at Leyden, Holland. Here they had prospered; but they were still English, and, seeing their children growing up with distinctly Dutch characteristics, they determined to migrate to a land where the son of an Englishman would grow up an Englishman. It is often said that the chief aim of the Puritans was to settle in a land where they could worship God as they pleased. This, however, they were quite at liberty to do in Holland. It might be said with greater truthfulness that they desired to settle in a land where they could compel others to worship God as they commanded—and this they managed quite effectively for some years after their landing.

THE PILGRIMS

They accordingly obtained from the London branch of the Virginia Company permission to settle at the mouth of the Delaware, and from the king the promise that he would “wink at their heresy.” When all was ready, the youngest and strongest of the Leyden congregation, with Brewster, Bradford, Winslow, and Myles Standish at their head, repaired to Delft Haven, where they embarked for England upon the Speedwell. At Southampton they were joined by the Mayflower, with recruits from London, and the two little vessels turned their prows toward the vast waters of the Atlantic.

PLYMOUTH ROCK

The granite boulder on which the Pilgrims are said to have landed in 1620.

The Speedwell, however, soon sprang a leak, and the two vessels entered the harbor of Plymouth in Devonshire, where as many as possible of the Speedwell’s passengers were transferred to the Mayflower, those who could not be there accommodated being placed ashore. As the Mayflower glided out of the harbor on September 6, 1620, the one hundred and two devoted souls on board waved a sad farewell to their twenty disconsolate fellow Pilgrims who stood on the quay. As the dim outlines of ancient Cornwall faded from their view, the hearts of flesh cried out, but the steady voice of the Spirit gave them courage; for to the Puritan, in spite of his faults, which were many and great, duty was always first, and the planting of the wilderness with the choicest seed, as he modestly called himself, was a solemn duty laid upon him by God.

Copr. 1906. A. S. Burbank, Plymouth, Mass.

NATIONAL MONUMENT TO THE FOREFATHERS

Erected in remembrance of their sufferings for civil and religious liberty.

Driven from their course, lost on the vast oceans of an unknown world, the little company pressed bravely on, and on November 9 sighted Cape Cod, far to the north of their intended destination. Here their patent was useless, and as some of the company in “discontented and mutinous speeches” during the voyage had declared that “they would use their own liberty” after landing, it was thought wise to draw up a compact binding its signers to render “all due submission and obedience” to the government therein provided. This document has been called the first written constitution in the world’s history. It was not a constitution, however; but only a compact.

PLYMOUTH ROCK

After five weeks of careful inspection of the coast they selected for their colony a spot which Captain John Smith had already named Plymouth, in honor of the lovely harbor from which they had sailed. Here, as tradition says, upon a great rock, now known throughout the world as Plymouth Rock, they landed on December 21, plowed through the deep snow, and amid the “murmuring pines and the hemlocks” began to build a House of God and about it rude cabins of logs. To this scene every true American heart should turn with reverence, whatever