tree Shilling 242 Statue of Governor Winthrop . . 244 XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, PAGE Statue of Samuel Adams .... 246 Faneuil Hall (" Cradle of Liberty ") 249 Boston Stone 252 Green Dragon Tavern ... . 255 Christ Church 266 Paul Revere 268 Tomb of the Mathers 277 Old State House 282 Royal Arms *. 283 Liberty Tree 286 Landing of British Troops, 1768 ; by Paul Revere 290 Crispus Attucks Monument . . . 296 Samuel Adams 300 John Hancock 318 Old Province House 324 Old Hancock Mansion 326 Boston State House, with Annex . 327 Boston Common, 1809 329 King's Chapel 330 Battle of Lexington 349 Governor Eustis's Monument . _ . 353 Hancock-Clarke House 354 Old Buckman Tavern 357 The Old Manse 362 The Minute-Man 367 Hawthorne's Grave 376 PAGE Emerson's Grave 377 Emerson's Home 380 The Wayside, Hawthorne's Home . 381 Merriam's Corner ...... 383 Munroe Tavern 388 Map of Boston and Vicinity . . . 404 Statue of William Prescott . 406 General Joseph Warren . . .411 British Ensign 413 Revolutionary Musket , . 414 Battleof Bunker Hill . . . . 416 Bunker Hill Monument .... 424 Harvard Monument 427 General Nathanael Greene . . . 431 Old Powder-House, SomerviUe . . 433 The "Washington Elm," Cam bridge 435 General Washington 436 Harvard College Campus . . . 439 Longfellow's Home 442 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . . 443 Elmwood, Lowell's Home .... 445 Statue of Leif Erikson 446 Boston Public Library : Front Fa- fade 448 Boston PubUc Library : Colonnade of Court 449 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES, THE START. AST summer at Bar Harbor I chanced to meet my old friend Denison, who after graduation from college had ., gone West, and had made both a reputation and a fortune. Denison had with him his son Percy, a high-school lad, looking for ward to a college course. He was an athletic young fellow, manly in per son and bearing, ardent, spirited, ob serving, — a genuine American boy of the best type. Drawn to him by his manner and talk, I found that among his studies at school he liked mei-ican history best, and that he had an specially keen interest in landmarks of the nil ati ve periods of his country. So our sultory talk fell upon such topics, till one ght, as we sat on the hotel piazza, Percy folded to me a plan which he had long ished. This plan was to visit the home of his ancestors in Massachusetts, and to spend a vacation in pilgrimages to historic spots in 1 2 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. New England identified with the small beginnings of the nation. Would I not help him, he urged, systematically to carry out such a plan ? Born and reared in the West, the East, with its wealth of historical associations, evidently had a fascination for him ; and, American to his finger-tips, he had a strong desire for a personal knowledge of the places where the steps which had led from Colonies to Provinces, and from Provinces to Republic, had been taken. He had discovered through the slight excursions into ancient records which he had made for his elder sister, who was a member of the Daughters of the Revolution, that he not only had ancestors, but that they were settled here in the " good old Colony days," before separation from the mother country was dreamed of. This discovery had stimulated his interest in historic New England. But with all his casual reading and study, he had found that his acquaintance with many of the most important landmarks of American history was yet but superficial. The fact had only recently been brought home to him, with a mortifying shock, by a critic's marginal notes upon an attempt which he had made at a prize essay : exposing his confusion of seventeenth century with eighteenth century monu ments, of Colonial with Provincial affairs, and his mixing of landmarks of the pre-Revolution controversies. He had indeed derived some consolation from finding himself able to enlighten the congressman for his district, and the Fourth of July orator of his city, who had confounded Pilgrim with Puritan, and almost hopelessly tangled the causes of the Revolution ; and he had also found balm for his wounded pride in the disclosures by some of the Revolutionary sons and daughters that they were hardly more accurately informed. Still, as he had said, he was obliged to confess that he was not sufficiently grounded in foundation- facts clearly to tell the story of his country and its historic sites and places, as every true American should be able to do. All this Percy confided to me with engaging frankness ; and the outcome of our talk was an agreement to meet in Boston, TBE START. 3 the mecca of American historic pilgrimages, some time in the following spring, and lay out a programme. So one fair day in May, such as occasionally bursts upon New England in that uncertain month, I received at Boston a despatch from Percy announcing his coming, and reminding me of my last summer's promise. I found him, upon his arrival, comfortably quartered in a down-town hotel, poring over an outspread map of New England, the chairs of his room up- heaped with guide-books of all sorts and conditions, and a per plexed look upon his handsome face. " Upon my word," he exclaimed after our mutual greetings, "it is all so interesting I can't make up my mind where to begin ! Shall I start with the Pilgrims at Plymouth or with the Puritans at Salem ? Or shall I begin with Revolutionary landmarks, in which interest is the keenest with us Westerners when we find ourselves in these parts, covering those of earlier days in later pilgrimages ? Shall I take historic pilgrimages alone, or combine literary pilgrimages with them, and so em brace landmarks of American literature with those of American history ? " I suggested that he should make Boston his starting-post, and arrange an itinerary, each pilgrimage to occupy one or two days. "Suppose," I said, "you lay out a programme including a dozen trips, covering in all, say, a fortnight. Your first pil grimage might well be made into the Old Colony, beginning at Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod, and thence tracing the footprints of the Pilgrims through Plymouth, Kingston, Dux bury, and Marshfield. Then you might strike for Cape Ann, and follow the Puritans back through Salem and its neighbor hood to Charlestown and Boston. At the same time you will cover landmarks of .the Provincial and Revolutionary periods, and various other historic sites, recalling the stories of great men as well as of great events in our history. You might treat the Revolutionary period, so far as practicable, chronologically. Beginning here in Boston with monuments marking the preced- HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. ing controversies, you can trace the several outbreaks from the earliest to the Lexington affair, the Concord Fight, the British rout, the conflict at Breed's Hill, the Siege of Boston, the Evacuation. " In these and other pilgrimages into localities within easy reach of your central point will be included a variety of most interesting features, — literary as well as historic landmarks, ancient mansion houses, rich monuments of Colonial and Pro vincial days, and much picturesque country and coast. As an admirable finish of the series, you might take Cambridge, giving part of a day to a leisurely tour of our oldest university town, — the place also, as you know, first selected by the Winthrop party for the chief town of the Colony before Boston was deter mined upon." These suggestions Percy adopted with promptness. He proposed that we should proceed at once to outline fourteen pilgrimages, and together start upon them, weather permitting, without delay, I to act as " guide, philosopher, and friend," it pleased him to say. To the latter proposition I at first de murred ; but he pressed it with such urgency and winsome in sistence that I at length agreed, consenting to act the friendly guide, but declining the -role of philosopher. Our itinerary finally planned, we speedily completed our simple preparations. For equipment we provided ourselves with light haversacks in which to carry lunches and other es sentials, several pocket maps, railway time-tables, and a good field-glass ; while Percy had brought with him his kodak and his sketch-book. II. MASSACHUSETTS BAY, PROVINCETOWN, CAPE COD. From Boston to Cape Cod tip. — Historic points along the waterway. —The Pilgrims in Boston Harbor before the Puritans came. — The expedition up from Plymouth led by Standish in 1G21: Winslow's minute narra^ tive.— The Norsemen's explorations of 1000-1004: legend ot Thorvald's "Krossaness." — Early comers to Cape Cod. — The Mayflower in Prov incetown Harbor. — The Compact signed in its cabin. — First landing- place of the Pilgrims. — Quaint Provincetown and its weird sand-hills. — The path of the first Pilgrim exploration party. — By Cape Cod to Plymouth. — Pilgrim traces along shore. It was our good fortune to make our first pilgrimage with the opening of June. Boarding the Provincetown steamer early in the forenoon of a dazzlingly bright Monday, with a clear sky and a sparkling sea, we found seats on the forward deck, and settled down for a full enjoyment of the four or five hours' sail over Massachusetts Bay to the end of Cape Cod. As we steamed placidly down from the spreading city, past the harbor islands, toward Point Allerton and the broad waters of the bay beyond, Percy tried in imagination to picture the scene which these shores, islands, and waters in their natural state — a silent wilderness, without buildings, houses, or ship ping — presented to the Puritan first-comers. " I have read," he observed, " that one of the early voyagejrs called this a paradise; but the Puritans, who came to stay, must have been most strongly impressed with its awful loneliness." " True," I answered, " loneliness was, doubtless, an element in the scene. But it was by no means the dominant one ; and I question if it made much, if any, impression upon the pioneers. None of the chroniclers among the first-comers, either as ex plorers, traders, or colonists, makes inention of it. What most 6 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. impressed them, evidently, was the attractiveness of the region ; and in the contemplation of this feature that of loneliness had slight influence. It was Captain John Smith, he of Pocahontas fame, one of the earliest to give a detailed account of this neighborhood, who described it as the 'paradise of all these parts ' ; and he was so enchanted with what he saw that he declared, 'Of all the four parts of the world that I have yet seen not inhabit ed, could I but have the means to transport a colony, I would rather live here than anywhere.' He sailed about these waters as early as 1614, a dozen years be fore any white settler was here, skirting the coast most closely be- tw.een Cape Ann and Cohasset, and made note of 'many lies all planted with corne, groves, mulberries, salvage [savage] gardens, and good harbors.' 'And as you passe,' he further remarked, 'the sea coast shews you all along large corne fields and great troupes of well proportioned people.' " This was a somewhat fanciful picture, no doubt ; for the gallant Smith was an optimistic explorer, and had the sailor's fondness for picturesque narration of adventure, with a free ^>^ (T ( \ M.rb«;^^ /Spot fcnti. Saugus >t! Lynn 7 (^ r^ [ Medford f w Uha« /''J'^^} , .. •?*=4^elsca,plO i MASSACHUSETTS a m b ri dgeVjj^r'^^ Winthpop A-^p \ B /I y jivn ^5L^h^~^ J jQuinc^ ^^•^^ b Hingham 1| ''Weym'buth BOSTON HARBOR MAP. MASSACHUSETTS BAY. mingling of fact and romance. He was, moreover, concerned in an enterprise the main object of which was commercial, with colonization projects in view, so that he saw with a flattering eye. But those who came after him largely confirmed his view. Seven years later, in 1621, within the first year of the Plymouth Colony, Myles Standish came up from Plymouth in a shallop, or large sail-boat, with ten companions and three Indian guides, on a voyage of exploration and trade. Landing, they ' marched in arms up the country,' and also found it fair ; for they took back to Plymouth ' a good report of the place, wishing we had been seated there.' " When the Puritans came, in 1630, what there was of lone liness in the scene was fading away. Here and there was some slight show of settlement. At the upper end of the harbor was a little plantation at Winnisimmet, now the city of Chelsea, and the 'palisadoed' house of Samuel Maverick, a young 'gentle man of good estate ¦¦ and education. At Mishawum (Charlestown) was the hum bler, palisaded, and thatched dwelling of Thomas Wal ford, blacksmith, with his wife and children. At Shaw mut, which became Boston, on the slope of its loftiest hill, was the cottage, the rose-garden, and orchard of William Blaxton [Black stone], the 'solitary book ish recluse.' In the harbor was a trading and fishing station. Along shore were the straggling settlements at ' Merry Mount,' Mount WoUaston, now in Quincy, and at Weymouth. Coming in June, the Puritans found the country CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. 8 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. at its best. In full blossom and leaf. These now bare islands by which we are sailing were then mostly well wooded. From the shores of the mainland noble forests stretched back to the hills beyond ; and the three picturesque mounts of ' Shaw mut,' which the Bostonians years since reduced and levelled, rose conspicuously in the landscape. Contrasted with what they had left behind in old England, it was a scene of solitude ; but compared with that which ten years before first met the gaze LOOKING UP BOSTON HARBOR FROM THE MIDDLE BREWSTER. of the Pilgrims over the bleak headlands of Cape Cod, it must have been a spectacle almost animating. " No, I should say that the first impressions of the Puritans were, on the whole, altogether pleasing. They found the coun try beautiful, and the ' Old Planters,' as the settlers already fixed here were called, disposed to be neighborly. These ' Old Planters ' were the remnant of the colonies which Ferdinando Gorges and his son Robert attempted to establish in Massa- MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 9 chusetts Bay some years before, with discouraging results. They were regular Church of England men, but none the less on this account inclined to friendliness toward the incoming Puritan non-conformists. Maverick gave Winthrop a good dinner upon his arrival, and later Blaxton cordially invited the newcomers to settle on his peninsula." In my preparation for these pilgrimages, in order to render myself as helpful as possible to my young friend, I had made some memoranda from various historical papers, records, and authorities, and had also taken copies of a few interesting docu ments. Among the latter was the story of the Myles Standish expedition of 1621, written by one of the company, Edward Winslow, and especially interesting as the first authentic ac count which we have of a landing by Europeans, and an in shore exploration on this part of the coast. Captain Smith tells us that he passed " close aboard the shore," and mapped out the bay (by which term was then meant only Boston harbor), but he did not venture to land here ; and it is the opinion of the best authorities that he did not come beyond the opening of the harbor, although it has been said that he sailed to its head. Other of the Plymouth men's predecessors, visitors or traders, did little more than make observations in passing, unless we accept the traditions of the Northmen respecting an attempt by them at a settlement made at the dawn of the eleventh century. Winslow's quaint account was serviceable to us in fixing the first notable Pilgrim landmarks on the waterway down from Boston, as well as in filling out the picture of this neighborhood before the Puritan advent. So I produced it while we were discussing Puritan first impressions, and before we had passed beyond the historic harbor islands, Percy following on his map, as I read with explanatory note and comment. " It seemed good to the company in general," — meaning the Plymouth Colony, — the account begins, " that though the Massachusetts [the Indian tribe occupying this region] had 10 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. often threatened us (so we were informed), yet we should go among them, partly to see the country and partly to make peace with them, and partly to procure their truck. For these ends the Governor chose ten men, and Tisquantum and two other savages, to bring us to speech with the people and interpret for us." " Tisquantum, o'r Squanto," I explained, " was one of a band of upward of twenty Indians, whom Hunt, here with Captain Smith in 1614, enticed to his ship just before her departure, under pretence of trading, and carried off to Europe. A number were sold into slavery in Spain, while Squanto was taken, or found