THE PILGRIM SETTLEMENT.
“Quit ye as men; be true then, who would fight
In this so holy cause; think ye a soul
Weighed down by beggarly lusts can have a right
To urge God’s ark of freedom to its goal?
They must be holy who’re ordained to be
The high priests of a people’s liberty.”
WILSON.
A short survey of the surrounding country convinced the Pilgrim
pioneers that the long-sought spot had at last been found. They
determined to plant their settlement on Plymouth Rock, with no other
seal than the broad one of the Divine sanction. Entering their
shallop, they soon regained the “Mayflower.” Carver recited the story
of their adventures to the clustering voyagers; and when he said that
a spot had been found where they might erect their Ebenezer, devoutly
all thanked God.
At once the “Mayflower’s” course was shaped for Plymouth harbor,
where she dropped anchor on the 16th of December.[150] The first law
on the Pilgrim statute-book was, that each man should build his own
house.[151]
A few days after the arrival of the ship, “a party of colonists went
ashore to fell timber, to saw, to rive, to carry, and prepare for the
important work of building; and that day every man worked with a
will, hopefully and heartily. A new home, a pleasant refuge, future
security, was the aim of every one, and while each cheered the other,
the axes rang out in harmony with their hopes; their strokes were
as heavy as their hearts were light. The crowned oaks of the forest
did homage, and yielded their riches to found the infant state.”
After sufficient timber had been secured for present want, “many went
to work on an adjacent hill[152] to prepare fortifications; others
measured the land, and allotted the lots for building.”[153]
The houses were ranged in a double row along one street;[154]
and for economic reasons the community was divided into nineteen
families, an arrangement which necessitated fewer buildings and less
outlay.[155] Yet despite the energetic labors of the settlers, they
made haste slowly. At that inclement season it was almost impossible
to build. Happily the weather was moderate for December;[156] but
rain fell incessantly, which was disastrous to the health of men
already wasting away under consumptions and lung-fevers.[157] It was
remembered that “a green Christmas makes a fat church-yard.”
The Pilgrims were well satisfied with the site of their settlement,
hard and sterile as it was. Indeed, they had a devout habit of
looking on the good, rather than the evil of events, and this made
even their crosses easier to be borne. “This harbor,” they said,
“is a bay greater than Cape Cod, compassed with goodly land; and in
the bay are two fine islands,[158] uninhabited, wherein are nothing
but woods, oaks, pines, walnuts, beech, sassafras, vines, and other
trees which we know not. The bay is a most hopeful place, and has
innumerable store of fowl and excellent food; it cannot but contain
fish in their seasons; skate, cod, turbot, and herring, we have
tasted of. Here is abundance of muscles, the greatest and best we
ever saw, also crabs and lobsters in their time, infinite. The place
is in fashion like a sickle or fish-hook. The land for the crust of
the earth is a spit’s depth, excellent black mould, and fat in many
places; and vines are everywhere, and cherry-trees, plum-trees, and
many others whose names we know not. Many kinds of herbs we find in
winter hereabouts, as strawberry-leaves innumerable, sorrel, yarrow,
carrot, brook-lime, liverwort, water-cresses, great store of leeks,
and an excellent strong kind of flax or hemp. Here is sand, gravel,
an excellent clay, no better in the world, exceeding good for pots,
and it will wash like soap; we have the best water that ever we
drank, and the brooks will soon be full of fish.”[159]
So runs the journal of the Pilgrims. Hopeful and thankful for what
they had, they seemed anxious to be pleased, and to make the best
even of their ills. It was in no sour and bitter spirit that they
“Leaned their cheeks against the thick-ribbed ice,
And looked up with devout eyes to Him
Who bade them bloom, unblanched, amid the waste
Of desolation.”
After all, perhaps it was well even for their present safety that
they had landed on the bleak New England strand. “Had they been
carried, according to their desire, unto Hudson’s river,” says Cotton
Mather, “the Indians in those parts were at this time so many and
so mighty and so sturdy, that in probability all this feeble number
of Christians had been massacred by the bloody savages, as not long
after some others were; whereas the good hand of God now brought
them to a country wonderfully prepared for their entertainment by a
sweeping mortality that had lately been among the natives. ‘We have
heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work thou
didst in their days, in the times of old; how thou dravest out the
heathen with thy hand, and plantedst them; how thou didst afflict the
people, and cast them out.’ The Indians in these parts had newly,
even about a year or two before, been visited with such a prodigious
pestilence, as carried away not a tenth, but nine parts of ten; yea,
’tis said, nineteen of twenty among them; so that the woods were
almost cleared to make room for a better growth.
