PLYMOUTH, CLARK'S ISLAND, AND DUXBURY.
"Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod!
They have left unstain'd what there they found--
Freedom to worship God!"--MRS. HEMANS.
Let us now take a walk in Leyden Street. Until 1802 the principal street
of the Pilgrims was without a name; it was then proposed to give it the
one it now so appropriately bears. In my descent of the hill into the
town square, I passed under the shade of some magnificent elms just
putting forth their spring buds. Some of those natural enemies of trees
were talking of cutting down the noblest of them all, that has stood for
nearly a hundred years, and long shaded Governor Bradford's house.[193]
Consulting again our old guide, De Rasieres, I find he tells us, "New
Plymouth lies 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
northward to the rivulet and southward to the land. The houses are
constructed of hewn planks, with gardens, also inclosed 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 sudden attack;
and at the ends of the sides with hewn planks; so that their houses and
court-yards are arranged in very good order, with a stockade against a
sudden 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." We are
standing, then, in the ancient place of arms of the Pilgrims.
[Illustration: BUILDING ON THE SITE OF BRADFORD'S MANSION.]
Nearest to us, on the north side of the square, is the site of Governor
Bradford's house, with the Church of the Pilgrimage just beyond. The
dwelling of the governor was long ago removed to the north part of the
town, and this, its successor, does not fulfill our want, as the
veritable habitation of the much-honored magistrate would do. Nearly
opposite is the old county court-house, erected in 1749. Up at the head
of this inclosed space, which long custom miscalls a square, is the
First Church, its pinnacles appearing dimly through the interweaving
branches of tall elms. There is a coolness as well as a repose about the
spot that makes us loiter.
After the tragic death of his first wife, Bradford bethought him of Mrs.
Southworth, whom he had known and wooed in old England as Alice
Carpenter. She was now a widow. He renewed his suit, and she hearkened
to him. But as the governor could not leave his magistracy, the lady,
ceding her woman's rights, took ship, and came to Plymouth in August,
1623. In a fortnight they were married.
Bradford tells how the passengers of the ship _Ann_, of whom Mistress
Southworth was one, were affected by what they saw when they first set
foot in Plymouth. They were met by a band of haggard men and women,
meanly appareled, and in some cases little better than half-naked. The
best dish they could set before their friends was a lobster or piece of
fish, without other drink than a cup of water. Some of the newly arrived
fell weeping; others wished themselves in England again, while even the
joy of meeting friends from whom they had long been separated could not
dispel the sadness of others in beholding their miserable condition. The
governor has not told us of the coming of Alice Southworth, but says
simply there were "some very useful persons" on board the ship _Ann_.
Here the governor entertained Pere Gabriel Dreuillettes, in 1650 with a
fish dinner, because, says the good old Jesuit, it was a Friday. The
governor was equal to the courtesy; yet, I fancy, fish dinners were
often eaten in Plymouth.
Bradford's second wife survived him thirteen years. With her came his
brother-in-law, George Morton, her sister, Bridget Fuller,[194] and two
daughters of Elder Brewster. She lived thirty years with her second
husband, and, from the tribute of Nathaniel Morton,[195] must have been
a woman of an exemplary and beautiful character. Her sister, Mary
Carpenter, lived to be ninety years old. She is referred to in the
church records of Plymonth as "a godly old maid, never married."
Apropos of the governor's wedding, I extract this notice of the first
marriage in the colony from his history: "May 12th, 1621, was ye first
marriage in this place, which, according to ye laudable custome of ye
Low Countries, was thought most requisite to be performed by the
magistrate, as being a civill thing, upon which many questions aboute
inheritance doe depende," etc.
When Edward Winslow was in England as agent of the colony, and was
interrogated at the instance of Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, before
the Lords Commissioners of the Plantations, he was, among other things,
questioned upon this practice of marriage by magistrates. He answered
boldly that he found nothing in Scripture to restrict marriage to the
clergy. He also alleged that the plantation had long been without a
minister, and finished by citing, as a precedent, his own marriage by a
magistrate at the _Staat-haus_ in Holland. Morton, who appeared as an
accuser of Winslow, says, "The people of New England held the use of a
ring in marriage to be a relique of popery, a diabolical circle for the
Devell to daunce in."
As soon as they had definitely settled upon a location, the colonists
went to work building their town. They began to prepare timber as early
as the 23d of December, but the inclemency of the season and the
distance every thing was to be transported--there were no trees standing
within an eighth of a mile of the present Leyden Street--made the work
painfully laborious and the progress slow. On the twenty-eighth day the
company was consolidated into nineteen families, the single men joining
some household in order to lessen the number of houses to be built. They
then staked out the ground, giving every person half a pole in breadth
and three in length. Each head of a family chose his homestead by lot,
and each man was required to build his own house. By Tuesday, the 9th of
January, the Common House wanted nothing but the thatch to be complete;
still, although it was only twenty feet square, the weather was so
inclement that it took four days to cover it. They could seldom work
half the week.
[Illustration: SITE OF THE COMMON HOUSE.]
Captain Smith says, in 1624, the town consisted of two-and-thirty houses
and about a hundred and eighty people. The Common House is believed to
have stood on the south side of Leyden Street, where the abrupt descent
of the hill begins. In digging a cellar on the spot, in 1801, sundry
tools and a plate of iron were discovered, seven feet below the surface
of the ground. This house is supposed to have served the colonists for
every purpose of a public nature until the building of their fortress on
Burial Hill. Mourt calls it their rendezvous, and relates that a few
days after completion it took fire from a spark in the thatch. At the
time of the accident Governor Carver and William Bradford were lying
sick within, with their muskets charged, and the thatch blazing above
them, to their very great danger. In this Common House the working
parties slept until their dwellings were made ready.