his way, to England. He got a smattering of English there ; and being brought back to his home in 1619, by Captain Thomas Dermer, a later companion of Captain Smith, he became the ally of the Pilgrims when they came. Of the kidnapping of these Indians Smith was guiltless ; for it was done after his departure. Hunt being left in charge of one of his vessels, which was to be taken to Malaga with a catch of fish." The narrative continues : " On the 13th of September, 1621, being Tuesday, we set out about midnight, the tide then serv ing for us ; we, supposing it to be nearer than it is, thought to be there the next morning betime, but it proved to be well-nigh twenty leagues from New Plymouth. We came into the bottom of the bay [the opening of this harbor], but being late, anchored and lay in the shallop, not having seen any of the people." The place where they anchored was off Thomson's (now Thompson's) Island, the "fruitful isle," as it was afterward termed, lying well in toward the Quincy shore, near Castle Island, where now is Fort Independence. Here they passed the night; but during the evening Standish and others explored the island, and one William Trevore, a sailor of the party, took pos session of it in the name of David Thomson, gentleman, then in London, from which act, probably, they named it -Isle of Trevore. The next morning they "put in for the shore," and then made their landing, the spot being at the foot of the rocky cliff of the MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 11 headland in the marshes which we see back of the island, from that time known as Squantum Head, so named from the friendly Indian guide. At or near the same spot, nine years later, the passengers of the Mary and John, the first of Winthrop's fleet to arrive, landed, — coming over iu small boats from Nantasket, where the captain of their ship had left them, — and began the settlement of Dorchester. So this point is doubly historic. The narrative goes on to relate their adventures with mi nute detail. After making a breakfast of some lobsters, which they found here, and " made ready " under the cliff, the party, with the exception of two left to guard the shallop, set out with Squanto to seek the inhabitants. Soon they met an Indian woman coming for the lobsters which they had appropriated ; and having " contented her," that is, given her something for them, they learned from her where the savages were. Leaving Squanto with the woman to guide them along shore, they re turned, and re-entering their shallop, sailed farther inland, toward one of the near-by hills — ¦ perhaps Savin Hill, on the Dorchester shore, or Dorchester Heights of Revolutionary fame, in South Boston, now almost entirely gone. Here they found the sachem, " or governor of this place," Abbatinewat by name, and his followers, who gave them a friendly reception. The sachem told them that he "durst not remain in any settled place for fear of the Tarentines," — a warlike tribe dwelling on the distant Penobscot, in Maine, who were accustomed to sweep up to this region in their fleets of war-canoes at about harvest-time, and despoil its inhabitants. The Englishmen agreeing to be his "safeguard" from his enemies if he would declare himself to be a "King James's man," as divers other sachems down Plymouth way had done, he promptly made declaration, and then volunteered to pilot the party to the Squaw-Sachem. This Squaw-Sachem was the widow of Nane pashemet, the chief Indian ruler of the region, and was living in the country up the- Mystic River. So they again embarked, the Indians presumably taking a canoe, and crossed the bay in 12 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. the direction of Charlestown, to the mouth of the Mystic, ob serving as they sailed the many pleasant harbor islands. It was dusk when they reached the river ; and accordingly they anchored, and spent that second night aboard the shallop. The next morning they went ashore, and then it was that they "marched in arms up the country." It must have been an awesome spectacle that these strange men presented to their newly made savage friends, each in corselet, with matchlock and long sword, as they fell in line behind their stout little leader, the oue soldier of the Plymouth Colony. Perhaps the captain himself bore his famous weapon of which Longfellow has sung, measuring, we are told, almost an English ell from hilt to point, and which is still preserved at Plymouth. They marched a long while along the wooded MYLES STANDISH'S SWORD shore, brilliant with rich autumnal tints, before meeting any one ; for the " troops of well proportioned people " whom Cap tain John Smith had remarked in this region had largely been reduced and scattered by pestilence and war. After a tramp of about three miles, they came to a deserted Indian farm, " where corn had been newly gathered and a house pulled down." "Not far from hence " they reached a stockaded fort which had been built by Nanepashemet, and inside it "the frame of a house wherein, being dead," the king ¦' lay buried." A mile farther on they came to another fort, " seated on the top of an hill." Here, they were told, Nanepashemet had been killed by the Tarentines, " none dwelling in it since the time of his death." This sightly place was Rock Hill in Medford. The party now halted, and sent two savages " to look up the inhabitants, and to inform them of our ends in coming, tliat tliey might not MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 13 be fearful of us." The messengers first found a lot of Indian women, together with their corn in heaps, within a mile of the halting-place, whither it was supposed they had fled, having got word of the approach of the invaders. They were induced to come back and meet the party. Though at first showing much fear, they soon " took heart," " seeing our gentle carriage toward them," and entertained the visitors with a banquet of boiled cod, " and such other things as they had." Then, with much sending for, came one of their men, " shaking and trem bling with fear; but when he saw that we intended them no hurt, but came to truck, he press'd us with his skins also." Of him they inquired for the queen; but she was "far from thence," and could not be seen. While they were parleying, Squanto would have them rifie the women of their belongings, " ' for,' said he, ' they are bad people, and have oft threatened you; but our answer was, 'were they never so bad we would not wrong them, or give them any just occasion against us.' " Still the spokesman, probably the valiant captain, took care to add that " if they once attempted anything against us, then we should deal far worse than he desired." Having spent the day, they returned to the shallop, almost all the women accompany ing them to the shore, pressing their furs, and even the beaver skins from their backs, upon the visitors, so fully had the spirit of trade at length possessed them. Promising to come again, the explorers set out on the re turn voyage at evening, with a fair wind and a light moon ; " and through the goodness of God came safely home before noon of the day following, with a considerable quantity of beaver," and the good report of the place which we have re marked. Besides sailing the Mystic River, they observed the " fair entrance " of the Charles River, which Captain Smith had named but not seen. Although they " had no time to dis cover it," some historians give them, rather than Smith, the credit of its actual discovery. After this memorable first expedition, frequent trips up 14 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. from Plymouth were made, and some time before the coming of the Puritans these waters were quite familiar to Plymouth Colony folk. They established a fishing and trading station here as early as 1623. They were probably on Governor's Island, where now Fort Winthrop stands, within the next year, when it received its first name of Conant's Island, from Roger Conant, afterward governor at Cape Ann. They gave the name to Point Allerton, the bold headland of Hull, at our right as we pass out to the bay, in honor of their early agent, Isaac Allerton, who was with Standish in the exploration of 1621. They named the rocky islands opposite, on one of which Boston Light stands out picturesquely, calling them the Brew- sters, for the family of Allerton's second wife, a daughter of Elder Brewster of the Plymouth Colony. Thompson was on his island by 1624, having come up from Piscataqua, now Ports mouth, N.H., where he had begun a plantation for Gorges the year before. Though not of the Pilgrims, he was friendly with them. He died in 1628 ; and when the Puritans came, his prosperous widow was living here with her infant son and a retinue of servants. Point Allerton had an added attraction for Percy when I remarked that according to some archeeologists it was the " Krossaness " of the Northmen, discovered and so named six hundred years and more before the coming of the Pilgrims, by Viking Thorvald, and the place of Thorvald's death and burial. This opinion, I told him, rests on the romantic Icelandic sagas, which have been the subject of much interesting speculation by historical students. Thorvald was son of Erik the Red, and brother of Leif, supposed to have been the first to reach this coast, and to have discovered Cape Cod. Erik the Red was a Danish chieftain, who in the year 985 sailed for Iceland, and there founded a colony of warriors. Thence several of these warriors made frequent expeditions in tlieir picturesque galleys to the southward along the wild coast, seeking " some new Drontheim Fiord on which to found a Norway of the West." MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 15 Leif Erikson came some time in the year 1000 ; and it was the theory of the late Professor Eben N. Horsford, who devoted much time and care to Norse investigations, that he sailed up the bay, crossed Boston Harbor, and penetrated the Charles River to Cambridge and Watertown, where he attempted the founding of Vineland. So strong was Professor Horsford in this belief, that he caused stone tablets to be placed at various points, and the " Norumbega Tower " to be built in Weston on Charles River side. Thorvald came twice, first about two years later than Leif. Upon his second voyage, in 1004, he was driven ashore, when NORSE VESSELS., the keel of his ship was broken, on Cape Cod, which he named " Kjalarness." After making repairs, the sagas tell of his sail ing " round the eastern shores of the land and into the mouths of the friths which lay nearest thereto, and to a point of land which stretched out and was covered all over with wood." " Here," he exclaimed, " it is beautiful ; and here I should like to fix my abode ! " So he and his followers landed. They en countered nine of the aborigines, " eight of whom they killed, but the ninth escaped in his canoe." Later a large number came in canoes, and a fierce battle ensued. Thorvald was mortally wounded, and he advised his men to hasten their preparations for departure. "But me," he said, "you must 16 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. take to that promontory where I thought to have made my abode. I was a prophet ; for now I shall dwell there forever. There you shall bury me; and plant there two crosses, one at my head and one at my feet, and call the place Krossaness [the promontory of the crosses] for all time coming." His directions were followed ; and soon after his men re-embarked, and turned their faces homeward. Although some archaeologists confidently identify Point Allerton as this place, others are quite as sure that it was the Gurnet, the outer point of Plymouth, and others are not pre pared to decide that it was either. While we were thus discoursing, our steamer had made its way into the open by Minot's Light, the lonely tower rising from the sea, marking the outermost ledge of dangerous rock at the entrance of the harbor, or Boston Bay, whose great white light is visible for nearly fifteen nautical miles. Percy was told that this rugged stone structure has held its ground through storm and calm since 1859, when it was erected in place of an iron pile-house, swept away in a furious April gale eight years before, with the keeper and his two assistants. The monotony of the daily life of its occupants is broken by occasional visitors, who come in small boats to be lifted to it in a chair operated by the machinery which is employed to hoist provisions. The sail now became a little sea-voyage, with a dim, fading coast-line on the one side, and the ocean on the other. There being no more near historic points to view, we took the op portunity to try the ship's dinner, which Percy pronounced "relishy." On deck again we were in good season to enjoy the ap proach to port. As the white cliffs of the hook enclosing Provincetown harbor loomed into view, I reminded Percy of its especial interest as the spot on which the. first known English dis coverer of Massachusetts set foot, as well as the place of the MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 17 MINOT'S LIGHT, 18 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. landing of the first colonists who became permanently planted here. " Yes," he replied ; " I know. That first English discoverer was Bartholomew Gosnold. He came here long before the Pilgrims ; and it was he who gave the place the name of Cape Cod, because, as I have read, of the quantities of cod his men caught here. And they attempted to make a settlement here, didn't they ? " " That was on the other side of the Cape, in Buzzard's Bay. They first spent a day on shore here, observing the country, and meeting an Indian or two, — one of them ' a young man of proper stature and of pleasing countenance,' — who were not ill-disposed toward them. Then they sailed round the headland, doubling the Cape ; passed Martha's Vineyard ; discovered the little island of No Man's Land ; rounded Gay Head on Martha's Vineyard, which they named Dover Cliffs ; and landed on the island of Cuttyhunk, at the entrance of Buzzard's Bay, naming the former Elizabeth Island, from the English queen, and the latter Gosnold's Hope. ' Here,' says Bancroft, ' they beheld the rank vegetation of a virgin soil ; noble forests ; wild fruits and flowers bursting from the" earth ; the eglantine, the thorn, and the honeysuckle ; the wild pea, the tansy, and young sassa fras ; strawberries, raspberrries, grape-vines — all in profusion. Within a pond upon the island lies a rocky islet. On this the adventurers built their storehouse and their fort, and the foun dations of a colony were laid.' The band remained on the island for about a month. Then becoming dissatisfied, and fearing the Indians, they loaded their vessel with sassafras root, at that time ' esteemed in pharmacy as a sovereign panacea,' and set sail for the return voyage to England. " But," I recalled, " Cape Cod was known to Europeans some time before Gosnold's coming. Besides those traditions of the Northmen, vague references to it are found in various accounts of early voyagers. Thoreau, in his Cape Cod sketches, says that it was probably visited by Europeans long before the seven- PROVINCETOWN. 