FOREFATHERS' DAY
One does not need to seek the brow of Cole's Hill very early on
Forefathers' Day to see the star of morning rise and shine upon
Plymouth. It marks the passing of one of the four longest nights
of the year, those of the four days before Christmas, a memorable
period for all Americans, for during it the Pilgrim Fathers came
to Plymouth. According to the best authorities the exploring party
set foot on the famous rock on Monday, Dec. 21 (new style). But
the ship herself did not enter the harbor for five days. Friday,
the 18th, the explorers reached Clark's Island after dark and
spent the night most miserably, though it was next door to a
miracle that they got there alive and no doubt they were thankful
for that. How they battled by Manomet Point in the half gale and
high sea, the night already upon them and the harbor unknown to
any aboard, their rudder gone and their mast "broken in three
places," we know from Bradford's graphic description. On Saturday
they rested on their island and dried their clothes and their
gunpowder. On Sunday they prayed and otherwise kept the Sabbath as
was their want. On Monday they went ashore on the mainland, found
the situation desirable, and struck boldly across the bay to the
Mayflower inside the hook of the Cape, to tell the news.
So the first of the Forefathers set foot on Plymouth soil on the
21st of December, according to the revised calendar. But the
Mayflower herself did not enter the harbor till five days later.
"On the 15th of December," says Bradford (on the 25th as we now
reckon it, though ten days before the England they had left behind
would celebrate Christmas), "they weighed anchor to go to the
place they had discovered, and came within two leagues of it, but
were fain to bear up again, but the 16th day the wind became fair
and they arrived safely in the harbor and afterward took a better
view of the place and resolved where to pitch their dwellings and
the 25th day began to erect the first house for common use, to
receive them and their goods.
*****
Forefathers' Day is rightly set, then, on the 21st, though we have
really an all-winter landing of the Pilgrims, the ship remaining
in the harbor and being more or less their refuge until the 5th of
April, 1621. In some respects the place of their landing has
vastly changed. The waterfront is ugly with rough wharves and coal
pockets, store-houses and factories. The famous rock itself
reposes beneath a monstrous granite canopy and seems to have so
little connection with the sea that one at first sight is inclined
to levity, wondering where the landing party got the gang plank
which bridged such a distance. Yet it was in all reverence that I
sought Plymouth, hoping to in some measure bridge the three
centuries that lie between that day and this, and see the New
World in some measure as they saw it, at the same season.
For at least the seasons have not changed. The storms and the
calms, the snow and the sunshine, come now, as then, in cycles
that may not match day by day in all instances, but, taking year
by year, come surprisingly near it. There is more in the Old
Farmer's Almanack's serene forecast of the weather for an entire
year ahead than most of us are willing to admit. There are people
who back its oracle against the Weather Bureau and claim that they
travel warmer and drier by so doing. Yet if one makes a study of
Farmers' Almanack weather he finds that it wins by predicting the
same storms and the same cold snaps, the same drought and the same
rain for just about the same seasons, year after year, spreading
the prophecy over days enough to give it considerable leeway.
"About this time expect a storm," it says, and in the ten days of
the aforesaid time the storm is pretty apt to come.
So, to my joy, I found in Plymouth on my few days there on
Forefathers' Day week just about the weather Bradford reports for
that first voyage of the Mayflower's shallop to its harbor. "After
some hour's sailing," says Bradford, "it began to snow and rain,
and about the middle of the afternoon the wind increased and the
sea became very rough and they broke their rudder and it was as
much as two men could do to steer her with a couple of oars. But
their pilot bade them be of good cheer as he saw the harbor, but
the storm increased and night coming on they bore what sail they
could to get in while they could see. But herewith they broke
their mast in three pieces and their sail fell overboard in a very
grown sea, so that they were like to have been cast away."
[Illustration: Billington Path along the Border of "Billington Sea"]
Anyone who knows that Massachusetts coast in December will
recognize the weather, a wind from the northeast bringing mingled
rain and snow, not a gale, but a squally wind, with a "very grown
sea" such as beat upon the coast at the beginning of this week,
sending the white horses racing up the beach below Manomet Head,
which has been named for them, and smashing in continuous thunder
on the stern and rockbound cliffs between White Horse Beach and
Plymouth harbor.