It was worth living two hundred years ago to have witnessed one street
scene that took place here. John Oldham, the contentious, the
incorrigible, dared to return to Plymouth after banishment. He had, with
Lyford, tried to breed a revolt among the disaffected of the colony. A
rough and tough malignant was Oldham, fiercely denouncing the
magistrates to their teeth when called to answer for his misdeeds. He
defied them roundly in their grave assembly. Turning to the by-standers,
he exclaimed:
"My maisters whar is your harts? now show your courage, you have oft
complained to me so and so; now is ye tyme if you will doe any thing, I
will stand by you."
He returned more choleric than before, calling those he met rebels and
traitors, in his mad fury. They put him under guard, until his wrath had
time to cool, and set their invention to work. He was compelled to pass
through a double file of musketeers, every one of whom "was ordered to
give him a thump on ye brich, with ye but end of his musket," and was
then conveyed to the water-side, where a boat was in readiness to carry
him away. They then bid him go and mend his manners. The idea of the
gantlet was, I suspect, borrowed from the Indians.
This little colony of pilgrims was at first a patriarchal community.
Every thing was in common. Each year an acre of land was allotted to
every inhabitant to cultivate. The complete failure of the experiment
ought to stand for a precedent, though it seems somehow to have been
forgotten. Men, they found, would not work for the common interest as
for themselves, and so the idea of a community of dependents was
abandoned for an association of independent factors. From this time they
began to get on. The rent-day did not trouble them. "We are all
freeholders," writes Edward Hilton home to England. In 1626 the planters
bought themselves free of the undertakers, who oppressed them with
ruinous charges for every thing furnished the colony. Allerton, who was
sent over in 1625 to beg the loan of one hundred pounds sterling, was
obliged to pay thirty pounds in the hundred interest for the two hundred
pounds he had obtained. In the year 1627 they divided all their stock
into shares, giving each person, or share, twenty acres of land, besides
the single acre already allotted.
[Illustration: THE ALLYNE HOUSE.]
It is time to resume our walk down Leyden Street. On reaching the bluff
before mentioned the street divides, one branch descending the declivity
toward the water, while the other skirts the hill-side. The Universalist
Church at the corner marks the site of the Allyne House, an ancient
dwelling demolished about 1826. By the Plymouth records, it appears
that, in 1699, Mr. Joseph Allyne married Mary Doten, daughter of Edward,
and granddaughter of that Edward Doten who had come in the _Mayflower_.
Among the children of Joseph Allyne born in the old homestead was Mary,
who became the mother of that "flame of fire," James Otis. The house
commanded a fine view of the bay, its foundations being higher than the
chimneys in the streets below. It may not, perhaps, be generally known
that James Otis, after completing his studies in the office of Jeremiah
Gridley, then the most eminent lawyer in the province, came from Boston
to Plymouth, where he took an office in the main street. He practiced
there during the years 1748-'49, when his talents called him to a
broader field.
Mercy, the sister of James Otis, married James Warren, a native of
Plymouth. He succeeded General Joseph Warren as president of the
Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, but is better known as the author
of the celebrated "Committee of Correspondence," which he proposed to
Samuel Adams while the latter was at his house. Mrs. Warren, at the age
of seventy, was visited by the Duke De Liancourt. "She then retained,"
he says, "the activity of mind which distinguished her as a sister of
James Otis; nor had she lost the graces of person or conversational
powers, which made her still a charming companion." For reasons apparent
to the reader, she resolved not to send her "History of the Revolution"
to the press during her husband's lifetime.
[Illustration: THE JOANNA DAVIS HOUSE, COLE'S HILL.]
Going beyond the church, we come upon the open space of greensward,
intersected by foot-paths, known as Cole's Hill. Some defensive works
were erected on this bank in 1742, in the Revolution, and again in 1814.
I have already traversed it in imagination, when standing on the summit
of Burial Hill. It is no longer a place of graves, nor does it in the
least suggest, by any monumental symbol, the tragedy of the Pilgrims'
first winter here, when, as Bradford touchingly says, "Ye well were not
in any measure sufficient to tend ye sicke; nor the living scarce able
to burie the dead." Their greatest strait was in May and June, when
there were no wild fowl. Winslow says they were without good tackle or
seines to take the fish that swam so abundantly in the harbor and
creeks.
We may not disguise the fact. The least attractive object is the Rock of
the Forefathers. The stranger who comes prepared to do homage to the
spot the Pilgrims' feet first pressed, finds his sensibility stricken in
a vital place. The insignificant appearance of the rock itself, buried
out of sight beneath a shrine made with hands, and the separation of the
sacred ledge into two fragments, each of which claims a divided regard,
give a death-blow to the emotions of awe and reverence with which he
approaches this corner-stone of American history.
Plymouth Rock, or rather what is left of it in its original position, is
reached by following Water Street, which, as its name indicates, skirts
the shore, conducting you through a region once devoted to commerce, now
apparently consigned to irretrievable decay. Near Hedge's Wharf, and in
close vicinity to the old Town Dock, is the object of our present
search. A canopy, designed by Billings, has been built above it. I
entered. In the stone pavement is a cavity of perhaps two feet square,
and underneath the uneven surface the rock appears. I had often wished
to stand here, but now all enthusiasm was gone out of me. I had rather
have contented myself with the small piece so long treasured, and with
the loom of the rock as my imagination had beheld it, than to stand in
the actual presence of it.
[Illustration: PLYMOUTH ROCK IN 1850.]
By the building of street and wharf on a higher level the rock is now at
some little distance from high-water mark.[196] At one time the sea had
heaped the sand upon it to the depth of twenty feet, but the tradition
of the spot had been well kept, and at the dawn of the Revolution the
sand was cleared away, and the rock again laid bare. This was in 1774.