19 teenth century ; and it may be that Sebastian Cabot, the first to discover the continent of North America, himself beheld it. The date of Gosnold's landing was 1602. The next year Martin Pring, sent out by wealthy Bristol merchants, was here looking for sassafras ; and thereafter ' they came thick and fast, until long after sassafras had lost its reputation.' In 1605 and 1606 Champlain was here, the first year with De Monts, and made the first map of the country, extending from Labrador to Cape Cod, when it was known as 'New France.' Then came Captain John Smith, making his map, and first calling the country New Eng land. He gave to this harbor the name of Milford Haven, and Prince Charles changed the name of Cape Cod to Cape James. Subsequently other names, French, Dutch, and English, were given the Cape, but that of Cape Cod alone held ; and it is likely to be, as Cotton Mather said, a name which ' it will never lose till shoals of codfish be seen swimming on its highest hills.' " We were now rounding the headland of the " hook " into Cape Cod Bay. We passed Race Point, with its lighthouse, showing at night a fixed white light, varied by a white flash every minute and a half ; next Wood End, whose tower shows a light flashing red every fifteen seconds ; next Long Point, from which beams a great fixed white light, — all names familiar to mariners the world over, while the latter is historic as the prob able first Pilgrim landing-place. And then our steamboat turned into the magnificent harbor. Before us to the left lay the queer little town, spreading along the curving beach mainly in one street, in front, stretches of rickety old wharves reaching far into the bay, and behind, the weird sand-hills rising in the form of a crescent. At the head of the harbor we passed close to the place where the Mayflower came to anchor at the end of her anxious voyage, " after many difficulties in boisterous storms," and where she rode during the month of her stay in this haven while the chief men were searching " for an habitation." Here in her little cabin on that sombre November day of 1620, before a foot 20 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. touched the shore, the famous compact for " a civil body poli tick " — "perhaps," says John Quincy Adams, "the only in stance in human history of that positive, original social compact which speculative philosophers have imagined as the only legit imate source of government " — was drawn up, and signed by all the males of the company who were of age, forty-one in number. The women and children of the company numbered fifty-nine. Here was born Peregrine White (so named because of the peregrinations of his parents), the first white child that came into being in New England. With such associations this body of water has peculiar interest for every American. As one of the truest of Americans has said, he " should reverently lift his hat in its honor.'' The Mayflower dropped anchor " three-quarters of an Eng lish mile," we are told, off Long Point shore. The first landing there was made by a few of the men, who at once set about re fitting the shallop, which they had brought with them for use in discovering the coast. A number of the women also went ashore to wash ; and so on Monday, Nov. 13, old style, was in- stitu.ted the New England washing-day. Then the entire com pany landed to refresh themselves, wading a " ship's bow," on account of the shallow shore, which the long-boat could not reach. We sailed farther on toward the town, and up to the long wharf, where we were met by quite a delegation of the town folk ; for the incoming of the Boston steamer and the mails by the railroad are the great events of the day. Although much of the picturesque life of Provincetown has gone out with the changes iu the sea-faring business and the fisheries, Percy found it odd and unusual, and enjoyed greatly the promenade along the plank walk by tlie principal thorough fare. But his cliief delight was the background of sand-hills, glit tering in the sunshine, and taking on various hues. The town he saw was literally a town builded on the sand. Sand was every- PROVINCETOWN. 21 where. He was told that it was Provincetown's great enemy, drifting from the shifting hills like snow, and more than once threatening to annihilate the town. At every hand he observed evidences of the constant battle against it. Large stories were told him by the townspeople, with whom he fell into casual talk, of its persistent work, — of its quick swallowing of the hulls of wrecks, its rapid burial of growing things, and the de structive effects of sand-blasts in winter storms. THE MAYFLOWER. At first, he was informed, the shops and houses were built on piles that the sand might drift under them ; but now they are mostly of brick underpinning. Rocks and stones are as rare as jewels in the place, and the earth is all imported. Yet we saw a goodly show both of trees and gardens, testifying to the perse verance of the inhabitants in overcoming the natural conditions of their situation. Earth brought in vessels from a distance, and laid about their houses, has been cultivated into lawns, grass-plots, flower-beds, and vines, which are marvels of color. Percy learned that the main income of the town is still derived from fisheries, and ships yet come in with fine catches. 22 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. More make this a harbor of refuge, none on the coast being its superior. Opening to the south, land-locked, spacious, it has sufficient anchorage, it was said, for twenty-five hundred sail. Tales were told of old skippers seeing not infrequently five hun dred ships at one time riding within the hook. Of the flourish ing fishing-days Percy heard many interesting stories, but none larger than those which Thoreau repeats, — of a vessel coming in one day with " forty-four thousand, codfish," and of another arriving from the Grand Banks with " fifty-six thousand fish taken in a single voyage, the main deck being, on her return, eight inches under water in calm weather." In Revolutionary days British cruisers frequently ran in here ; and toward the close of the war, the frigate Somerset, flying before a French man-of-war in hot pursuit, in attempting to make the harbor, was wrecked on the outer bar. Her bones still lie buried in these Cape Cod sands, beyond the town. She had often made a rendezvous in these waters, when her captain had levied on the Provincetowners for supplies, settling the bill, as the local historian relates, not in currency, but by the loan of his chaplain to preach to them. So they viewed the ship's discomfiture with complacency till she struck. Then they bravely strove to save the crew, but in vain, for the poor fellows were thrown into the sea. " The Somerset," I added, " will be heard of later, when we visit Bunker Hill, for she was one of the warships which covered the landing of the British troops." From the main street, which extends the length of the town along the harbor, we crossed to the shorter upper street, parallel with it, and built on a ridge of the sand-hills, where stands the town-house, the most conspicuous building in the place. From this point we entered upon an exploration of the sand-hills, with a townsman as our guide ; for to the stranger this strange region is like the trackless sea. These hills, of varying heights, broken by sharp cuts, — great dips' like " mighty sugar-scoops," as one writer has aptly de scribed them, and " giant bowls," — extend, in irregular chains, PROVINCETO WN. 23 north and south, for about five miles. The winds have carved them into fantastic shapes, some with smoothly rounded tops, others curiously combed, others running to peaks, others with long, flat summits. They are constantly changing, a million tons of sand, it has been estimated, being displaced from and about them each year. "Where," says the writer whom I have quoted, " while the mischievous winds prevail, you see a mere mound to-day, you may to-morrow find a level plain, a growing hill, or a deep cut or scoop. And with all the shift ing, it is clear that the dunes creep steadily southward," press- SAND HILLS. ing upon the town. The sands are of the finest texture, a rich creamy color ; and the shades which the hills take on vary with the changing seasons. Here and there the slopes and foot-hills are thick with beach-grass, occasionally mingled with masses of bayberry bush. At rare intervals appear the trunks of ancient trees, remnants, perhaps, of the forest which the Pil grims found here when they described the harbor as " com passed about to the very sea with oaks, pines, juniper, sassafras, and other sweet wood." The sand-hills to the ocean side, Percy was told, are the property of the Commonwealth, part of the " Province Lands " 24 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. which originally embraced the territory of the town (hence its name); and the State is now making a systematic effort to check the movement of the sands townward, by extending the growth of the beach-grass, and restoring the forest. Ultimately the region is to become a great public sea-park. On the nearest summit, with the Atlantic in full view on one side, Massachusetts Bay on the other, and the town beneath us, we tarried a while to study Pilgrim footprints at long range. Looking across to Long Point at the right, and following the curving harbor and bay front, we were able, in part, to trace the line of march of the band of sixteen "resolute men," who were put ashore from the Mayflower^ on the fourth da}' after her arrival to make the first exploration of the countrj-, while others were mending the shallop. Marshalled on the Point by tlieir captain, Myles Standish, each with "musket, sword, and corselet," they set off in military order, covering all that is now Provincetown the first day, and the next penetrating ai'ound to the present Truro Village. There turning about, they re traced their steps, and after a second night in camp, came "both weary and welcome home." They had followed for the most part an Indian trail. But they met only one band of savages, — four or five, with a dog, who, upon their approach, fled into the woods. This meeting was on their outward march, at about the middle of the present town. Their adventure was without exciting incident, bej'ond the catching of William Bradford — afterward Governor Bradford — by the leg in an Indian deer-trap, and their occasional losing of the trail. The appearance of the country "much comforted them;" and the soil, where we found sand, they found " much like the downs of Holland." " Much game they saw," some deer, and three bucks ; but they " would rather have had one of them." No woods are here now, nor game to speak of, though in these sand-hills an occasional shy fox is yet seen. Thoreau's " great walk " in the sand-hill region was toward the southwest end of the town, west of " Shank Painter CAPE COD. 25 Swamp," across the sands to the shores of Race Point, three miles distant, and thence eastward through the great sand "d.esert" to the Atlantic side north of the town, "where," he tells us, " for half a mile from the shore it was one mass of white breakers, which, with the wind, made such a din that we could hardly hear ourselves speak." After supper Percy and I strolled along the plank walk of the main street, finding all Provincetown out, looked into a number of the queer shops, and made friends with two or three old citizens, who gave freely from their stores of reminiscences of the town in its palmy days, before its discovery bj' the sum mer tourist. The night we spent at a good tavern, where we were fa vored with a fair table and comfortable beds. The next morn ing, up with the earliest of birds, we took the first of the two daily trains, which starts out at forty minutes after five o'clock, for our journey over the Cape and around to Plymouth. The way by land is by far the longest way round. By water direct it is not more than twenty-two miles across the bay, and on a line with the shore, fifty-five miles. But cover ing as it does the full length of this "bare and bended arm" of Massachusetts, passing numerous points of historic interest, the long, roundabout railroad journey is well worth the taking. Percy found it so, the entire ride being full of novelty for him. Through Truro, which extends for twelve miles up the Cape from Provincetown to Wellfleet, the railroad runs close to the bay shore. Just beyond Provincetown and its sand-hills range, we entered the narrowest part of the Cape, — " the wrist," as Thoreau terms it, — a sandy height, at points less than half a mile between bay and ocean. From the Atlantic side, which is the higher, the inhabitants overlook the bay ; and they may yet see, as Thoreau saw, " vessels sailing south into the bay on the one hand, and north along the Atlantic shore on the other, all with an aft wind." The shore along Eastern Harbor was of special interest to 26 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. Percy as the place where the first Pilgrim exploration party, whose course we had traced, signalled their position to the Mayflower by a beacon fire. At North Truro station we were in the neighborhood of Highland Light, one of the first-class lights on the Atlantic coast, and the first light usually seen on the approach to Massachusetts Bay from Europe. It marks the place also, according to the late Professor Horsford, of Leif's "Landfall" of the year 1001. This, Professor Hors ford contended, was on " a little island at the summit of Cape Cod, only a few square miles in area, now connected by drift ing and blown sand with the mainland near" this lighthouse. Highland Light stands on a high clay bank abutting on the ocean, called the " Clay Pounds," some say because vessels have been pounded against it in gales. The white tower rises one hundred and eighty-three feet above the sea, and its light is visible for nearly twenty nautical miles. The fog-signal ad joining is a first-class " Daboll " trumpet. The ocean side be tween this and Race Point Light is the most dangerous along the Cape, and the shore is often strewn with wreckage. '¦ Dan- gerfield " was the first name of Truro, when it also included Provincetown. At the station in Truro Village we were near the limit of the Pilgrims' journey up the Cape, at the mouth of the Pamet River, which they called Cold Harbor. Here, after a second exploration, — this by water, and in the shallop, the party num bering twenty-five, with several sailors, and the captain of the Mayflower sailing the boat, — some were quite disposed to es tablish the settlement. But after earnest discussion, it was agreed to make a third expedition ; and this brought them to Clark's Island, and ultimately to Plymouth. Next we entered the fishing-town of Wellfleet. where the first night on the eventful third expedition was spent, and where in the morning the company had a brisk, though blood less, fight with a band of Indians on shore. Then we passed through ancient Eastham, which forms the bend of the fore- CAPE COD. 27 arm of the Cape, first settled in 1646, and out of which were cut Wellfleet (in 1763), and the next town, Orleans (in 1797). Here the airm turns to the westward, and the railroad shortly curves southward to tap the villages of Brewster (named after Elder Brewster of the Plymouth Colony). Thence we passed through Dennis, picturesque in parts ; Yarmouth, Barnstable, and Sandwich, the three oldest towns on the Cape, dating each from 1639; and the youthful Bourne, carved outof Sandwich a dozen years ago, marking the mainland and the end of the Cape. Percy, at this point, brought out his note-book, and de manded statistics ; whereupon I overhauled my memoranda, and gave him these : Length of Cape Cod, sixty-five miles on the north shore, eighty on the south and east ; average breadth, about six miles ; greatest height above the level of the sea, about three hundred feet ; composed almost entirely of sand, to the depth of nearly three hundred feet. From Bourne we struck into a series of Old Colony towns, going around to the west of Plymouth instead of directly into its limits which touch Bourne, and reaching our destination by way of the Plymouth and Middleborough railway. III. PLYMOUTH. First impressions of the oldest town in New England. — Forefathers' Rocli and its story. — Clark's Island, first landing-place of the Pilgrims in Plymouth Harbor. — The voyage of the shallop which brought them here. — The subsequent coming of the Mayflower's passengers. — Cole's Hill and Leyden Street. — Sites of the first houses. —The sad first win ter. — The sailing away of the Mayflower. — The town seven years after the landing: the proce,ssion to Sunday service. — Town Square. — Burial Hill and its memorials. — Sites of the first fort and the watch-house. — Watson's Hill, where the first Indians appeared. — Town Brooli. Percy was charmed with Plymouth. The approach bj- the railroad, with the wide view from the car windows over the harbor to the bay, in its frame of picturesque shore, had de lighted him ; and his pleasing first impressions deepened as we strolled through the elm-shaded streets of the Pilgrim town. He found it bearing well its years, with dignified mien, as befits the oldest town in New England, conservatively modern ized, with the comforts and conveniences of the age, but withal a charming old-time flavor. Our first impulse was to follow our companions of the train through the tree-lined way — fitly named Old Colony Park — toward the main street. But Percj^ remarking that he would like to begin at the beginning, and take Plymouth as the Pilgrims first took it, we turned around to the left of the station, toward the water front, and followed Water Street to the traditional la.nding-place on the Rock. 28 PLYMOUTH. 