“It is remarkable that a Frenchman, who, not long before the Pilgrim
settlement, had by a shipwreck been made captive among the Indians
of New England, did, as the survivors report, just before he died
in their hands, tell these tawny pagans that ‘God, being angry with
them for their wickedness, would not only destroy them all, but also
people the place with another nation, which would not live after
their brutish manner.’ Those infidels then blasphemously said, ‘God
could not kill them,’ which was confuted by a horrible and unusual
plague, whereby they were consumed in such vast multitudes, that our
first ancestors found the land almost covered with their unburied
carcasses; and they that were alive were smitten into awful and
humble regard of the English by the terrors which the remembrance of
the Frenchman’s prophecy had imprinted on them.”[160]
During the first few months of their wilderness life, little occurred
of special public interest among the Pilgrims. The routine of their
days was undisturbed. Engrossed by the pressing present duties of the
hour, they labored to complete their preparations for the winter.
Their existence was that which is common in all pioneer settlements,
which has been led a thousand times since on our western prairies,
and which is led to-day by the settler who rears his log-cabin under
the shadow of the Rocky mountains.
The country seemed lonely and monotonous.[161] “Among the few
recorded incidents,” says Elliot, “we gather here and there some
facts which serve to illustrate the social and moral condition of
the exiles during these initial months of their western life. On the
21st of January, 1621, they celebrated public worship for the first
time on shore. On the 17th of February, Standish was chosen captain,
and all were arranged in military orders. This may be called their
first legislative act, the first communal life of men who believed in
and were forced to act out the principle of self-government; every
man could vote, and the ballot of the lowest colonist counted the
same as Governor Carver’s. Births and deaths varied the monotony
of existence. Peregrine White, the first born in New England, had
appeared in November, and six persons had died in December, among
whom was Dorothy, Bradford’s wife, who was drowned. This was the
beginning of a mortality which carried dismay and destruction into
the weakened ranks.”[162]
Measures were taken for the military protection of the colony. “A
minion, a saker, and two other guns, were mounted on Fort Hill,”
where a block-citadel had been erected.[163] Standish was the _beau
ideal_ of a soldier—alert, provident, tireless. The words which
Longfellow has put into his mouth exhibit his genial humor and quaint
wisdom:
“‘Serve yourself, would you be well served, is an excellent adage;
So I take care of my arms, as scribes of their pens and their
ink-horns.
Then, too, there are my soldiers, my great, invincible army,
Twelve men, all equipped, having each his rest and his matchlock,
Eighteen shillings a month, together with diet and pillage,
And, like Cæsar, I know the name of each of my soldiers.’
This he said with a smile, that danced in his eyes, as the sunbeams
Dance on the waves of the sea, and vanish again in a moment.”[164]
The peculiar situation of the Pilgrims tended to increase that
rugged individuality, that self-confident earnestness, that somewhat
dogmatic vigor, which already characterized them, and which is still
a salient trait of their descendants. There they stood on a bleak and
desolate shore; bereaved of sympathy at home, without friends in the
wilderness, “with none to show them kindness or to bid them welcome.”
The nearest French settlement was at Port Royal; it was five hundred
miles and more of trackless forest to the English plantation of
Virginia.[165] The exiles were obliged to be self-centred; cut off
from the outer world and isolated, they could entertain no friends
but God and each other.
We can hardly be sufficiently thankful for the singular combination
of circumstances which produced the Plymouth settlement in 1620.
“Had New England been colonized immediately on the discovery of
the American continent, the old English institutions would have
been planted under the powerful influence of the Roman religion;
had the settlement been made under Elizabeth, it would have been
before activity of the public mind in religion had conducted to a
corresponding activity of mind in politics.” God builded better
than men knew; and when the time was ripe, he chose “the Pilgrims,
Englishmen, Protestants, exiles for religion, men disciplined by
misfortune, cultivated by opportunities of extensive observation,
equal in rank as in rights, bound by no code but that of religion and
the public will,”[166] and with these elements He planted a model
state, and bade it grow into a democratic, Christian commonwealth,
that it might be at once an exemplar and a benefactor to mankind.
The Pilgrims cheerfully accepted peril and discomfort to build such
a state. Peace under liberty—_sub libertate quietem_—this was their
aspiration, and they said,
“We ask a shrine for faith and simple prayer,
Freedom’s sweet waters, and untainted air.”[167]