In the attempt to remove it from its bed it split asunder, the
superstitious seeing in this accidental fracture a presage of the
division of the British empire in America. The upper half, or shell, of
Forefathers' Rock was removed to the middle of the village, and placed
at the end of a wall, where, along with vulgar stones, it propped the
embankment. In 1834 the fractured half was removed from the town square
to its present position in front of Pilgrim Hall, where it is now lying.
The honor of having first set foot on this threshold of fame is claimed
for John Alden and Mary Chilton. The question of precedence will
probably never be settled. It is also claimed for the exploring party
who landed from the shallop on Monday, the 21st of December, commonly
called Forefathers' Day.[197]
For more than two hundred years the 22d of December had been observed as
the day of the landing; that is, in effect, to say, it had been so
observed by the Pilgrims themselves, by their descendants around their
firesides, and had received the sanction of formal commemoration, in
1769, by the Old Colony Club. Men were then living who were within two
generations of the first comers, and retained all their traditions
unimpaired. After this long period had elapsed, it was assumed that the
Pilgrims had designed to signalize the landing of the exploring party of
eighteen, rather than that from the _Mayflower_, and upon this theory,
by adopting the new style, the landing was fixed for the 21st, a
substitution which has been generally acquiesced in by recent writers.
Unless it is believed that the landing of the party of discovery
possessed greater significance to the Pilgrims, and to those who lived
within hearing of the voices of the _Mayflower_, than the disembarkation
of the whole body of colonists on the very strand they had finally
adopted for their future home, the presumption of error in computing the
difference between old and new style has little force.
For six weeks these explorations had continued all along the coast-line
of Cape Cod, and nothing had been settled until the return of the last
party to the ship. The _Mayflower_ then sailed for Plymouth, and cast
anchor in the harbor on the 16th; but the explorations continued, nor
was there a decision until the 20th as to the best point for fixing the
settlement. Moreover, there are no precise reasons for saying that the
first exploring party landed anywhere within the limits of the present
town of Plymouth, nor any tradition of its making the rock a
stepping-stone.
We prefer to believe that the Pilgrims meant to illustrate the landing
from the _Mayflower_--the event emphasized by poets, painters, and
orators--as marking the true era of settlement; that the 22d of December
was intelligently adopted by those best able to judge of their
intentions; and that an unbroken custom of more than two centuries
should remain undisturbed, even if it had originated in a technical
error, which we do not believe was the case. "This rock," says the
gifted De Tocqueville, "has become an object of veneration in the United
States. I have seen bits of it carefully preserved in several towns of
the Union. Does not this sufficiently show that all human power and
greatness is in the soul of man? Here is a stone which the feet of a few
outcasts pressed for an instant, and the stone becomes famous; it is
treasured by a great nation; its very dust is shared as a relic. And
what has become of the gate-ways of a thousand palaces? Who cares for
them?"
The skeleton of a body was here before them, but, as Carlyle says, the
soul was wanting until these men and women came. Mr. Sherley, writing to
Bradford, says, "You are the people that must make a plantation and
erect a city in those remote places when all others fail and return."
I do not find such conspicuous examples of intolerance among the
Pilgrims as afterward existed in the Bay Colony. Lyford said they were
Jesuits in their ecclesiastical polity, but they permitted him to gather
a separate church and perform the Episcopal service among them. Beyond
question, they were not willing to see the hierarchy from which they had
fled establish itself in their midst. The intrigues of such men as
Lyford within the colony, and Weston in the company at home, kept back
the remnant of their own chosen associates, and re-enforced them with
churchmen, or else men of no particular religion or helpfulness.
In November, 1621, the planters received an accession of thirty-five
persons by the _Fortune_.[198] It was the custom in the plantation for
the governor to call all the able-bodied men together every day, and
lead them to their work in the fields or elsewhere. On Christmas-day
they were summoned as usual, but most of the new-comers excused
themselves, saying it was against their consciences to work on that day.
The governor told them if they made it a matter of conscience he would
spare them until they were better informed. He then led away the rest.
When those who had worked came home at noon they found the conscientious
observers of the day in the street, at play; some pitching the bar, and
some at stool-ball and like sports. The governor went to them, took away
their implements, and told them it was against his conscience they
should play while others worked. If they made keeping the day a matter
of devotion, they must keep their houses, but there must be no gaming or
reveling in the streets. Assuredly there was some fun in William
Bradford, governor.
Hutchinson--after all the abuse of him, the fairest historian as to what
transpired in advance of the Revolutionary period--gives the Plymouth
colonists credit for moderation. When Mrs. Hutchinson was banished by
Massachusetts, she and her adherents applied for and obtained leave to
settle on Aquidneck, then acknowledged to be within the Plymouth patent.
Before this, Roger Williams, who had been their minister, was, after his
banishment from Salem, kindly used, though requested to remove beyond
their limits, for fear of giving offense to the Massachusetts colony.
Many Quakers probably saved their lives by fleeing to Plymouth, although
the Pilgrims detested their worship and enacted laws against them. The
town of Swanzey[199] was almost wholly settled by Baptists.
The relations of the Pilgrims with the Indians were founded in right and
justice, and stood on broader grounds than mere policy. This is shown in
the unswerving attachment of Massasoit, the fidelity of Samoset, and the
friendship of Squanto. The appearance of Samoset in the Pilgrim village
was of good augury to the colony, and is worthy of a more appreciative
pencil than has yet essayed it.