29 As we walked along the water-side roadway, the panorama of sea and shore, which had spread before us from the railway entrance, came into nearer view. Facing the harbor, we had at the left Captain's Hill in Duxbury, topped by the slender shaft of the Myles Standish monument. Beyond appeared Rouse's Hummock on Duxbury Beach, where the French Atlantic cable is landed. Almost in front of us lay Clark's Island, the first landing-place of the Mayflower's exploring party. At its right A BIT OF OLD PLYMOUTH, Saquish Head stood out picturesquely from the attenuated strip of Duxbury Beach. Beyond, on the outer end of the beach, the Gurnet's Nose, with its twin white lighthouses, pointed sea ward. Toward the east, Plymouth Beach stretched from the south shore, a long, narrow spit of glistening sand, covered with woodland when the Pilgrims came, but now bare of verdure, save the fringe of short beach-grass on the harbor side. At the ex treme right the spreading headland of Manomet marked the southern harbor bound. It was full tide, and the harbor ap peared to be a fine one ; but it is so only in seeming, for on the 30 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. ebb it is left almost bare, exposing a wide expanse of flats thick with eel-grass, long sand-bars and shoals, through which the main ship channel makes its devious way to the sea. Percy proposed a visit to Clark's Island before making the tour of the town, that we might explore that first landing-place, and approach the mainland as the Pilgrims had approached it. I explained that the island .was j)rivate property, and that there was no public communication with it. Still, I had heard that visitors coming to see Pilgrim landmarks were not unwelcome there ; and I suggested that we might find a skipper who would take us across, and obtain permission for us to land. This struck Percy agreeably ; and we concluded to hunt up our skipper after we had viewed the historic Rock, and make the start, if possi ble, from the pier in front of it. A short walk brought us to the " sacred shrine." The bowl der — its two pieces which for upward of a century had been separated being now reunited — presents, we are assured, '¦ much the same appearance as when the Pilgrim shallop grazed its side." It stands under a heavy granite canopy, protected by iron railing with side gates, which are thrown open during the daytime, that modern pilgrims may step as well as gaze upon the hallowed spot. This Percy did, as thousands have done before him ; and then we reviewed its interesting history, with the evidence in support of the theor}- that this was actually the place of lauding, which some close students of history have doubted. I recalled that it was not till 1741 that the Rock was pub licly identified as the spot upon which the pioneers first stepjied, although tradition had long marked it as the place. In that year it was proposed to build a wharf over it ; whereupon Elder Thomas Faunce, a venerable man, living in Duxbury, was borne here in his armchair, and, seated on the Rock, made declaration in the presence of many witnesses, that when a boy he had been told the story of the landing on this identical stone, by his fa ther, who had come over on the ship Anne in 1623, and that he PLYMOUTH. 31 had also heard it repeated by contemporary Pilgrims. " Then, taking his last look at the spot so endeared to his memory, and bedewing it with tears, the aged elder bade it farewell." The fact that Elder Faunce was at this time almost a centenarian, having attained the age of ninety-five, has been considered good ground for doubting the accuracy of his declaration ; but it is said that he was yet of strong intellect and clear memory. ^¦F«^J^'J.>'JJ^^'-'^« CANOPY OVER PLYMOUTH ROCK. And having been born in the year 1647, he was of adult age when several of the leaders of the Mayflower band were still living. The wharf builders, however, heedless of the old man's pro test, went forward with their work, building at a higher level than the Rock ; and subsequently the sea covered it with sand. 32 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. At a later period, it is said, the Rock was used for a step toward a warehouse. Then, in 1774, at the approach of the Revolu tion, its removal was undertaken to the Town Square, there to be surmounted by a liberty-pole. In the effort to lift it from its bed it was accidentally split, which was taken by some Lib erty-party men as an omen of the final separation of the Colonies from the mother country. The upper part was lifted out ; and twenty yoke of oxen being attached to it, the piece was gayly drawn with much huzzahing to the Town Square, where it was deposited at the foot of a liberty-pole flying the flag inscribed "Liberty or Death." Here it remained till the Fourth of July, 1834, when it was again removed, with formal procession, this time to the yard of Pilgrim Hall, in front of the entrance-porch of the building. This was its resting-place for nearly half a century, bewil dering to visitors because of its remoteness from the shore, while the other portion was preserved on the original site, sunk in a stone pavement. Its return to the present spot, and the welding together of the two parts, was in the year 1880, without ceremony. The building of the granite canopy above the Rock, designed by Hammatt Billings, was begun in 1859, but was not completed till 1867. "Now, as to the landing," I remarked, "if we hold fast to the narratives of the historians of the period, — the Pilgrims themselves, — we must discard much of the picture which painters and romancers have given. "The landing of the 21st of December (Ilth, old style), which we celebrate as Forefathers' Day, was, as you know, the landing only of the twelve Pilgrims forming the explor ing party of eighteen persons (six of them of the IMayflower's crew), who sailed up from Provincetown in the shallop, and first reached Clark's Island. After leaving the island they ' sounded ye harbour and founde it fitt for shipping,' and cautiously skirting the mainland, at length came ashore here. ' Marching into ye land,' they found ' divers cornfeilds & little PLYMOUTH. 33 running brookes, a place (as they supposed) fit for situation ; ' and met no Indians. Then, re-embarking, they sailed back to Provincetown with ' this newes to ye rest of their people, which did much comfort their harts.' They were absent on this ex ploration trip about a week. "The IMayfiower weighed anchor in Provincetown Harbor to come hither on the 16th, old style; and arriving on the 16th, delayed by contrary winds, anchored off the inner bend of Plymouth Beach, over a mile distant from shore. Then further exploration was made by the leaders, for it was not yet determined where the settlement should be. At length, on the morning of the 19th, after they ' had called on God for direction,' they resolved to take ' a better view of two places which we thought most fitting for us,' and to decide between them. These were this place, and a point over Kings ton way, on Jones Eiver, named by them for the Mayflower's captain. Deciding ' by most voices ' to settle here, they deter mined the next day 'to come all ashore and to build houses.' But that next day a cold storm arose, and there was then no general landing. As the weather cleared after a succession of rainy days, the men of the company landed in groups, and shortly began work on the building of the ' common house ; ' but just when the women came ashore is not known. "We must, therefore, dismiss the pretty romance of the light-hearted Mary Chilton's landing, ' the first to set foot on this threshold of fame ; ' and the claim for young John Alden of his being the first to land must also fail, for he was not one of the exploring party in the shallop. The Mayflower con tinued to be the headquarters till after the ' common house ' was built, and it was not till March that the whole company was transferred from her to the shore. She remained anchored in the harbor till well into the spring, finally sailing for home on the 5th of April. "It is an interesting fact, by the way," I added, "that ' Forefathers' Rock ' is the only rock of its kind on this part of 34 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. the shore. It is one of a very few bowlders, in a region where the geologists say 'there is not known a single ledge save those which the fisherman reaches with his lead.' And this fact is often quoted in criticism of Mrs. Hemans's famous hymn. It is true that her ' rock-bound coast,' so far as the neighborhood of the landing is concerned, was a figment of the imagination ; but in Kingston are ledges, while over on the outer face of Manomet, south of the entrance to the harbor, are magnificent rock features which justify her allusions." From the Rock the'sites of the first settlements are but a ^^^—J^Lggtm^^^jnt^ <'^^ Z ^ j W^- CLARK'S ISLAND, step ; still, we held to our plan of first crossing to Clark's Island, having the special good luck to find on this pier a skipper who could take us over, and secure the privilege of landing. Strik ing a bargain with him, which was not difficult, for he was a reasonable man, we stepped aboard his craft, and with a fair breeze sailed off. It was a pretty sail of four miles across. We passed near Plymouth Beach pier, and close to the Red Lighthouse at the junction of the Plymouth, Kingston, and Duxbury channels, mooring at length to the little jetty of our island, the jewel of the harbor. By the permission of its present owners, descen- PLYMOUTH. 35 dants of the Watson family, into whose possession the island came during Pilgrim days, we strolled over its pleasant paths to Election Rock, which bears the inscription commemorating the Pilgrims' first Sunday in Plymouth Harbor. Election Rock we found to be a large bowlder, nearly, if not quite, twelve feet high, occupying the highest point of the island. The inscrip tion, copied from Mourt's Relation, appears on its outer face in these words (the date being modern style ; old style, the 10th) : — " On the Sabboth Day wee bested. 20 Decbmbek, 1620." Standing upon the little elevation where the almost ship wrecked pioneers had stood, hard onto three centuries before us, our eyes roamed over lovely views seaward and shoreward. Theirs saw a wooded solitude across an unknown harbor on the one side, and on the other the shipless sea. Still, on that " faire and sunshiny " day following the night of storm when they made this shelter, it was doubtless to them far from a cheerless scene. Of the narratives of the memorable voyage which brought up here, that in Bradford's history is the most interesting, al though the eaxiierc Mourt's Relation, written in part, it is pre sumed, by the same hand, is faitliful in minute detail. Notes from both of these I had with me ; and while Percy was tracing on his map the course of the party over from Provincetown, I outlined the story of the adventure. It was a notable band, including the chief men of the col onists. There were John Carver, the first governor ; William Bradford, the historian, who became the second governor ; the cultured Edward Winslow ; the soldier Myles Standish ; Richard Warren, John and Edward Tilley, Steven Hopkins ; John How land, one of Carver's company ; Edward Doten, of Hopkins's 36 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. company ; John Allerton and Thomas English, sailors in the service of the Merchant Adventurers, with whom the Pilgrims had contracted ; aud two master's mates, the master gunner, and three sailors of the Mayflower. Shortly after the start from Provincetown they encountered harsh winds and freezing weather, so that the " sprea of ye sea lighting on their coats, they were as if they had been glased." That day they beat about the baj', and with difficulty reached Billingsgate Point, the extreme western shore of Wellfleet Harbor, within which they spent the night. The next day part of the band explored various points on shore, while the others continued the search by water for a " fitte place." The second night's rendezvous was on the Wellfleet shore, the neighborhood of which we passed on our railroad ride up from Provincetown. Here in the morning they had their most exciting meeting with the Indians, and so named the place " First Encounter." Thence they sailed for a harbor of which Coppin, one of the master's mates, had told them. He was their pilot, having been in this region before. Coasting along inside of the Cape, the shallop at length neared jNIanomet Headland. It was now late in the afternoon. Suddenly a storm of snow and rain came upon them. The sea roughened. Their rudder broke, and it was " as much as two seamen could do to steer her with a couple of oars." At dusk their mast broke in three pieces. Their sail fell overboard in a "very grown sea, so as they had like to have been cast away." "Yet by God's mercie they recovered themselves, and having ye floud with them, struck into ye harbore." Then Coppin crj-ing, "Lord, be merciful to us ! my eyes never saw this place before," " would have run the ship ashore in a cove full of breakers be fore ye winde, but a lusty seaman who steered bade them who rowed, if they were men, about with her ! or ells they were all cast away, the which they did with speede." All honor to him. He was a cheerful and clear-eyed soul, this lusty seaman ; for he bade his companions " to be of good cheere & row lustly. PLYMOUTH. 37 for there was a faire sound before them, and he doubted not they should find one place or other wher they might ride in saftie." The cove full of breakers is supposed to have been that between the Gurnet and Saquish Head ; although one author ity holds that it was off Plymouth Beach, and the "faire sound " was our harbor. Rounding Saquish Head, it then being very " darke " and raining " sore," they found themselves in smoother water, and soon got under the lee of this island, where they came into safe anchorage. The frightened voyagers, not knowing where they were, and fearing further meeting with hostile Indians, were " divided in their mindes " whether to go ashore or stay by their boat till morning. But some being " so weake with could [cold] they could not endure," they deter mined to make the venture. Landing, they " with much adoe got fire (all things being so wett)," the cheerful light of which soon drew the others ; and by midnight, when the wind had shifted and " it frose hard," all were here bivouacked. The first to step ashore was Clark, the first master's mate ; and so his name was subsequently given to this island. With the coming of daylight they found that they were on a "strange island," "secure from ye Indians, wher they might dry their stufe, fixe their peeces & rest themselves ; and give God thanks for his mercies in their manifould deliverances." This done, they set out to explore the place. The island was then covered with a fine growth of red cedar ; and from this rock they doubtless got fair views of the neighboring points, also well wooded, and of the mainland across the harbor. To ward nightfall, " this being ye last day of ye weeke, they pre pared ther to keepe ye Sabath." And the simple record of that first Sunday is in the words from the Relation here in scribed, " On the Sabboth Day wee rested." Of their devotions no note is preserved. " They would hardly have stirred on any enterprise without their Bible," Drake remarks, in attempting to picture the scene, " and probably one having the imprint of 38 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. Geneva, with figured verses, was now produced. Bradford, yet ignorant of his wife's death [she fell overboard from the May flower, and was drowned, the very day of the departure of the exploring party], may have prayed, and Winslow exhorted. . . . Master Carver may have struck the key-note of the Hundredth Psalm, 'the grand old Puritan anthem ;' and even Myles Stan dish and the ' saylers ' three may have joined in the forest hymnal." BURIAL HILL. Early the next morning they gathered up their belongings, and again taking the shallop, turned their backs upon this rest ful island, and sailed off toward the mainland. So we now fol lowed on our return sail, our captain, humoring Percy's fancy, steering, according to his lights, along the course they may have taken. We made our landing at the modern pier, and, passing Forefathers' Rock, walked up to the bluff directly across the PLYMOUTH. 