MAGAZINE OF AMERICAN HISTORY

VOL. VIII

DECEMBER 1882

No. 12

TH

PLYMOUTH ROCK RESTORED

I.

HE removal of Plymouth Rock from its private burial-yard in front of Pilgrim Hall, where it had lain for nearly fifty years, to its old bed-rock near the quickening, world-uniting sea, has suggested an attempt to restore this ancient stepping-stone to its historical connection with other Pilgrim landing-places, upon Clark's Island and Cape Cod, together with a brief review of other restorations now in progress at Plymouth through the generous aid of J. Henry Stickney, of Baltimore, to whom the credit of restoring Plymouth Rock belongs.

Popular tradition, the celebration for more than a century of Forefather's Day with its splendid oratory, the influence of churches in New England, the press, pictorial art, poetic imaginâtion—all these influences, and many more besides, have contributed to the development of the now almost universal idea among Americans and foreigners, that the Pilgrim Fathers first landed upon Plymouth Rock. The world is very willing to believe this pleasing tradition, and there is no reason for supposing that the world will ever renounce it, if indeed such apostasy were desirable. The world likes general and comprehensive ideas, and Plymouth Rock stands very properly for the first permanent landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at New Plymouth. The Rock well typifies the historic idea that they had come to stay in that vicinity. It is impossible for a modern pilgrim to contemplate that low-lying wharf by the sea, with Cole's Hill rising above it-Cole's Hill, the first burying-ground of the Pilgrims-without the conviction stealing over him that this traditional and actual landing-place is different from all others. Here, after the explorers had landed from the Mayflower, they "came to a conclusion by most voyces, to set on the maine Land, on the first place, on a high ground, where there is a great deale of Land cleared;" here at Plymouth all finally, but gradually, disembarked, men, women, and children;

here they settled; here they lived; here they died, and here they were buried. "No New Englander," said President Dwight, of Yale College, in his "Travels," written nearly a century ago, "No New Englander who is willing to indulge his native feelings, can stand upon the rock where our ancestors set the first foot after their arrival on the American shore, without experiencing emotions very different from those which are excited by any common object of the same nature. No New Englander could be willing to have that rock buried and forgotten." This is the voice of a popular sentiment which will never die.

But with all reverence for popular sentiment and current tradition, it is nevertheless the duty of the rising generation of American students to discriminate between emotion and fact. Without disturbing popular or individual affection for Plymouth Rock and for "the ancient Towne of Plymouth," which affection indeed can never be moved, it is nevertheless possible and desirable for all fair-minded, open-hearted readers of Plymouth history to examine its preface, which, if rightly understood, will only add intelligent interest to the volume itself. It is not intended, in this article, to attempt any historical restorations by the manufacture of new materials, but simply to point out the historic relation of a few old facts, and to join them together, as Mr. Stickney has at last reunited Plymouth Rock, which had been sundered for more than a hundred years.

Germany, England, and New England have been stepping-stones for the Aryan race in its colonial progress westward. Britain was peopled by immigrating Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, who settled in self-governing village communities; the Celtic land became Teutonic land; a new Germany was reproduced. This process was repeated by the English in a New World. Pilgrims and Puritans, imbued with the same old English spirit of independence and self-government in religious forms, peopled a New England with Teutonic village life, strengthened by English parish experience. But the Pilgrim Fathers did not come to America straight from their mother country; they first went back to their older Fatherland, which then appeared to be a land of greater liberty; after a sojourn in Holland they returned upon their footsteps and made England the stepping-stone to a New England. While the Pilgrims were actuated by a great hope and inward zeal "of laying some good foundation," though they themselves should prove but "stepping-stones unto others," it should nevertheless be remembered that it was English liberty, English independence of character, English colonial enterprise, English capital, English maritime experience, an English ship, manned by English sailors familiar with the New England coast, that brought the Pilgrims safely from old Plymouth to New Plymouth. Such facts are

historic islands indicating the relation of divided lands. May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say," with William Bradford, the original historian of Plymouth Plantation, " Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean"?

It was on November 19th, new style, that the Pilgrims who sailed from Plymouth, England, on September 16, 1620, first sighted Cape Cod. Bradford explains how this cape, named by Gosnold in 1602, "retains ye former name amongst sea-men," although Captain John Smith called it Cape James. Upon November 21st, just one month before the first landing of explorers at Plymouth, the Mayflower came to anchor in the bay of Cape Cod, "wherein 1000. saile of Ships may safely ride." The same day, before any men were allowed to go ashore, the famous Pilgrims' Compact was drawn up and signed in the cabin of the Mayflower, not for the sake of instituting government de novo, but for the purpose of restraining certain adventurers who threatened to "use their owne libertie" after landing, inasmuch as the Pilgrim patent was for lands in Virginia and not for lands in New England. The fundamental idea of this famous document was that of a contract, based upon the common law of England. Men who professed themselves "loyall Subiects of our dread soveraigne Lord King IAMES," men who had undertaken to plant an English colony in English dominions, were founding government upon a very ancient basis.

After signing the compact, upon the very same day, sixteen men, well armed, were set ashore in the long boat to spy out the land, and others were sent with them "to fetch wood." This was the first landing of the Pilgrims in New England. The exploring party ranged across that narrow neck of land at the end of Cape Cod, and perhaps from Long Point to Race Point. They found sand-hills which reminded them of "the Downes in Holland," although the former were far better, for the surface was often of "excellent blacke earth" of a spade's depth. Moreover the land was well wooded, down to the very sea, and without underbrush, so that they could easily make their way beneath the forest trees. Evidently, in those times, the land's end of Cape Cod was not the barren, sandy tract which the modern pilgrim finds it to be as he makes his toilsome way in a "tip-cart" or on foot across the dunes from Provincetown village to Race Point. The surviving name, "Wood End," indicates that a forest-growth once flourished upon the southwest side of Cape Cod. The desolation of Sahara has been brought upon this region by cutting off the timber, thus allowing the sand to drift in from the beach.

The above exploring party returned at night to the Mayflower with their boat full of juniper, "which smelled very sweet," and which the Pil

ERDERS
BUCK