About the middle of March, after many false alarms of the savages, an
Indian stalked into the town. Passing silently by the houses, he made
straight for the rendezvous. I think I see the matrons and maids peeping
through their lattices at the dusky intruder. He was tall, straight of
limb, and comely, with long black hair streaming down his bare back,
for, except a narrow girdle about his loins, he was stark naked. When he
would have gone into the rendezvous the guard intercepted him. He was
armed with a bow, and in his quiver were only two arrows, one headed,
the other unheaded, as indicating the pacific nature of his mission. His
bearing was frank and fearless, as became a sagamore. "Welcome,
Englishmen," he said to the by-standers, astounded, as well they might
be, on hearing such familiar salutation from the lips of a savage.
The first thing this Indian asked for was beer. The Pilgrims themselves
preferred it to water, but they had none left; so they feasted him on
good English cheer, and gave him strong waters to wash it down. His
naked body excited astonishment, and a compassionate Pilgrim cast a
horseman's cloak about him. Of all the assembly that encircled him,
Samoset alone seemed unconcerned. The settlers had seen skulking savages
on the hills, but they knew not what to make of this fellow, who thus
dropped in on them, as it were, for a morning call. Since their first
encounter with the Nauset Indians, they expected enmity, and not
friendship. A midnight assault in their unprepared state was the thing
most dreaded. Peace or war seemed to reside in the person of this
Indian. They watched him narrowly. At night-fall they hoped he would
take his leave; but he showed neither disposition to depart, nor
distrust at beholding himself the evident object of mingled fear and
suspicion. They concluded to send him on board the _Mayflower_ for
safe-keeping, and Samoset went willingly to the shallop; but it was low
tide, and they could not reach the vessel. So they lodged him in Steven
Hopkins's house. The next day he left them to go to Massasoit, and they
finished by recognizing him as a friend, sent them by Heaven. Samoset
was the Pemaquid chief, of whom we should gladly know more than we do.
His communications were of importance to the Pilgrims, for Bradford
admits that the exact description he gave them of his own country and of
its resources was very profitable to them. I suppose it led to their
establishing the trading-houses at Penobscot and Kennebec, and to the
addition of the strip of country on the latter river to their patent of
1629, afterward enlarged by other tracts purchased of the Indians. The
Pilgrims preferred trading to fishing, and no subsequent colony had such
an opportunity to enrich themselves; but it was the policy of the
English adventurers to keep them poor, and it may be questioned whether
they developed the shrewdness in traffic for which their descendants
have become renowned.
Samoset's coming paved the way for that of Massasoit, who made his entry
into Plymouth with Indian pomp, in March. He was preceded by Samoset and
Squanto,[200] who informed the settlers that the king was close at hand.
The Pilgrims were then assembled under arms on the top of Burial Hill,
engaged in military exercise, and witnessed the approach of Massasoit
with his savage retinue of sixty warriors. Here were two representative
delegations of the Old World and the New; the English in steel caps and
corslets, the Indians in wild beasts' skins, paint, and feathers. The
bearing of the Christians was not more martial than that of the savages.
The Pilgrims stood on their dignity, and waited. At the king's request,
Edward Winslow went out to hold parley with him. His shining armor
delighted the Indian sachem, who would have bought it, together with his
sword, on the spot, but Winslow was unwilling to part with either. After
mutual salutations and some talk of King James, Massasoit, accompanied
by twenty, proceeds to the town, leaving Winslow a hostage in the hands
of Quadequina, his brother. At the town brook Massasoit is met by
Standish with half a dozen musketeers. Here are more grave salutations,
and then the king is conducted to an unfinished house, where the utmost
state the Pilgrims could contrive was a green rug and three or four
cushions placed on the floor. There is a roll of drum and blast of
trumpet in the street, and Bradford, attended by musketeers, enters. He
kisses the hand of the New England prince--"tho'," says Mourt, "the king
looked greasily"--and the savage kisses Bradford. Then they sit. The
governor calls for a stoup of strong waters, which he quaffs to the
king, after the manner of chivalry; the royal savage drinks, in return,
a great draught, that makes him "sweate all the time after."
"Give me the cups,
And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
The trumpet to the cannoneer without,
The cannons to the heavens, the heaven to earth.
'Now the king drinks to Hamlet.' Come, begin."
It may interest some readers to know what a real Indian king was like.
"He was," says an eye-witness, "a very lustie man, in his best yeares,
an able body, grave of countenance, and spare of speech; in his Attyre
little or nothing differing from the rest of his followers, only in a
great Chaine of white bone Beades about his necke; and at it behinde his
necke hangs a little bagg of Tobacco, which he dranke and gave us to
drinke; his face was painted with a sad red like murry, and oyled both
head and face, that hee looked greasily. All his followers, likewise,
were in their faces in whole or in part painted, some blacke, some red,
some yellow, and some white, some with crosses, and other Antick workes,
some had skins on them, and some naked, all strong, tall, all men in
appearance.
"One thing I forgot; the king had in his bosome, hanging to a string, a
great long knife. He marvelled much at our trumpet, and some of his men
would sound it as well as they could." Mourt also states that the king
trembled with fear while he sat by the governor, and that the savages
showed such apprehension of the fire-arms that the governor caused them
to be removed during the conference.
This was the first American Congress of which I have found mention. The
Indians knew what a treaty of amity meant. They needed no instruction in
international law. I believe they knew the Golden Rule, or had a strong
inkling of it. That was a convention more famous than the Field of the
Cloth of Gold, though there were but a green rug and a few cushions.
"The peace," Bradford writes, "hath now (1645) continued this
twenty-four years." "To which I may add," says Prince, "_yea, 30 years
longer, viz., to 1675_."