39 roadway, and into the region which the Pilgrims first occupied. This mound is the remnant of the " Cole's Hill " near which the first houses were placed, and where without doubt the first burials were made in unmarked graves. Approaching the hill by North Street, on the right side, we came around by a left turn to the little park on its cleared brow, overlooking the placid harbor and the bay beyond. Thence we crossed to Ley den Street, on the south side, the principal Pilgrim street (un named till 1802), and to the site of the first " common house." On the hill we observed at the head of Middle Street, on the park side of the road, the single memorial tablet here, which marks the burial-place of one Pilgrim, discovered some years ago, and points to that of another, near by. Its inscription Percy copied as follows : — ON THIS HILI, THE PILGRIMS WHO DIED THE FIKST WINTER WERE BURIED. THIS TABLET marks the spot where lies the body of one found Oct. 8th. 1883. The body of ANOTHER FOUND ON THE 27TH of the following month lies eight feet northeast of thb westerly corner of this stone. Erected 1884. Of the forty-four — nearly half of the company — who died during the first four months, these ashes, and parts of five skele tons entombed in the chamber of the canopy over Forefathers' Rock, are the only remains known ; and the identity of these is beyond conjecture. Twenty-one of the forty-four were signers of the compact in the cabin of the Mayflower before the land ing at Provincetown. Among the number were Carver, the governor, who died suddenly on the day of the departure of the Mayflower for home, and his widow, whose death soon followed, 40 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. from grief. This great mortality was largely the result of ex posure during the long search for a " fitte place " for settle ment. Many caught fatal colds through wading from the boats to the shore at Provincetown. Others died of ship-fever con tracted on the crowded Mayflower. As the winter advanced, " ye welle were not in any measure sufficient to attend ye sicke, nor ye living scarce able to bury ye dead." At one time, says Hutchinson, there were not above seven men capable of bearing arms. But with all this hardship, this suffering, this awful fatality, the work of upbuilding and of ordering the affairs of the little colony moved steadily forward. And when at length the Jlay- flower weighed anchor and turned her prow homeward, breaking the last link with the Old World, not one of the band faltered. All resolutely remained; and, while they "crowded the strand, watching the lessening speck, . . . with a loftiness of purpose which was ever theirs," " they consecrated themselves anew to the work in which they were engaged." This recital brought vividly to Percy's mind the pathos of that first dismal wanter, and impressed him with the sublime heroism of the lone colonists. " And how was it that these graves were so completely obliterated?" he asked. "I have read that not a single grave of a Mayflower Pilgrim is now to be found." This is not strictly correct, I told him ; for the burial-place of Bradford is known, that of Standish, discovered in recent years, and those of two or three others. Yet it is true that not only most of the Mayflower passengers, but nearly all of those who came in the Fortune, the next ship to arrive, in 1621, and in the Anne and Little James, in 1623, lie in un known graves. It is a tradition that the graves on this hill were in the first spring carefully levelled and sowed with grain, in order to conceal from the Indians the extent of the losses of the colonists, lest the savages might take advantage of their weakness, and attempt to exterminate them. PLYMOUTH. 41 Not all of those who died in the first winter, perhaps, were buried here. Some may have been buried iu their own home stead lots, as was a custom of the t'ime, and for long after. The first exposure of human remains on the hill was made in 1735, when, during a heavy storm, a portion of the bank was washed away, and several bodies were exhumed. Then, early in the present century, workmen digging a cellar for a house George Henry Bouyhton. THE PURITAN EXILES. came upon a skeleton. But it was not till one hundred and twenty years after the first discovery of remains that the fact of this being the earliest burial-place was established. At that time (May, 1855), in digging a trench on the slope of the hill, portions of five skeletons were disinterred ; which, being ex amined by the late Drs. John C. Warren and Oliver Wendell Holmes, of Boston, were pronounced to be of the Caucasian race. These are now in the canopy over the Rock. The bones found 42 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. on the spot marked by this tablet were re-deposited in a brick vault ; the others discovered later were undisturbed. The site of the first or " common " house, on Leyden Street, opposite a large elm on the hillside, we found conspicuously marked, the wooden tablet illustrated with a fanciful repre sentation of the rude structure and its original surroundings. The site was identified by local antiquarians after careful study of the bits of evidence which appeared. In 1801 work men digging the cellar for the dwelling now here turned up some tools and an iron plate, which it was concluded must have been used in the "common house." The construction of this first house was begun on Christmas Day, nine days after the moor ing of the Mayflower in the harbor ; and the following Sunday the first religious services on shore were held in the partly fin ished building. Owing to the frost and frequent " foule " weather, which much hindered the work, and the labor in fetch ing wood, there being slight growth of timber on this point, it was not completed till the middle of January. It was made of hewn logs, with thatched roof, about " 20 foote square." It was the "rendezvous" of the colonists while on shore, till their little town was built in " two rowes of houses and a faire street," — " this street we are now on," I reminded Percy. " Three days after the beginning of their common house," I continued, as we strolled up this first Pilgrim street toward Burial Hill, " they began work on their fort on the hill which we are approaching, and also began to lay out and allot lands, first dividing the company into nineteen families, the single men being distributed among them that fewer houses might be built at the start. This classification was on the basis of the division of the company upon their arrival at Provincetown — eighteen husbands and wives and four fathers, each with one or more sons. The governor's family numbered eight. A rude plot of this street in Bradford's handwriting is preserved in the Plymouth Records of Deeds, with this entry, the first in the book, to an incomplete list of names of lot-holders : ' meer- PLYMOUTH. 43 steads & garden-plotes of those who came first, layed out, 1620.' " At the approach of the second winter the village consisted of seven dwellings, with four other houses for plantation uses, and more were about to be erected. Six years later it had grown to be the comely town which is pictured in the familiar description of Isaak De Rasieres, a'man 'of faire and genteel behaviour,' as Bradford calls him, who visited the colony in October, 1627, as an embassy from the New Netherlands. The town lay, he wrote, ' on the slope of a hill stretching east toward the sea coast, with a broad street about a cannon-shot of eight hundred [yards] long leading down the hill, with a street crossing in the middle north ward to the riv ulet and south ward to the land. The houses are constructed of hewn planks, with gardens, also enclosed behind and at the sides with hewn planks ; so that their houses and court-yards are arranged in very good order, with a stockade against a sud den attack; and at the ends of the streets there are three wooden gates. In the centre, on the cross-street, stands the governor's house, before which is a square inclosure, upon which four pateros [steenstucken] are mounted, so as to flank along the streets. Up the hill [Burial Hill] they have a large square house, with a flat roof, made of thick sawn plank, stayed with oak beams, upon the tip of which they have six cannon, which shoot iron balls of four and five pounds, and command the surrounding country. The lower part they use for their church, where they preachy on Sundays and the usual holidays.' 44 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. «De Pasieres gives this quaint aud graphic picture of the "De Rasieres give ^J;-^. < a^iey assemble by beat of p,ocession to the ^-da^™ ",,,, J, i. ..ont of the cap- drums, each ^^1^^^^^^^ ,1^,.,. cloaks on, and place themselves ^^"''L rThree abreast, and are led by a sergeant without beat ^"f drum' Behind comes the governor in a long robe ; beside hm ^on the right hand, comes the preacher with his long cloak and on the left hand the captain, with his side arms, and cloak on, and with a small cane in his hand — and so they march in good order, and each sets his arms down near him. Thus they are continually on their guard night and day.' The fort on Burial Hill was their place of worship for eighteen years, or till 1638, when the first meeting-house was erected in Town Square. What manner of house that was is not known. In fact, nothing is known of it except that it had a bell." We were now within Town Square at the foot of Burial Hill, which rose abruptly in front of us, picturesque and impres sive, its steep grassy slopes thick with gray gravestones and monuments, simply adorned with pleasant shade-t-csS^B^JaJTower- ing bush and shrub. The noble elms which embellisli t^^ square are upward of a century old. They were planted hjtr Thomas Davis in 1784. For some years they shaded^the|j^,nt; j^Qj^gg of Governor Bradford, which stood on the corned' Main Street, where the Odd Fellows' building now stands. The site of the first meeting-house, it is believed, is covered by the tower of this building. The " Church of the Pilgrimage," next beyond, was built in 1840. The lineal descendant of the First Church, founded by the Pilgrims in Scrooby, England, is the stone Memorial Church, on the hillside, close to the entrance-way to the burying-ground, replacing a former Gothic structure burned in 1892. This organization, a tablet informs the visitor has remained unchanged, and its ministry continued in unbroken succession to the present day. "With the exception of the elms tlie only ancient thing now in the square is the Town House nil the south side, formerly the Court House, built in 1749. PLYMOUTH. 45 While mounting the hill by the steep entrance-path, Percy paused occasionally to glance at the inscriptions on the nearest stones, hoping to come across an historic name, or some quaint epitaph, which he had been told were rather more numerous here than in other early New England burying-grounds. Near the summit, and quite close to the path, an ornamented slate slab bearing the name of Thomas Faunce caught his eye. This, as he rightly thought, marks the grave of the aged iden tifier of " Forefathers' Rock." According to the inscription, the good man was in his ninety-ninth year when he died, in February, 1746, four years after his formal pilgrimage and dramatic farewell to the Rock. He was the last to hold the office of ruling elder in the First Church, a place of importance in his day, second only to that of the minister ; and he served as town clerk of Plymouth for nearly forty years. After making a sketch of this stone, Percy thought that we had better next seek the Governor Bradford monument as the most important memorial on the hill. So we bent our steps toward the north path, in the direction of the clump of elms and larches on the right. Near the head of the main path, before the bend north ward, we noticed, at the left, an oval marble block on a low pedestal, inscribed, " This monument marks the spot where the Watch House was erected in 1643 ; " and we turned to look at it. The short granite posts at the corners of the lot in which it stands indicate the bounds of the house. It was a tower of brick ; and it is said that the foundation is still here, slightly below the surface, while the hearthstone upon which the Pil grim watch-fires were built still lies undisturbed. Thirty-three years later, during King Philip's War, when an invasion was feared, a second watchhouse was built, presumably over the old one. This was of wood, "sixteen foot in length, twelve foot in breadth, and eight foot studd, of two stories," and two "gabels to the roofe on each syde one." It was agreed that the builder should receive for the job " eight pounds to be paid 46 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. either in money or other pay equivalent," and that only the frame should be brought to the place at the town's charge. Those were days of frugal figuring, and bargains for the town were made with the same closeness that marked bargains be tween individuals. The site of the ancient forts we found marked by a similar oval tablet near by, to the southeast. The first fort was a rude construction, only twenty by twenty feet, completed in Janu ary, 1621. But the next year a larger one was erected in its place, " both strong and comly, which was of good defence." It was made, Bradford tells us, "with a flate rofe & battle ments, on which their ordnance was mounted, and where they kept constant watch, espetially in time of danger. It served them also for a meeting house & was fitted accordingly for that use." This was the fortress and meeting-house which De Rasieres describes. On the approach of King Philip's War a third and much more formidable stiucture, palisaded with high pickets enclosing a space one hundred feet square, and sur rounded by a ditch, was erected. After the war had ended. King Philip's head was long exposed upon its battlements, as that of AVittuwamet, a chief killed by Standish in a hot duel at Weymouth in 1623, had been displayed above the walls of the earlier fort. Back of the tablet marking the site of the watchhouse, we observed a row of stones commemorating the ministers of the First Church ; and back of these the Judson tomb, with numer ous inscriptions, one of them to the memory of the famous Adoniram Judson, D.D., missionary to Burmah, and the author of the dictionary of the Burmese language, who died at sea in 1850. The first Adoniram Judson, his father, buried here, was the first pastor of the Third Congregational Society of Plymouth. Farther over to the south, and back of the site of the fort, the Cushman monument rose conspicuous!}', the most imposing obelisk on the hill, erected by descendants of Robert Cushman. This commemorates, besides the pioneer Robert, — who was PLYMOUTH. 47 the first agent of the colony in England, returning thither in the ship in which he came out in 1621, — his son Thomas Cushman, ruling elder of the Plymouth Church for nearly forty years, and Mary, Thomas's wife, a daughter of Isaac Allerton, " the last survivor of the first comers in the Mayflower," as the inscription on the monument relates. The slate stone marking Elder Cushman's grave, close to the shaft, was placed by the church in 1715, twenty years after his death. Left fatherless when a youth, Cushman was brought up in Governor Brad ford's family, and in after years became the governor's confiden tial friend. Making our way westerly toward the centre of the ground, we came upon the grave of John Howland, one of the oldest here ; upon the headstone is this entry quoted in the Plymouth records : " He was the last man that was left of those that came over in the ship called 'Mayflower' that lived in Plym outh." Howland, I reminded Percy, was of the exploring party who made the first landing on the Rock, and was the " lustie yonge man " whose narrow escape from drowning on the Mayflower's voyage over is related by Bradford. During a "mighty storme," he says, Howland, "coming upon some occa sion above ye graftings, was, with a seele of ye shipe throwne into sea ; but it pleased God yt he caught hould of ye tope-saile halliards, which hunge over board & rane out at length ; yet he held his hould (though he was sundrie fadomes under water) till he was bald up by ye same rope to ye brime of ye water, and then with a boat hooke & other means got into ye shipe againe, & his life was saved ; and though he was something ill with it, yet he lived many years after, and became a profitable member both in church and comone wealthe." Howland was deputy and assistant for several years, and died " a godly man " at the age of eighty. On the gravestone his wife is said to have been a daughter of Governor Carver, but this is questioned by authorities ; and Bradford states that he married Elizabeth Tilley, daughter of John Tilley. 48 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. Near by the Howland graves Percy discovered the oldest stone in the ground, — at the grave of Edward Gray, bearing date of 1681. Gray was one of the wealthiest men in the col ony, a merchant, and in later life one of the largest owners of land. His home was in Kingston, and the homestead remains occupied by his descendant to this day. Behind this grave are the Clark gravestones, one of which especially attracts strangers because it purports to mark the grave of the mate of the Mayflower. This inscription Percy copied in part as follows : — HERE LIES buried YE BODY OF MR. THOMAS CLARK, Aged 98, Departed this Life March 24, 1697. Thomas Clark was mate of the Mayflower, according to tradition in the Plymouth and Connecticut Colonies. History gives his arri val in Plymouth from England in the ship Anne in 1623. . . He lived for some years in Boston, and also in Harwich, of which town he was one of the original pro prietors. He died in Plymouth, having lived in the reigns of seven British sovereigns, the Commonwealth and the Protectorate. This stone is erected to his memory hy his descendants A. D. 1891. "In this, as in most cases, history is the better guide than tradition," I remarked. "The name of the Mayflower's mate was John, not Thomas, Clark ; and it has been clearly shown that Thomas first came out in the Anne. The error of this inscrip tion is corrected in the local guide-book, and none need be led astray by it. But Thomas Clark was not the less a notable man in the colony ; and his son Nathaniel, whose grave is a near neighbor, became one of the councillors under Sir Edmund Andros, that obnoxious governor of New England in 1686-1689, and for a while had possession of Clark's Island under a grant from Sir Edmund. Previously he was secretary of Plymouth Colony. He married Dorothy, widow of the Edward Gray dis tinguished by the oldest gravestone here as we have seen." PLYMOUTH. 