To see Manomet in stormy December is to know how grim it is. The
wooded headland which the little shallop so desperately won by in
the gloom of that December twilight and storm has changed little
if any since that time. Stern and rock-bound it certainly is. The
sea of centuries has beaten against the great drumlins of boulder-till
and has not moved the boulders that bind them together. At
the most it has but washed out the smaller ones, leaving the sea
front surfaced with great white granite rocks that gleam like
marble in the sundown to the limits of the washing tide, then
shine olive green with the froth of the waves. From the sands of
White Horse Beach to those of the Spit in Plymouth harbor there is
no place where that storm-tossed shallop might have made a landing
with any hope of safety. To have turned toward the shore as the
pilot bade them when the mast broke would have been to drown the
whole company in the surf, in which case Plymouth would never have
been. No one knows the name of the "lustie seaman" who then
usurped the command and bade the rowers "if they were men, about
with her, or else they were all cast away." On the words of this
courageous unknown hung the lives of the company and perhaps the
fate of the expedition itself. It is a stern and rock-bound coast
in very truth, and if it seemed as dark and forbidding on that
December nightfall in 1620 as it did on one of the same date this
year, I for one would not have blamed them had they sailed away,
never to come back. For a quarter of a mile off shore scattered
boulders curried the surf and fluffed it into white foam. Its
deafening roar was filled with menace. Salt spray and sleet
mingled cut one's face rods back from the shore, and high up the
dark hill behind rose the gnarled woodland, wailing and tossing
its giant branches. With the fall of night no light was visible
from sea or shore. All was as primal, as chaotic, as menacing as
it had been on that Friday night three centuries before when the
Pilgrims' shallop beat in by the point, its tiny white sail
drowned like the wing of a seagull in the dusky welter of the sea.
[Illustration: The Stern and Rock-bound Coast which greeted the Pilgrims]
That night, as on the night that the Pilgrims came, the wind
changed to the westward and blew the storm to sea. Yet all night
from Cole's Hill I saw the dark clouds to seaward, lingering there
and refusing to be driven completely away, and in the gray of dawn
the morning star rose out of them, overmatching with its clear
light that of the Gurnet which shone from the murk of their depths
below. The frozen ground rang beneath the heel and the cold had
bitten deep. Out of the northwest a few flakes of snow came and it
was long before the sun shone through the clouds and touched the
top of Manomet Hill. Yet when it did it came with a burst of
golden glory and filled the sky with such rosy and benign colors
that one half expected to see a flight of Raphael's cherubs
through it to earth. And all the land beneath was softened with a
blue haze from east to south, making of it a country of romance
through which pricked towers of Aladdin palaces and in which one
knew at sight that he might find all his dearest dreams coming
true: Thus the Pilgrims saw it that first morning from Clark's
Island and the sight must have warmed the hearts of them and dried
the tears out as it dried the garments wet with salt spray and
cold rain.
The wind from the west was keen for the next few days, but it blew
all the forebodings out of the sky and to find the south side of a
hill or even a thicket was to find perfect comfort. The sea off
Manomet was no longer chaotic and menacing, but was stippled with
dancing light on a soft, rich blue that was as soothing to the
sense as the other had been disquieting. Along the south of White
Horse Beach the lapidary surf had strewn quartz pebbles that
gleamed in the clear sun like precious stones. It took little
effort of the imagination to find pocketfuls of rubies, pearls,
sapphires, and amethysts among these, and had it indeed been
"bright jewels of the mine" which the voyagers sought they might
have been pardoned for thinking they had found them there. And all
ashore under this alluring blue haze lay a country that was
superlatively lovely even under frozen skies and on the shortest
day of the year. Southerly toward it the shallop sailed in 1620,
under flocks of whirling white gulls, through flocks of black and
white Labrador ducks that then wintered in numbers along our
shores, from Clark's Island to the mouth of Town Brook.
Factories and dwellings line Town Brook, now in place of the
primeval forests of pine and oak. Its waters leap one dam after
another, but cannot escape pollution till their dark tide mingles
with that of the clear sea. But for all that the contour of the
chasms in the big sand hills through which it flows to the sea is
changed but little. The low sun leaves it in shadow most of the
day and one can fancy the Pilgrim children and perhaps their
elders glancing often up its shadowy canon under black growth, a
mysterious gulch down which at any time might stride the savages
they so feared, or other, worse terrors of the unknown wilderness.