The Indians, at the entertainment given them in Plymouth, partook
heartily of the food set before them, but they could not be induced to
taste spices or condiments. Salt was not used by them. Gosnold regaled
them with a picnic at the Vineyard, of which John Brereton says, "the
Indians misliked nothing but our mustard, whereat they made many a sowre
face." I doubt not the English spread it thickly on the meat, even at
the hazard of good understanding.
It took these simple natives a long time to comprehend the English
method of correspondence. They could not penetrate the mystery of
talking paper. There is a story of an Indian sent by Governor Dudley to
a lady with some oranges, the present being accompanied with a letter in
which the number was mentioned. When out of the town, the Indian put the
letter under a stone, and going a short distance off, ate one of the
oranges. His astonishment at finding the theft discovered was unbounded.
I did not omit a ramble among the wharves, but saw little that would
interest the reader. When you are there, the proper thing to do is to
take a boat and cross the bay to Clark's Island and Duxbury. We sailed
over the submerged piles at the end of Long Wharf; for the pier, once
the pride of Plymouth, was fast going to wreck. The tops of the piles,
covered with sea-weed kept in motion by the waves, bore an unpleasant
resemblance to drowned human heads bobbing up and down. As we passed
close to the new light-house off Beach Point, the boatman remarked that
when it was being placed in position the caisson slipped in the slings,
and dropped to the bottom nearer the edge of the channel than was
desirable.
[Illustration: THE GURNET.]
Having wind enough, we were soon up with Saquish Head, and in a few
minutes more were fast moored to the little jetty at Clark's Island. The
presence at one time of two islands in Plymouth Bay is fully attested by
competent witnesses. Many have supposed Brown's Island, a shoal seaward
of Beach Point, to have been one of these, tradition affirming that the
stumps of trees have been seen there. One author[201] believes Brown's
Island to have been above water in the time of the Pilgrims. Champlain
locates two islands on Duxbury side, with particulars that leave no
doubt where they then were. Mourt twice mentions them, and they are on
Blauw's map inside the Gurnet headland. In an account of Plymouth
Harbor, printed near the close of the last century, two islands are
mentioned: "Clark's, consisting of about one hundred acres of excellent
land, and Saquish, which was joined to the Gurnet by a narrow piece of
sand: for several years the water has made its way across and insulated
it. The Gurnet is an eminence at the southern extremity of the beach, on
which is a light-house, built by the State."[202]
Bradford mentions the narrow escape of their pinnace from shipwreck on
her return from Narraganset in 1623, by "driving on ye _flats_ that lye
without, caled Brown's Ilands." Winthrop relates that in 1635 "two
shallops, going, laden with goods, to Connecticut, were taken in the
night with an easterly storm and cast away upon Brown's Island, near the
Gurnett's Nose, and the men all drowned." In 1806 it was, as now, a
shoal. There can be little dispute as to Saquish having been permanently
united to the main-land by those shifting movements common to a
sea-coast of sand.[203]
It is rather remarkable that, with a sea-coast exceeding that of the
other New England colonies, Plymouth had so few good harbors. The beach,
the safeguard of Plymouth, was once covered on the inner side with plum
and wild cherry trees, pitch-pines, and undergrowth similar to that
existing on Cape Cod and the adjacent islands. The sea has, in great
storms, made a clean breach through it, digging channels by which
vessels passed. There was a shocking disaster within the harbor in
December, 1778, when the privateer brig _General Arnold_ broke from her
anchorage in the Cow Yard,[204] and was driven by the violence of the
gale upon the sand-flats. Twenty-four hours elapsed before assistance
could be rendered, and when it arrived seventy-five of the crew had
perished from freezing and exhaustion, and the remainder were more dead
than alive.[205]
As we sailed I observed shoals of herring breaking water, or, as the
fishermen word it, "scooting." Formerly they were taken in prodigious
quantity, and used by the Pilgrims to enrich their land. Squanto gave
them the hint of putting one in every hill of corn. His manner of
fishing for eels, I may add, was new to me. He trod them out of the mud
with his feet, and caught them in his hands. I was surprised at the
number of seals continually rising within half a cable's length of the
boat, at which they curiously gazed with their bright liquid eyes. We
did them no harm as ever and anon one pushed his sleek round head and
whiskered muzzle above water. Hundreds of them disport themselves here
in summer, though in winter they usually migrate.
[Illustration: WATSON'S HOUSE, CLARK'S ISLAND.]
It is only a little way from the landing-place at Clark's Island to the
venerable Watson mansion, seen embowered among trees as we
approached.[206] The parent house was removed from its first situation,
rather nearer the water than it now stands, and has incorporated with
itself newer additions, till it is quite lost in the transformation it
has undergone. The island is a charming spot, and the house a
substantial, hospitable one. I did not like it the less because it was
old, and seemed to carry me something nearer to the Pilgrims than any of
the white band of houses I saw across the bay. Ducks, turkeys, geese,
and fowls lived in good-fellowship together in the barn-yard, where were
piled unseaworthy boats; and store of old lumber-drifts the sea had
provided against the winter. The jaw-bone of a whale, that Mr. Watson
said he had found stranded on the beach, and brought home on his back,
lay bleaching in the front yard. I may have looked a trifle incredulous,
for the hale old gentleman, turned, I should say, of three-score, drew
himself up as if he would say, "Sir, I can do it again."
[Illustration: ELECTION ROCK, CLARK'S ISLAND.]
After showing us his family portraits, ancient furniture, and other
heir-looms, our host told us how Sir Edmund Andros had tried to
dispossess his ancestors. My companion and myself then took the path
leading to Election Rock, that owes its name, doubtless, to some local
event. It is a large boulder, about twelve feet high, on the highest
point of the island. Two of its faces are precipitous, while the
western side offers an easy ascent. At the instance of the Pilgrim
Society, the following words, from "Mourt's Relation," have been graven
on its face:
"On the
Sabboth Day
wee rested.