49 We now turned toward the Bradford obelisk. We found it in a position commanding the fullest view of the town below the hill, the harbor and the bay beyond, and the central memo rial of a cluster of notable tablets. It was placed so long ago as 1835 by descendants of the governor over the spot which some time before had been fully identified as his grave. Percy copied the inscriptions, finding some difficulty in deciphering the Latin lines, and making nothing of the Hebrew. Later, substituting translations which were found in Kingman's Epi taphs, these inscriptions stood on his note-book as follows : — (north side.) "Jehovah is the Help of My Life." under this stone rest the ashes of WILLM BRADFORD, A zealous puritan & SINCERE CHRISTIAN : Gov. of Ply. Col. from Apr. 1621 to 1657 (the year he died, aged 69), except 5 years which he declined. Qua patres difflcillime atlepti sunt nolite turpiier relinquere. ("What our fathers with so much difficulty secured, do not basely relinquish). (south side.) WILLIAM BRADFORD of Austerfield, Yorkshire, England, was the son of WILLIAM AND ALICE BRADFORD. He was Governor ot Plymouth Colony from 1621 to 1633 ; 1635 ; 1637 ; 1639 to 1643 ; 1645 to 1657. Several graves of Bradfords surround the monument. The oldest stone iu the group is over the grave of Joseph Bradford, youngest son of the governor and his second wife, Alice South- worth Bradford. He lived a quiet life, mostly on his farm in Kingston, and died in his eighty-fifth year. Major William, the eldest and more distinguished son, prominent both in civil and military affairs, lies on the west side of his father's grave. It is related that at the time of his death, in February, 170|, the public road from Kingston where he lived was obstructed 50 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. with snow, ana "the corpse was carried . . . along the sea shore, it being the expressed desire of the deceased to be buried near the body of his father." It is believed that the governor's second wife was buried near the monument, but there is no trace of her grave. She was widow of Edward Southworth when Bradford married her, a fortnight after her arrival as a passenger in the Anne, presumably coming in response to his suit, for he had " known and wooed " her in old England when she was Alice Carpenter, before his first marriage, we are told. In his history he refers to the arrival of the Anne with " some very useful persons" on board. Alice Bradford survived the governor thirteen years. With the note of her death in the Plymouth records it was said of her that " Shee was a goodly matron, and much loved while she lived, and lamented tho' aged when she died." Her sister, Mary Carpenter, lived to the age of ninety. After we had strolled among these and other ancient graves, and Percy had made copies of numerous quaint inscriptions, we sat for a while on one of the benches under the larch-trees, enjoying the view of town below us and bay beyond, with the misty line of Cape Cod cliffs on the distant southeasterly hori zon. Looking down upon the town, we traced the outlines of the early Pilgrim village, — Leyden Street on the one side. North Street on the other. Middle Street over Cole's Hill, Main Street the upper bound. Water Street on the harbor front, and the historic Rock of landing. Then, turning again toward the main path, as we entered upon the steep descent we had a fair view to the southward of neighboring Watson's Hill, upon the summit of which the first Indians appeared in February, 1621, silhouetted against the winter sky ; whence shortly after came Samoset, the first Indian visitor, with his, " Welcome, Englishmen ; " then other braves ; and then the friendly Massa soit, with his body-guard of warriors. We looked down also upon the Town Brook crossing, where Massasoit, with twenty of his warriors, was met "in military form," and thence es- PLYMOUTH. 61 corted to the presence of Governor Carver, who appeared with " drumme and trumpet after him and some few musketiers," when that famous league of peace, the first of its kind, and " preserved inviolable for upward of fifty years," was concluded. To the westward lay the picturesque chain of hills, the near est crowned with the national monument to the forefathers, and the glittering waters of " Billington Sea," the pretty lake, which its Pilgrim discoverer thought to be a " great sea." IV. ABOUT PLYMOUTH TO'WN. Old Colony mansions. — Historic manuscripts and documents in the Kegistry of Deeds. — Pilgrim HaU and'its relics. — The national monument. — Au Old Colony ride. — Plymouth Woods. — Billington Sea. — Head of Town Brook. — Rare treasures in Plymouth homes. —Percy sits in Governor Bradford's chair. Having now covered the cliief Pilgrim landmarks, we bent our steps toward Pilgrim Hall to examine the collection of me morials there displayed. On the way along Main Street we observed an historic house or two, notably the Warren-Otis house, on the North Street corner ; and making a detour into North Street, passing under the row of superb Watson lindens, which Colonel George 'Watson imported and set out a century ago, we came to the old Winslow mansion-house. It was our good fortune, through the courtesy of one of the family in whose possession the property has been for years, to see the interior of the older part of this dwelling. Percy found great delight in the tour through the spacious rooms, high-studded, with old-fash ioned wainscoting, deep fireplaces, and high mantels ; and he was especially charmed with the broad hall, its stately stairway, enriched with fine hand-turned balusters and twisted newel-post, the old clock at the bend of the stairway, the lattice-work at the turn giving light and air to the rear hall. As we entered the drawing-room on the first floor, our host spoke of this apartment as the scene of various interesting events during the history of the mansion, covering a hundi-ed and fifty years. "It was in this room," he remarked, "that Ralph AValdo Emerson was married to his second wife, Lydia ABOUT PLYMOUTH TOWN. 53 Jackson in the autumn of 1835. She was a daughter of Charles Jackson, who acquired this estate by inheritance. Emerson had met her the previous winter when he was lec turing in Plymouth. Upon his wedding-day, as his son. Dr. Emerson, relates in Emerson in Concord, he ' drove in a chaise to Plymouth,' and was married in the evening. Then the next morning he ' set forth in the chaise again, and brought his bride before sunset to their new home in Concord.' " THE OLD V/INSLOW MANSION-HOUSE. This mansion our kind friend told us was built in 1745 by Edward Winslow, a great-grandson of Governor Edward Wins low, and it occupies land originally of John Howland's holding, purchased by Winslow from Consider Howland, a grandson of John. It has been in the possession of Edward Winslow's descendants, direct or indirect, ever since. For many years it was the summer home of the late eminent Unitarian clergyman and scholar, the Rev. Dr. George W. Briggs of Cambridge. Returning to Court Street, which Main Street becomes be- 54 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. yond North Street, we soon reached the County Court House, the dignified building of old-time type (erected in 1820, and remod elled in 1857, I ascertained, to satisfy Percy's craving for sta tistics), set well back from a green park. I suggested that we should step inside, assuring Percy that we would find some rare treasures here which he would regret to miss. Entering the office of the Registry of Deeds, on the street floor, and stat ing our desire to see some of the old manuscripts which we understood were accessible to the public, we were conducted to a case of drawers, where we found under glass the original writings of the fathers, brief records in quaint phrasing of momentous acts in the first years, upon which Percj- feasted his eyes. Taking the drawers in succession, we saw the origi nal plotting of the first street, the plan of the first allotment of lands, or " meersteads," with the names of those to whom they were assigned ; the earliest orders for the government of the little colony ; the order, in Bradford's handwriting, first establishing the right of trial by jury ; the order first pro viding a customs law ; the division into lots among the colo nists of the cattle belonging to the whole company in 1627 (the first neat-cattle having been brought over in 1624) ; papers bear ing the signatures of Bradford, Standish, and other leaders ; and lastly, the original patent granted in 1629 to Bradford and his associates, with the signatures of the Earl of Warwick and others, together with the great seal, and the original birch- wood box in which the document came from England. Percy was permitted to make copies of some of the documents, and his note-book soon contained the following : — [The division of the cattle. 1627.] At a publique court held the 22tli of May it was concluded by the whole Companie, that the cattell w^'' were the Companies, to wit, the Cowes & the Goates should be equally deuided to all the psonts [per sons] of the same company it soe kept vntill tbe expiration of ten yeares after the date aboue Mritten. & that euei-y one should well and sufficiently puid [provide] for there owne pt vnder penalty of forfeiting the same. ABOUT PLYMOUTH TOWN. 55 That the old stock with halfe th increase should remain for comon vse to be diuided at thend of the said terme or otherwise as ocation falleth out, & the other halfe to be their owne for euer. Vppon w'^'' agreement they were equaUy deuided by lotts soe as the burthen of the keeping the males then beeing should be borne for common vse by those to whose lot the best Cowes should fall & so the lotts fell as followeth. — thirteene psonts being pportioned to one lot. [Then follow the names of the households to whom each lot fell, and the cattle and goats in each lot.] [The establishment of trial by Jury. 1623.] It was ordained. 17. day of Desemb. Anno. 1623. by the Court then held ; that all crimynall facts ; and also all maters of Trespases ; and debts between man, & man should, be tried by the verdict, of twelue Honest men, lo be Impanled by Authoryty, in got forme of a Jurie vpon their oaths. [The first customs law. 1626. ] It was ordained the said. 29. of March. 1626. for the preunting scarcity, as also for the furdering of our trade, that no corne, beans, or pease, be transporded, inbarked or sold to that end to be convayed out of the colony without the leaue & licence of the Gouernour & Counsell ; the breach whereof to be punished with lose of the goods so taken or proued to be sould; & the seler furder fined, or punished, or both at the discretion of ye Gour & counsell. Numerous ancient deeds were also shown Percy ; and in the record room he was allowed to see the original copy of the will of Myles Standish, now bound in the volume of early wills. From the Court House, five minutes down the pleasant tree- lined thoroughfare brought us to Pilgrim Hall, marked by the allegorical " Landing " in demi-relief in the pediment above the Doric porch. Upon the stone tablet, in the yard, at the side of the building, Percy read the words of the Compact signed in the cabin of the Mayflower at Provincetown, and, worked in the encircling fence, the names of its signers. This fence formerly enclosed the top of the Rock when that was here in front of the hall. The tablet was set up, and the fence removed to its 56 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. present position upon the restoration of the stone to its original bed at the foot of Cole's Hill. Entering the Hall we turned from the small vestibule into the curator's anteroom, where we enrolled our names in the visitors' book, and paid the modest fee of admission, which gave us a free run of every department, the entire interior being devoted to the museum. In the curator's room Percy was told that the ancient clock on the wall, which though nearly two centuries old ticks off the time as faithfully as any of the smart young modern clocks, once hung in the John Hancock mansion-house in Boston, and during the Siege was safely lodged in a house in Bridgewater. His attention was also directed by the devoted curator to other interesting things here. Among them was a commission on Indian we&fions . INDIAN BOW AND ARROWS, ETC. parchment from Oliver Cromwell to Edward Winslow as one of the arbitrators between England and the States-General of the United Provinces in the matter of ships and goods detained within the King of Denmark's domains after May, 1652. The signature had disappeared, having been torn off by some auto graph thief ; but it preserved a valuable, because contempora neous, pen-and-ink portrait of Cromwell. Another relic was a curious picture of " The Landing," done in distemper. We passed directly from the curator's room to the Main Room. Percy observed that it is lighted from the roof, to which it extends, and occupies the greater part of the building. Be sides Pilgrim antiquities in great variety and of much value, we found here numerous Indian implements and weapons, relics of Revolutionary days and of the later Civil War period, with rare ABOUT PLYMOUTH TOWN. 57 INDIAN WAR CLUB. books, manuscripts, and documents, and an extensive collection of paintings, portraits, engravings, and prints. While Percy's interest naturally centred in Pilgrim things, he did not allow anything historic, whatever its pe riod, to escape him. The larger paintings on the walls, perhaps be cause they were the more conspicuous objects, first engaged him. He made bold to criticise Henry Sargent's conception in the well-known " Land ing of the Pilgrims," which occupies the place of honor on the rear wall, the true story of the landing being fresh in his mind. I remarked, by way of justification of the painter, that the picture was intentionally ideal, and, moreover, that when it was conceived, more than sixty years ago, less was popularly known than now of the Pilgrim story. Bradford's History, for exam ple, still lay undiscovered iu the Fulham Library in England, where it had mysteriously found lodgment after much adven ture, the story of which he would have in detail on our next day's pilgrimage. "Yes," responded the astute Percy, "but it was clear enough, surely, from other histories, that there was no meeting with any Indian at the time of the landing, and no warrant for such a grouping as the artist pic tures." Percy was severe, as youth is apt to be, but not more so than some older critics of this work. Drake, I recalled, points to the figures of Governor Carver and of Samoset in the foreground, both larger than life, and to that of Standish, a tall, soldierly man, when, in fact, he was undersized, " scarce manly in appearance." And in " the INDIAN SHELL AXE. 58 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. crouching attitude of the Indian " Drake does not recognize "the erect and dauntless Samoset portrayed by Mourt, Brad ford, and Winslow." "Still," I added, "this painting is an improvement upon that other painting of 'The Landing,' in the collection of the Historic Genealogical Society of Boston, which Drake speaks of — representing a boat approaching the shore filled with soldiers in red coats ! " The other large paintings — on the south wall, " The Embar kation of the PUgrims," from Delft-Haven ; a copy, by Edgar Parker of Boston, of Weir's painting in the Capitol at Washington ; and on the north wall, " The Embarkation," by Charles Lucy, an Eng lish artist, which, when displayed at a prize exhibition in Lon don, drew the first premium of a thou- s a n d guineas — more full}- satisfied my young critic. Before Lucy's painting he paused long, its vigor and pathos evidently growing upon him as he studied its strongly drawn figures. But I have heard other more seasoned critics condemn its lack also of historical accuracy. The many por traits which he carefully scrutinized embraced those of the Winslows, — of Edward, the pioneer, afterward the governor ; of Josiah, the first native-born governor of the Plymouth Col ony, and Penelope, his wife, a daughter of Herbert Pelham, the first treasurer of Harvard College ; of General John, great- grandson of Governor Edward, a major-general in the British ELDER BREWSTER'S CHAIR. PEREGRINE WHITE'S CRADLE. ABOUT I'LYMOUTII TOWN. 59 army, second in command iu the expedition against the Aca dians in 1755, and the officer who moved them from their homes, an act which inspired Longfellow's classic ErnnfjeHne ; and of the Rev. -John Alden, great-grandson of Jolm Alden of the ^layflower band, who reached the great age of one hun dred and two years. Turning now to tho collection of antiquities, Percy was impressed with the many articles which are said to have come in the Mayflower. He saw the chairs of (_jOvernor (Jar ver and of Elder Brew ster; a cabinet brought Ijy William White, the father of Peregrine, thi' first white child born at Province- town, Percj' remem bered ; a Dutch cra dle, also brought by William White, ¦-¦¦•¦--^OR CARVER'S CHAIR. nor wmsiow, wno foot-wheel in governor Bradford's family, married "White's widow ; a part of a chest, pestle, and mortar, and a pewter plate bearing the Winslow arms, brought by Edward Winslow ; a huge iron pot and pewter platter brought by Myles Standish ; numerous small pieces, spectacles, canes, a brass candlestick, a slipper, a cap, owned by Mayflower passengers ; an ancient foot-wheel once owned by a great-granddaughter of Gover nor Bradford, and a model of the Mayflower near by. Else where he came across the table and chair of Governor Winslow, which stood in the Council chamber during his governorship. 