The little knowledge of their day was but a tiny oasis in the vast
desert of unknown things, and in that country to the south and
west that was so alluring under the golden glow of the sun through
its soft blue haze might dwell both gorgons and chimeras dire. For
though the children were not with the explorers when they landed
from the shallop on Forefathers' Day, they came five days later in
the Mayflower itself.
There were twenty-eight of these children, varying in age from the
babe in arms to well-grown, lusty youths and maidens. Christmas
was at hand, and one fancies that all knew much about it, and
spoke little, perhaps not at all. So far as record goes they had
broken absolutely from all that they believed the follies of the
fatherland. Yet in the hearts of many, one can but think, must
have remained warm memories of Yule logs, of the boar's head,
piping hot and decked out with holly berries, and of the
low-ceiled, oak-wainscotted dining halls of Old World houses all
alight with candles and green with Christmas decorations. It is a
pity that in repudiating the folly they had to repudiate also the
fun. For just ashore in this land of mystery to which they had
come were opportunities for Christmas greenery and Christmas
feasting which they would have done well to take. The English
holly they had left behind, yet along Town Brook grew the black
alder with its red berries that are so pretty a substitute for the
others, a holly itself, or at least an Ilex. All about Plymouth in
the low grounds may be found these cheery, bright red berries,
even over on the seaward slope of Manomet Head I found them,
snuggling in hollows where tiny rivulets trickle down to the sea,
though on the ridge above them the oaks were dwarfed and storm-beaten
till one has difficulty in recognizing them for the variety
of tree that they are.
It is easy to believe that down to the very rack on which they
landed crept the club-moss which the descendants of the Pilgrims
so soon learned to call "evergreen." Tons of it we use today in
our Christmas decorations, nor does the supply from the
Massachusetts woods seem to diminish, ground-pine, common, and
"coral" evergreen, all varieties of the club-moss, that are
commonest out of the dozen that we have in all. Just up those dark
gullies Town Brook would have led them, as it will lead anyone
today, to a country that now, as it was then, is rich in winter
beauties of the woodland with which the exiles might well have
decorated the cabin of the Mayflower. And just within the woods in
any direction waited for them, had they had the will and the
wisdom to seek them, all kinds of Christmas cheer. Deer were
there, wild turkeys in great flocks and two varieties of grouse as
tame as chickens on a farm, and more delicious than any Christmas
goose which might have been served them in Holland or England.
There were no savages about Plymouth at the time and they might
have travelled the woods boldly, instead of taking prudent council
of their fears. But they need not have gone so far as that for
their Christmas feast. The sandy flats of nearby creeks were full
of clams and the sea of fish. The boar's head they might not have,
but there were splendid substitutes for it if they had cared to
make their Christmas feast of products of the new land to which
they had come.
Against all this, no doubt, they sternly set their faces, and
indeed, instead of feasting and good cheer on their December 25th,
they set soberly to work to build their first common house,
cutting greenery indeed, but not for decoration, and dining
abstemiously on the stores that they had shipped months before in
England. One can but believe that had they for a few bright
holidays put their fears behind them with their solemnity and
celebrated their own safe landing with a few roasted turkeys, a
few boiled cod and some clam soup, eaten in an evergreen-decorated
cabin of their good ship, or about a barbecue fire on shore, they
might have taken a step toward warding off the sickness which was
even then fastening itself upon them. But they certainly did not,
and in visiting their landing-place on their landing-day and
trying to see the world here as they then saw it, one must put
such riotous thoughts out of mind, as he must put the great
present-day town out of it.
Those two things aside on any before Christmas week it is possible
to see the landing-place of the Pilgrims much as they saw it, to
feel the same stormy weather sweep across the same sea and to see
landward the same hills clad with dark forests tossing their giant
branches and seeming to hold much of mystery and dread. To know
just a little of what they saw and felt one need but to stand on
the brow of Manomet Head when a December night lowers and the
northeast wind is hurling the surf on the rocks out of "a very
grown sea."