20 December,
1620."
As is well known to all who have followed the fortunes of the little
band of eighteen--and who has not followed them in their toilsome
progress in search of a haven of rest?--their shallop, after narrowly
escaping wreck among the shoals of Saquish, gained a safe anchorage
under the shelter of one of the then existing islands. It is probable
that when they rounded Saquish Head they found themselves in smoother
water.
The gale had carried away their mast and sail. Their pilot proved not
only ignorant of the place into which he was steering, but a coward when
the pinch came. They were on the point of beaching the shallop in a cove
full of breakers, when one of the sailors bid them about with her, if
they were men, or else they would be all lost. So that the fortunes of
the infant colony hung, at this critical moment, on the presence of mind
of a nameless mariner.
Cold, hungry, and wet to the skin, they remained all night in a
situation which none but the roughest campaigner would know how rightly
to estimate. The Indians had met them, at Eastham, with such determined
hostility that they expected no better reception here. Their arms were
wet and unserviceable. As usual, present discomfort triumphed over their
fears, for many were so much exhausted that they could no longer endure
their misery on board the shallop. Some of them gained the shore, where
with great difficulty they lighted a fire of the wet wood they were able
to collect. The remainder of the party were glad to join them before
midnight; for the wind shifted to north-west, and it began to freeze.
They had little idea where they were, having come upon the land in the
dark. It was not until day-break that they knew it to be an island.
Surely, these were times to try the souls of men, and to wring the
selfishness out of them.
This night bivouac, this vigil of the Pilgrims around their blazing
camp-fire, the flames painting their bronzed faces, and sending a
grateful warmth into benumbed bodies, was a subject worthy the pencil of
Rembrandt. I doubt that they dared lay their armor aside or shut their
eyes the live-long night. I believe they were glad of the dawn of a
bright and glorious December day.[207] They dried their buff coats,
cleansed their arms of rust, and felt themselves once more men fit for
action. Then they shouldered their muskets and reconnoitred the island.
Probably the eighteen stood on the summit of this rock.
I found Clark's Island to possess a charm exceeding any so-called
restoration or monumental inscription--the charm of an undisturbed
state. No doubt much of the original forest has disappeared, and Boston
has yet to return the cedar gate-posts so carefully noted by every
succeeding chronicler of the Old Colony. A few scrubby originals of this
variety yet, however, remain; and the eastern side of the island is not
destitute of trees. The air was sweet and wholesome, the sea-breeze
invigorating. In the quietude of the isle the student may open his
history, and read on page and scene the story of a hundred English
hearts sorely tried, but triumphing at last.
History has not told us how the eighteen adventurous Pilgrims passed
their first Sabbath on Clark's Island. One writer says very simply "wee
rested;" and his language re-appears on the tablet of imperishable rock.
Bradford says, on the "last day of ye weeke they prepared ther to keepe
ye Sabbath." If ever they had need of rest it was on this day; and if
ever they had reason to give thanks for their "manifold deliverances,"
now was the occasion. They would hardly have stirred on any enterprise
without their Bible; and probably one having the imprint of Geneva, with
figured verses, was now produced. Bradford, yet ignorant of his wife's
death, may have prayed, and Winslow exhorted, as both admit they often
did in the church. Master Carver may have struck the key-note of the
Hundredth Psalm, "the grand old Puritan anthem;" and even Miles Standish
and the "saylers" three, may have joined in the forest hymnal.[208]
Hood, in his "History of Music in New England," speaking of the early
part of the eighteenth century, says: "Singing psalms, at that day, had
not become an amusement among the people. It was used, as it ever ought
to be, only as a devotional act. So great was the reverence in which
their psalm-tunes were held, that the people put off their hats, as they
would in prayer, whenever they heard one sung, though not a word was
uttered."
On leaving Clark's Island we steered for Captain's Hill. By this time
the water had become much roughened, or, to borrow a word from the
boatmen's vocabulary, "choppy;" I should have called it hilly. Our
attempt to land at Duxbury was met with great kicking, bouncing, and
squabbling on the part of the boat, which seemed to like the chafing of
the wharf as little as we did the idea of a return to Plymouth against
wind and tide. Quiet perseverance, however, prevailed, and, after
clambering up the piles, we stood upon the wharf. A short walk by the
cart-way, built to fetch stone from the pier to the monument, brought us
to the brow of the hill.
Captain's Hill, named from Captain Miles Standish, its early possessor,
is on a peninsula jutting out between Duxbury and Plymouth bays. Its
surface is smooth, with few trees, except those belonging to the
farm-houses near its base. The soil, that is elsewhere in Duxbury sandy
and unproductive, is here rather fertile, which accounts for its having
become the seat of the puissant Captain Standish. The monument, already
mentioned as in progress, had advanced as high as the foundations. As
originally planned, it was to be built of stones contributed by each of
the New England States, and by the several counties and military
organizations of Massachusetts.
Standish, about 1632, settled upon this peninsula, building his house on
a little rising ground south-east of the hill near the shore. All traces
that are left of it will be found on the point of land opposite Mr.
Stephen M. Allen's house. The cellar excavation was still visible when I
visited it, with some of the foundation-stones lying loosely about.
Except a clump of young trees that had become rooted in the hollows, the
point is bare, and looks anything but a desirable site for a homestead.
Plymouth is in full view, as is also the harbor's open mouth. The space
between the headland on which the house stood and Captain's Hill was at
one time either an arm of the sea, or else in great gales the water
broke over the level, forming a sort of lagoon. Mr. Winsor, in his
"History of Duxbury," says the sea, according to the traditions of the
place, once flowed between Standish's house and the hill. The ground
about the house, he adds, has been turned up in years past, the search
being rewarded by the recovery of several relics of the old
inhabitant.[209] The house is said to have been burned, but so long ago
that even the date has been quite forgotten. On this same neck Elder
Brewster is believed to have lived, but the situation of his dwelling is
at best doubtful.