60 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. One case was found entirely filled with memorials of Myles Standish ; another, with articles once belonging to the Winslow family ; a third, with Alden family relics ; a fourth, with vari ous things owned by the First Church ; and a fifth, treasures of the White family. In the Standish case, with the pot and platter already men tioned, Percy looked down upon the captain's sword ; an em broidered " sampler " worked by Lora Standish, the captain's daughter, who died in young womanhood ; the fragments of a quilt which once belonged to Rose Standish (the captain's first wife, who died a month after the landing) ; a piece of the hearthstone of Standish's home in Duxbury, and a ground plan of the house. Chief of all these in interest to Percy was the famous sword ; and he wished that he might handle the ancient weapon, the more closely to examine its finish and the cuttings on its blade. It is of early Persian make, we are told, a Dhar- ban, of Thunder-bolt irou, and may have come dow^n to Standish from the Crusaders. Upon the blade appear engraved figures of the sun, moon, and stars, with Arabic inscriptions, which till so late as 1881 no one had been found able to decipher. In June of that year Professor James Rosedale of Jerusalem, an Arabic scholar visiting Plymouth with a part}' of Arabs from Palestine, interpreted one of them and part of another ; but the third, he explained, no one could decipher, for " it is of private signification," the key to the charm which the blade was assumed to possess, and known only to the warrior who had it engraved. The three inscriptions he pronounced to be Mohammedan work, cut at a much later period than the ancient Persian emblems — the sun, moon, and stars, worshipped by the Persians as the celestial deities of strength and power. The inscription which he interpreted read, " With peace God ruled his slaves, and with judgment of his arm he gave trouble to the valiant of the mighty and courageous," meaning the wicked ; the other, iu part, '' In God is all might," the remainder being, like the third inscrip tion, a private mark. He declared that the sword must have ABOUT PLYMOUTH TOWN. 61 fallen into the hands of the Saracens upon the defeat of the Persian tyrant warrior, Kozoroi, when Jerusalem was wrenched from him, in the year 637. Professor Rosedale's statement was written out aud signed by him ; and it is reproduced in the official catalogue of the collection. Percy made a note of the quaint sampler of Lora Standish's make, for his sister's sake. At the bottom of the dainty piece of embroidery, with the date of 1653, the maiden had worked these lines : — " Lorea Standish is my name. Lord guide my hart that I may doe thy will; Also fill my hands with such convenient skill As may conduce to virtue void of shame; And I will give the glory to thy name." In a miscellaneous collection next to the Standish case, Per cy's eye caught sight of the oldest state paper in the United States, — the first patent granted to the colonists, issued by the President and Council for New England, June 1, 1621, in the name of John Pierce in trust. It was brought over in the For tune, arriving in November of that year. It bears the seals and signatures of the Duke of Lenox, the Marquis of Hamilton, the Earl of Warwick, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and one other which cannot be made out. Interesting papers were also found in the case of articles belonging to the First Church, in another part of the hall ; and in the White case, a bond written and signed by Peregrine White. Next to the White case, in a mis cellaneous collection were seen the barrel of the gun with which King Philip was killed, a rare copy of John Eliot's Indian Bible, edition of 1685, and the original manuscript of Mrs. Hemans's hymn, " The Breaking Waves Dashed High." From the Main Room we passed into the north anteroom, then to the library, and finally to the lower hall, making note of many curious things of various periods. We studied more portraits, engravings, quaint old views ; saw more rare books, manuscripts, and parchments. A series of commissions to John 62 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. Winslow from King George the Second, from the royal Provin cial governors, Shirley and Pownal, and from Sir Charles Hardy, especially interested Percy ; also the letter of King Philip, by the hand of his Indian secretary, written iu 1663, to Governor Prence ; and of relics of the Provincial days, the royal arms which hung in the old Pilgrim Court House before the Revolu tion. The latter was carried off at the outbreak of hostilities by a fleeing royalist to Nova Scotia, whence it returned some years ago, a present to the Pilgrim Society from the roj'alist's descendant. In the lower hall the oaken bones of the Sparrow-hawk, a vessel wrecked on Cape Cod only six years after the coming of the Pilgrims, and embedded in the sands for more than two and a quarter centuries, occupied a large space, and, to Percy's mind, constituted the chief feature of the museum here. This I told him was the ship " with passengers in her and sundrie goods bound [from England] for Virginia," of the loss of which, in the autumn of 1627, Governor Bradford gives a de tailed account in his History. She had been six weeks at sea, and having lost her way, the master being sick, and the supply of water, food, and wood giving out, she was steered in the direction of land; and coming upon a "small, blind harbore,"' to the southward of Cape Cod, she ran upon a " drie flate within ye harbor, close by a beach." This was at a point off Nauset Beach and Chatham. The ship's company, not knowing where they were, nor what they should do, " begane to be stricken with sadness ; " but encountering some friendly Indians who had a smattering of English, they learned of their nearness to New Plymouth, and sending a missive to the governor, he at once responded with a boat-load of food, and " things to mend their vessel." After Bradford's return home he received word that the ship, being repaired, had again been driven ashore by a great storm and made unfit for sea. Thereupon her passen gers with their goods were conveyed to I'lymouth to remain till they were able to renew their voyage. Ground was appor- ABOUT PLYMOUTH TOWN. 63 tioned to them, and they raised much corn, which they sold on their departure. From the tag tacked to the frame Percy ascertained that these remains were exhumed from their bed in a meadow some distance back from the water by a storm in 1863, and being identified by competent authorities, were later carefully set up as we see them. All the principal timbers are here. The skeleton gives us a fair idea of a vessel of the period of the Mayflower, and of about its size of hull. Another relic of an historic craft was seen in the wood from the pawl-post of the English frigate Somerset, the story of the wreck of which, also off Cape Cod, we heard in our pilgrimage to Province- town. Leaving Pilgrim Hall, the round of what may be termed official memorials was finished with a visit to the National Monument. This we reached by another pleasant walk along Court Street, past the head of Old Colony Park, and beyond to Cushman Street, thick with trees, leading up toward the hill of which the monument is the centre-piece. We found it rising from a broad, open space, a great granite pile, surmounted by a massive figure of Faith, one foot resting on Forefathers' Rock, one hand holding a Bible, and the other uplifted, the index finger pointing upward. The four secondary seated figures, occupying buttresses at the base of the main, octagonal, pedestal, repre sent, respectively. Morality, with the Decalogue in one hand, the scroll of Revelation in the other, and in a niche on either side of her throne, a prophet and an evangelist ; Law, with Justice on one side, and on the other Mercy ; Education, with Wisdom, and Youth led by Experience ; and Freedom, protect ing Peace, while Tyranny lies overthrown by its powers. Upon the faces of the buttresses the leading scenes in the Pilgrim history, — the Departure from Delft-Haven, the Signing of the Compact in the Cabin of the Mayflower, the Landing at Plym outh, and the First Treaty with the Indians, — are depicted in alto-reliefs ; while in the panels on the main pedestal are the 64 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. names of the Mayflower passengers, and the formal inscrip tion : — NATIONAL MONUMENT TO THE FOREFATHERS. ERECTED BT A GRATEFUI. PEOPLE IN P.EJIEMERANCE OF THEIR LABORS, SACRIFICES, AND SUFFERINGS FOR THE CAUSE OF CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. Percy was surprised at the statement that this monument was twenty-nine years in building, the corner-stone having been laid in the summer of 1859, and the work pronounced finished in the autumn of 1888. The main pedestal and the statue of Faith, however, were in place a dozen years before the final completion of the work. It was designed by Hammett Bill ings, who planned the canopy over Forefathers' Rock, and is distinguished as the largest piece of granite statuary in the world. Here our pilgrimage might have properly ended ; but the day being not yet full spent, I suggested that we should take a drive out to the Forest Park, the town's public reservation, and get a taste of genuine Plymouth woods. This is, too, an historic quarter, I explained to Percy ; for it embraces the lovely lakes of "Billington Sea," and the head of the "very sweete" Town Brook. My companion fell heartily into the plan, and accordingly we returned to the town centre, and sought a vehi cle with cheerful driver at an easy price. This being speedily accomplished, for we discovered that carriage-men as well as boat-men, and other traders in Plymouth, were considerate in their dealings with the visiting modern pilgrim, we set out on the pleasant Old Colony ride. Our wa}- lay by Town Brook, and along the tree-shaded highway which reaches to New Bed ford, thirty miles and more beyond. A short half-hour's drive brought us to the park entrance, simply a rural wood-road from which smaller roads branch. There were no indications of the conventional public park, or evidences of attempts to improve nature. Here is the natural forest, bounded by a natural lake. ABOUT PLYMOUTH TOWN.- 65' national monument, PLYMOUTH. 66 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. The sweet underbrush, and wood flora, and mossy turf, are suf fered to remain as nature placed them. Birds abound here, and squirrels. Rural foot-paths follow the road-lines, from which narrower paths diverge into the thickets. The roads wind over the undulating surface, now nearing or skirting the water, now travelling the thickly wooded knolls above it, again round ing a slight promontory, from which extended views across " Billington Sea " are had. Frequent " opens " appear, through BILLINGTON SEA OUTLET. which charming bits of landscape delight the eye. At a point midway of the latter half of the circuit we left our carriage, an,d struck into a foot-path leading toward the southern section of the "sea." The walk through the rich woods brought us shortly into a glen-like region, and to the water's edge. Over the lake, with " the island " of vivid green lying, like a rare jewel, upon its bosom, to the distant chain of surrounding hills, we gazed upon an enchanting scene. Then turning, and fol lowing a planked way over swampy ground, we came upon a lovely dell, in which Town Brook opens, a narrow, placid stream, ABOUT PLYMOUTH TOWN. 67 and whence, with many a turn and twist, through verdant banks, it makes its way to the town and the sea. Our return ride was by the thoroughfare alongside of the brook, picturesque throughout. Having made some pleasant acquaintances while upon the day's pilgrimage, we spent the early evening in brief calls at some of the older Plymouth homes, and here found treasures of Pilgrim times, rarer, even, than those displayed in the museum of Pilgrim Hall. In one fair mansion-house, upward of a century old, a type of the Charles Bulfinch house, and designed, it is believed, by this first of eminent Boston archi tects, Percy had the pleasure of sitting in the chair of Gover nor Bradford, an heirloom of the family whose ancestral home this is, while holding iu his hand a book printed by William Brewster, at Leyden, in 1617, with the author's autograph, and surrounded by some of the richest Pilgrim relics in Plymouth. With the ringing of the " nine o'clock bell," which old-time custom still prevails in Plymotith town, we bade our new friends good-night ; and, taking the electric car, rode over to the head of the beach, where we booked for the night at Hotel Pilgrim on the hill. V. KINGSTON. Governor Bradford's farm. — Sites of homes of early settlers. — Elder Cush man's Spring. — Kingston's heroes of the Revolution. — A Revolutionary Cincinnatus. — Reminiscences of King Philip's "War: Caleb Cook and the death of Philip. — Kingston Landing. — The ancient Major John Bradford's liouse: former home of the "Bradford Manuscript." — The Governor Bradford house. Another glorious June morning favored us for our third Pilgrimage. This was to embrace Kingston, Duxbur}-, and Marshfield, all intimately associated with the earliest Pilgrims, and the latter distinguished in later days as the home of Daniel Webster. Percy was up betimes, long, I must confess, before I had stirred, and from the back piazza of the hotel witnessed the rising of the sun out of the sea, and the lighting up of the picturesque harbor shore. Immediately after breakfast we took the electric car, which starts directly from the steps of the hotel, bound for Kingston, four miles from Plymouth. The car passed along the main Plymouth street with which we had become familiar, and then took the old Boston highway into which Court Street makes. On the way, while enjoying the pleasant view of the sea and shore at our right, with fair country on the other side, we dis coursed upon the Pilgrim associations of the old towns that we were to visit. Kingston, lying about the " very pleasant river " which the Pilgrim leaders explored, and named, as we have seen, for Cap tain .lones of the Mayflower, occupies the territory wdiich they had " a great liking to plant in," instead of Plymouth, but de cided against because it lay too far from their fishing, and was G8 KINGSTON. 69 "so encompassed' with woods" that they feared danger from the savages. It was one of the earliest places occupied, however, when the colonists began to reach out into the country beyond the little village round about Leyden Street. This outreaching was upon the coming of the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the " flowing of many people into the coun try," which, Bradford informs us, caused cattle and corn to rise to a great price. The colonists were then growing in their "outward estate," and "no man now thought he could live ex cept he had cattle & a great deal of grounde to keep them." " So there was no longer holding them together, but they must of necessity goe to their great lots," and they "scattered all over ye bay." Governor Bradford himself was one of the earliest to take up lands about Jones River, and he had a house here as early as 1637. Some authorities think this was his principal dwell ing-place for several years. His son. Major William Bradford, succeeded him in this homestead ; and Bradfords were identified with the place till near the middle of the nineteenth century, the last of the governor's direct descendants, David Bradford, dying here in 1840. Others of the Mayflower company early occupying lands in these parts were Isaac Allerton (for whom, we have observed. Point Allerton in Boston Harbor was named), who was connected with the early business aifairs of the colony, twice its agent to the "Merchant Adventurers" in London, but subsequently, falling out of favor with his associates, through unprofitable business ventures, transferring his inter ests to other colonies ; Samuel Fuller, the first physician of the colony ; John Howland ; Stephen Hopkins ; and Francis Cook. Later, Edward Gray, he who became the most prosperous mer chant of the colony ; Thomas Willie, afterward the first English mayor of New York ; Charles Chauncy, sometime minister of Scituate, subsequently president of Harvard College, — settled in this territory. Those who first took up lands in Duxbury were Myles 70 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. Standish, Elder Brewster and his eldest son, Jonathan, Thomas Prence, afterward governor for seventeen years, and John Alden. They moved over with their families in 1630 or 1631, agreeing, however, to live in Plymouth in the winter, and to attend church there; but a year or so after these conditions were removed, and Duxbury set up its own church. Lands in Marshfield, then Green Bay Harbor, were as early taken up. Edward Winslow had the largest domain, part of which was subsequently included in the Daniel Webster place. Winslow established himself here in 1636-1037, and called his broad estate " Careswell," after a seat of his ancestors in Old England. Near by his brothers, Gilbert, John, and Kenelm, also settled ; but John, who had married cheerful Mary Chil ton, the "romping girl" of the tradition of the landing from the Mayflower, moved to Boston a few years later. The earliest settlements were made close to the bay and the rivers, which were the first highways of the Pilgrims. The first pathway extended from Plymouth to JIarshfield, crossing Jones River and Island Creek, the latter on the edge of Kings ton Bay, then following the shore line, skirting Captain's Hill in Duxbury, to accommodate Standish and Brewster, keeping still to the shore around to John jVlden's farm on the north side of Blue Fish River, and thence to Winslow's '¦ Careswell "' and Green Harbor. Parts of this pathway were later merged in " Massachusetts Path," the way to the Massachusetts Bay Colony settlements. In this pilgrimage, I told Percy, we should follow the line of this first path in a general way, turning aside, now and again, for excursions to various landmarks or picturesque points of historic interest. Kingston remained a precinct of Pl3'mouth through Pilgrim times and well into the eighteenth century. When it set up as an independent town it took its name from George the First, on the king's birthday, in May, 1726. Duxbury was named for Duxbury or Duxburrow Hall, the seat of the Standish family iu England. Marshfield was a part of Duxbury till KINGSTON. 71 1641, and then, made a township, received its name, probably, for Marsfield, earlier Marysfield, a parish in Sussex, England, the old home of some of the settlers, and not, as popularly assumed, from the wide extent of marshes within its bounds. On John Smith's chart of the Massachusetts coast in 1614, the names upon which Prince Charles changed, the Marshfield ter ritory appears as " Oxford." In each of these old colony towns we were to find numerous footprints of the Pilgrims yet clear ; and it was with lively anticipations that Percy sprang from the electric car when it stopped, at my signal to the conductor, on the outskirts of Kingston, in the " Colonel Thomas's HiJF' neighborhood. We alighted here to visit " Elder Cushman's Spring," at the foot of Thomas's Hill, on the right of the highway, near the site of the homestead of the ancient Isaac Allerton farm. Elder Cushman, I reminded Percy, was that Thomas Cushman, ruling elder of the Plymouth Church for forty years, whose grave we saw on Burial Hill. This farm became his home after his marriage to Allerton's daughter Mary, who came out in the Mayflower, a child, and outlived all of the " first comers," as we found also recorded on the Cushman monument. She reached the rare old age of ninety years, passing her long life from young womanhood in the homestead here. The elder also lived long, his death occurring in his eighty-fifth year. Mary's mother died soon after the arrival at Plymouth; and a few years later Allerton took for a second wife Fear Brew ster, daughter of Elder Brewster, but she soon succumbed to the hardships of early colonial life, dying in 1634. Thomas's Hill is historic of a later period, having been, a century after Pilgrim days, a part of the estate of General John Thomas of early Revolutionary fame, who commanded on the Roxbury side during the siege of Boston, and directed the forti fication of Dorchester Heights ; an officer whose great merit on this occasion, Bancroft says, " is the more to be remembered from the shortness of his career." 72 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. " Was he killed in action ? " Percy asked. " No ; this fine captain met his death ' unattended by glory.' In less than three months after the evacuation of Boston he fell a victim to the small-pox in Canada. Just before the end of the siege he was appointed a major-general by the Continental Congress, and ordered to Quebec in command of the expedition against Canada, to which duty he hastened immediately after the British had left the town. When he reached the American camp, the scourge was raging there with much virulence, and he was overtaken by it in the midst of his preparations for the campaign. He was a gallant gentleman, of ' superior ability and culture,' the historian avers, a typical citizen-soldier of that memorable period. In private life a physician, skilful and suc cessful, he brought to his military duties the same care and thoughtfulness which he gave to his profession. He had seen service twenty years before the Revolution, in the French wars, when he was commander of Provincial troops in the campaign of 1756-1757, under General John Winslow of jMarshfield. As the Revolution approached he was active and influential in the patriot cause, a delegate to the convention of Plymouth Count}' in 1774, and a member of the Provincial Congress at Concord and Watertown ; and he led a Plymouth regiment to the camp about Boston upon the first summons for men. His memoiy is cherished in the Old Colony as a sterling patriot and an able soldiet when serious work was to be done. Had he lived he would probably have ranked with the leaders whose names are more familiar in the story of the Revolution. Although not a native of Kingston (he was born in Marshfield, the son of a farmer), General Thomas settled here in early manhood when he began the practice of his profession." This led to talk, as we strolled toward the ancient spring, about other Revolutionary heroes. Simeon Sampson, the first captain in the Massachusetts naval service appointed by the Provincial Congress, was a Kingston man ; and my young friend's interest was heightened when he learned that the brisk KINGSTON. 73 little war-ships which Captain Sampson commanded — first the brig Independence, and afterward the state ship Mars — were both built at Kingston's Landing, which we were to pass on our way through this town. " Then there was the schoolmaster-soldier of Kingston," I added, " Captain Peleg Wadsworth, whose daughter Zilpah, in after years, married Stephen Longfellow, and became the mother of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the poet. He was a native of Duxbury, but was living in Kingston when the Revolution came, and teaching a private school in Plymouth. He organized the Kingston company of minute-men, and as its captain marched to the Roxbury camp. Soon after he was made an aide to General Artemas Ward. In 1778 he had command of a regiment from Essex in the expedition to Rhode Island under General Sullivan ; and the next year, being appointed adjutant- general of the Massachusetts militia, had charge of a portion of the troops engaged in the expedition 'to the eastward,' that is, to the district of Maine, — for Maine, you know, was a part of Massachusetts till 1820. General Wadsworth remained in Maine, and subsequently became a prosperous merchant. " And there was Major Seth Drew, Kingston born, first lieutenant of the Kingston minute-men, who left his work, as Cincinnatus left his plough, for his country's service. Drew was a shipwright ; and, as the spirited story runs, when tidings of liexington and Concord reached Kingston, he was engaged in the shipyard at the Landing at ¦' graving,' — cleaning a ship's bottom. In this process it was customary to set fire to a tar- barrel, and pass it under the vessel in order to burn or melt off the foul substance. Drew had just] lighted one barrel, and had begun using it, when his brother James rushed into the yard with the exciting news. Without a word he passed the burning barrel to another workman, and instantly left to join his com pany. He served with credit throughout the war." We reached " Elder Cushman's Spring " by a lane from the highway, passing at the side of a modern homestead, and across 74 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. a pleasant field for some distance down toward the Old Colony railroad along the shore. The spring lay in a rural spot at the foot of a knoll, near the railroad tracks, shaded by old trees. "\\'e found it bubbling from its sandy bottom, as it bubbled, doubtless, in the elder's time ; and it is said that it has never been known to run dry. For years it has been used as a drink- ing-place for grazing cattle. The first houses were clustered in this part of the present town, which still holds its Pilgrim name of " Rocky Nook ; " but traces of them long since disajDpeared. The homesteads of Samuel Fuller, the physician, of Francis Cook, and per haps of John Howland (who had previously lived a while on the Duxbury side), were somewhere alongside of •• Smelt Brook," the little stream which comes down to Rocky Nook from Smelt Pond iu the southeast part of the town. On the Cook homestead subsequently lived Caleb Cook, grandson of Francis Cook, a soldier in King Philip's War, of 1675-1676, who was in company with the Indian by whom Philip was shot, vnth the gun which we had seen in Pilgrim Hall. Although Philip, son of that IMassasoit who welcomed the Pilgrims upon their advent, led one of the most dreadful of Indian wars, carrying horror, woe, and desola tion in its train, during which hundreds of brave colonists fell on the field of battle, many women and children were car ried into captivity, whole villages and towns were destroyed, KING PHILIP. KINGSTON. 75 fiendish cruelties, massacres, and atrocities were perpetrated, we cannot read unmoved the story of this once great Indian monarch's bitter end. So I remarked to Percy ; and, while we were recrossing the field back to the highway, I sketched its salient features and the part which Caleb Cook had in it. Philip had been hemmed in and brought to bay by the sol diers of the famous Indian fighter. Colonel Benjamin Church of Duxbury. Deserted by his allies, his " ablest braves " slain, his wife and boy, the last of the Massasoit race, captured (and sub sequently sold into slavery), his subjects " falling around him as the leaves of the forest," he remained almost alone. Driven from point to point, he at length made his way back to his own country about Mount Hope, near Bristol, R.I. and here "sul lenly awaited the doom which impended." Of what followed, Barry, in his history of Massachusetts, tells us in the fewest words ; and taking out my note-book, I read this extract : It was welcome news to Captain Church -that his enemy was in such straits, and without a moment's delay, gathering around him his few trusty followers, he prepared to put the finishing stroke to the war. A deserter guided him to the side of the swamp whither Philip had withdrawn ; and upon a spot of up land, at its southern end, and at the foot of the mount which had been the throne of the chieftain, the victim awaited the approach of his pursuers. Creeping upon their bellies, as cau tiously as the tiger advances upon its prey. Church and his com panions wound their way in. Every man had his orders, and every one was posted to the best possible advantage. The quick report of a musket is heard ; a full volley follows ; and Philip, half naked, is seen hastily fleeing. An Englishman covets the honor of shooting him. His gun misses fire. And the ball of an Indian pierces his heart. . . . The body of the chieftain lies stretched upon the ground, and the desolating war is brought to a close." The dead body was beheaded and quartered; one of the hands was given to the Indian who fired the fatal shot, and on 76 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. the day appointed for a public thanksgiving the head was brought in triumph to Plymouth, where it was set up on the battlement of the fort on the hill. Caleb Cook was the Eng lishman to whom Barry refers. He was assigned with the Indian to watch, and, if possible, to kill Philip ; and when his gun failed, he bade the Indian fire. The Indian afterward gave his gun to Cook, in whose family it was kept as a trophy for many years. At length the barrel was placed in Pilgrim Hall, while the lock was given to the Massachusetts Historical So ciety in Boston. On the highway again, we sighted another car approaching. Taking this, we rode toward the main village so far as the road to The Landing, next beyond the bridge across Jones River, by which the ancient Bradford farms are reached. A ten or fifteen minutes' walk brought us again to the railroad, and to The Landing on the farther side. Here, on a bluff, we came upon the Major John Bradford house, a typical seventeenth century dwelling, interesting in itself, but most distinguished for its historical associations. Major John Bradford, I explained, was the eldest son of Major William Bradford, and grandson of Governor Bradford. He followed worthily in the footsteps of his more eminent father and grandfather, holding numerous oflBces, and serving in the General Court ; and he was the principal founder of this town of Kingston. Marrying, he built this house about 1674 ; and here he died in 1736, in his eighty-fourth year. But what most interested Percy was my remark that this Major Bradford was the last of the Bradford family to possess the famous "Bradford Manuscript," the first history of the Plymouth Plantation, from which I had quoted so freely in Plymouth, and that it was from this house that the precious document started upon its adventures upward of a century and a half ago, — tarrying in Boston till the Revolutionary period, then disappearing ; later bringing up mysteriously in the library of the bishop of London at Fulham ; at length coming back to KINGSTON. 77 us, and finding permanent lodgment in the Massachusetts State Library, placed there with much ceremony in the spring of 1897. The owner of the ancient house kindly permitted us to in spect the quaint interior. We lingered longest in the deep, low-studded " living-room," at the right of the narrow entry ; for this was the room, we imagined, and with fair reason, in which, on a June day in 1728, the major entertained Thomas MAJOR JOHN BRADFORD HOUSE. Prince, minister of the Old South Church in Boston, renowned as a chronologist, and passed to his keeping all of the old gov ernor's manuscripts, then lying in the family strong-box. " The lot," I went on to relate, as we drew up by the old fireplace, " did not include the Plymouth history ; for that was already out of the major's hands, having been loaned by him to Judge Samuel Sewall of Boston (he of the unique SeivaU's Diary, that remarkable chronicle ot small details of Colonial and Provincial life). But it soon after came into Dr. Prince's 78 HISTORIC PILGRIMAGES. collection, and was deposited in his '• New England Library" in Boston, kept in the "steeple chamber'' of the Old South INIeeting-house. All this we learn from Dr. Prince's note on a fly-leaf of the manuscript history, which served to identify the document when it was discovered in the Fulham Library by American historical authorities in 1855, long after it had been given up as lost. Here is the note, which I have copied ex actly, thinking you might find it interesting as a specimen of Colonial English, as well as profitable as a part of the story of the first chapter in the history of your country — ' the very Book of Genesis of the nation ' : — Tuesday, June 4, 1728; N. B. Calling at Major John Bradford's, at Kingston, near Plim- outli, sou of Major W"'- Bradford, formerly Dep. Govr- of Plimouth Colony, who was eldest son of W"'- Bradford Esq'- then 2'i Gov"^ and author of this History ; y" s* Major John Bradford gave me several Manuscript Octavoes w" lie assured me were written with his Grand father Gov Bradford's own Hand. He also gave me a little Pencil Book wrote with ii. Blew lead pencil by his s* Father, ye Dep. Gov'- , and He als'o told me y' He had sent & only lent his s