The earliest reference I have seen to the tradition of John Alden
"popping the question" to Priscilla Mullins for his friend, Miles
Standish, is in "Alden's Epitaphs," printed in 1814. No mention is there
of the snow-white bull,
"Led by a cord that was tied to an iron ring in its nostrils,
Covered with crimson cloth, and a cushion placed for a saddle."
John Alden's marriage took place, it is supposed, in 1621. The first
cattle brought to Plymouth were a bull, a heifer, and "three or four
jades," sent by Mr. Sherley, of the Merchant's Association, in 1624.
They were consigned to Winslow and Allerton, to be sold. The tradition
of the embassy of Alden, and of the incomparably arch rejoinder of
Priscilla, "Prythee, John, why don't you speak for yourself?" was firmly
believed in the family of Alden, where, along with that of the young
cooper having first stepped on the ever-famous rock, it had passed from
the mouth of one generation to another, without gainsaying.
I am not of those who experience a thrill of joy at destroying the
illusions of long-hoarded family traditions. What of romance has been
interwoven with the singularly austere lives of the Puritans, gracious
reader, let us cherish and protect. The province of the Dryasdust of
to-day is to bewilder, to deny the existence of facts that have passed
without challenge for centuries. The farther he is from the event, the
nearer he accounts himself to truth. Historic accuracy becomes another
name for historic anarchy. Nothing is settled. The grand old characters
he strips of their hard-earned fame can not confront him. Would they
might! Columbus, Tell, Pocahontas, are impostors: Ireson's Ride and
Standish's Courtship are rudely handled. His tactics would destroy the
Christian religion. Without doubt mere historic truth is better written
in prose, but by all means let us put a stop to the slaughter of all the
first-born of New England poesy. Let us have Puritan lovers and
sweethearts while we may. "What is your authority?" asked a visitor of
the guide who was relating the story of a ruined castle. "We have
tradition, and if you have any thing better we will be glad of it."
The position of Standish in the colony was in a degree anomalous, for he
was neither a church member nor a devout man. But the Pilgrims, who knew
on occasion how to smite with the sword, did not put too trifling an
estimate upon the value of the little iron man. He seems to have
deserved, as he certainly received, their confidence, as well in those
affairs arising out of religious disorders among them as in those of a
purely military character. When wanted, they knew where he was to be
found.
After his fruitless embassy to England, Standish seems to have turned
his sword into a pruning-hook, leading a life of rural simplicity,
perhaps of comparative ease. He had, as the times went, a goodly estate.
There is little doubt he was something "splenetic and rash," or that the
elders feared he would bring them into trouble by his impetuous temper.
He was of a race of soldiers.[210] Hubbard calls him a little chimney
soon fired. Lyford speaks of him as looking like a silly boy, and in
utter contempt. The Pilgrims managed his infirmities with address, and
he served them faithfully as soldier and magistrate. It is passing
strange a man of such consequence as he should sleep in an unknown
grave.
Near the foot of Captain's Hill is an old gambrel-roofed house, with
the date of 1666 on the chimney. At the entrance the stairs part on
each side of an immense chimney-stack. The timbers, rough-hewn and
exposed to view, are bolted with tree-nails. One fire-place would have
contained a Yule-log from any tree in the primeval forest. The hearth
was in breadth like a side-walk. On the doors were wooden latches, or
bobbins, with the latch-string out, as we read in nursery tales. The
front of the house was covered with climbing vines, and, taken
altogether, as it stood out against the dark background of the hill, was
as picturesque an object as I have seen in many a day.[211]
I would like to walk with you two miles farther on, and visit the old
Alden homestead, the third that has been inhabited by the family since
pilgrim John built by the margin of Eagle Tree Pond. This old house,
erected by Colonel Alden, grandson of the first-comer of the name, is
still in the same family, and would well repay a visit; but time and
tide wait for us.
Farther on I have rambled over ancient Careswell, the seat of the
Winslows, a family with a continuous stream of history, from Edward, the
governor, who became one of Cromwell's Americans, and died in his
service (you may see his letters in the ponderous folios of Thurloe),
down to the winner in the sea-fight between the _Kearsarge_ and
_Alabama_. Beyond is the mansion Daniel Webster inhabited in his
lifetime, and the hill where, among the ancient graves, he lies
entombed. Here, in Kingston, General John Thomas, of the Revolution,
lived.
[Illustration: CHURCH'S SWORD.]
Another military chieftain, little less renowned than Standish, was
Colonel Benjamin Church, the famous Indian fighter. He was
Plymouth-born, but lived some time in Duxbury. In turning over the pages
of Philip's and King William's wars, we meet him often enough, and
always giving a good account of himself. One act of the Plymouth
authorities during Philip's war deserves eternal infamy. It drew from
Church the whole-hearted denunciation of a brave man.
During that war Dartmouth was destroyed. The Dartmouth Indians had not
been concerned in this outrage, and after much persuasion were induced
to surrender themselves to the Plymouth forces. They were conducted to
Plymouth. The Government ordered all of them to be sold as slaves, and
they were transported out of the country, to the number of one hundred
and sixty.[212]
I despaired of being able to match this act of treachery with any
contemporaneous history. But here is a fragment that somewhat approaches
it in villainy. In 1684 the King of France wrote M. de la Barre,
Governor of New France, to seize as many of the Iroquois as possible,
and send them to France, where they were to serve in the galleys, in
order to diminish the tribe, which was warlike, and waged war against
the French. Many of them were actually in the galleys of
Marseilles.[213]
The balance is still in our favor. In 1755 we expatriated the entire
French population of Acadia. Mr. Longfellow tells the story graphically
in "Evangeline." John Winslow, of Marshfield, was the instrument chosen
by the home government for the work. It was conducted with savage
barbarity. Families were separated, wives from husbands, children from
parents. They were parceled out like cattle among the English
settlements. Their aggregate number was nearly two thousand persons,
thenceforth without home or country. One of these outcasts, describing
his lot, said, "It was the hardest that had happened since our Saviour
was upon earth." The story is true.
Our little boat worked her way gallantly back to Plymouth. Though
thoroughly wet with the spray she had flung from her bows, I was not
ill-pleased with the expedition. Figuratively speaking, my knapsack was
packed, my staff and wallet waiting my grasp. With the iron horse that
stood panting at the door I made in two hours the journey that Winthrop,
Endicott, and Winslow took two days to accomplish. Certainly I found
Plymouth much changed. The Pilgrims would hardly recognize it, though
now, as in centuries before their coming,
"The waves that brought them o'er
Still roll in the bay, and throw their spray,
As they break along the shore."
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[193] These trees are said to have been planted in 1783, by Thomas
Davis.
[194] Wife of Samuel Fuller. She gave the church the lot of ground on
which the parsonage stood.--_Allen._
[195] See Appendix to Bradford's History.
[196] In 1741, when it was proposed to build a wharf near the rock, it
was pointed out as the identical landing-place of the Pilgrims by Elder
Thomas Faunce, who, having been born in 1646, had received the fact from
the original settlers.
[197] This party consisted of eighteen persons--viz., Miles Standish,
John Carver, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, John Tilley, Edward
Tilley, John Howland, Richard Warren, Steven Hopkins, and Edward Doten.
Besides these were two seamen, John Alderton and Thomas English. Of the
ship's company were Clark and Coppin, two of the master's mates, the
master-gunner, and three sailors. This little band of discoverers left
the ship at anchor at Cape Cod Harbor on the 16th of December. Mourt
calls Alderton and English "two of our seamen," in distinction from the
ship's company proper, they having been sent over by the undertakers, in
the service of the plantation.
[198] On her return voyage the _Fortune_ was seized by a French
man-of-war, Captain Frontenan de Pennart, who took Thomas Barton,
master, and the rest prisoners to the Isle of Rhe, plundering the vessel
of beaver worth five hundred pounds, belonging to the Pilgrims. The
vessel and crew were discharged after a brief detention.--"British
Archives."
[199] First spelled Swansea, and named from Swansea, in South Wales.
[200] Squanto was one of the Indians kidnaped by Hunt, and the last
surviving native inhabitant of Plymouth. He had lived in London with
John Slany, merchant, treasurer of the Newfoundland Company.
[201] Winsor, "History of Duxbury," p. 26, note.
[202] See _ante_, also "Massachusetts Historical Collections," vol. ii.,
p. 5. First light-house erected 1763; burned 1801.
[203] Saquish is the Indian for clams. They are of extraordinary size in
Plymouth and Duxbury.
[204] An anchorage near Clark's Island, so called from a cow-whale
having been taken there.
[205] The following account of what straits light-keepers have been
subjected to in coast-harbors during the past winter will perhaps be
read with some surprise by those acquainted with Plymouth only in its
summer aspect: "On Tuesday evening, February 9th, 1875, the United
States revenue steamer _Gallatin_ put into Plymouth harbor for the
night, to avoid a north-west gale blowing outside. On the morning of the
10th, at daylight, when getting under way, Captain Selden discovered a
signal of distress flying on Duxbury Pier Light. The light-house was so
surrounded by ice that he was utterly unable to reach the pier with a
boat; the captain, therefore, steamed the vessel through the ice near
enough to converse with the keeper, and found that he had had no
communication with any one outside of the light since December 22d,
1874; that his fuel and water were out; and that they had been on an
allowance of a pint of water a day since February 6th, 1875. The steamer
forced her way to within some fifty or seventy-five yards of the pier,
when Lieutenants Weston and Clayton, with the boats, succeeded, after
two hours' hard work cutting through the ice, in reaching the pier, and
furnished the keeper and his wife with plenty of wood and water."
[206] There is tradition for it that Edward Dotey, the fighting
serving-man, was the first who attempted to land on Clark's Island, but
was checked for his presumption. Elkanah Watson was one of the three
original grantees of the island, which has remained in the family since
1690. Previous to that time it belonged to the town. The other
proprietors were Samuel Lucas and George Morton.
[207] Saturday, December 9th, Old Style.
[208] No reasonable doubt can be entertained that the Pilgrims' first
religious services were held in Provincetown Harbor, either on board the
_Mayflower_ or on shore. They were not the men and women to permit
several Sabbaths to pass by without devotional exercises.
[209] The first substance discovered was a quantity of barley, charred
and wrapped in a blanket. Ashes, as fresh as if the fire had just been
extinguished, were found in the chimney-place, with pieces of an
andiron, iron pot, and other articles. There were discovered, also, a
gun-lock, sickle, hammer, whetstone, and fragments of stone and earthen
ware. A sword-buckle, tomahawk, brass kettle, etc., with glass beads,
showing the action of intense heat, likewise came to light.
[210] I find that a Captain Standish, who is called a great commander, a
captain of foot, was killed in an attack by Lord Strange on Manchester,
England, dining the Civil War, 1642.
[211] This house has been stated to have been built in part of materials
from the house of Captain Miles Standish.
[212] Baylies's "New Plymouth."
[213] "Massachusetts Archives."
[Illustration: PROVINCETOWN FROM THE HILLS.]