the Land’s End, when they were forced, by stress of weather, to put back into Plymouth. The captain of the Speedwell declared that his ship was too much battered to keep the seas. Though the man was lying in order to escape from the fulfilment of his charter, his word was taken. The Speedwell was abandoned, the pilgrims in her were bidden to come aboard the Mayflower to take the places of some who could endure no more. About twenty of the pilgrims left the expedition at Plymouth. They were discouraged by the hardship and seasickness, two doctors which never fail to teach the unfit that though many are called to the life of pioneers, very few are chosen. Among those who left the expedition at Plymouth was Robert Cushman.

On Wednesday, the 6th/16th September, the expedition left Plymouth for a third attempt. In the existing records little is said about the voyage; but it must have been a strange and terrible adventure to most of the party. The ship was very small, and crowded with people. Counting the crew, she must have held nearly a hundred and fifty people, in a space too narrow for the comfort of half that number. The passengers were stowed in the between decks, a sort of low, narrow room, under the spar deck, lit in fine weather by the openings of hatchways and gunports, and in bad weather, when these were closed, by lanterns. They lived, ate, slept, and were seasick in that narrow space. A woman bore a child, a man died there. They were packed so tightly, among all their belongings and stores, that they could have had no privacy. The ventilation was bad, even in fine weather. In bad weather, when the hatches were battened down, there was none. In bad weather the pilgrims lived in a fog, through which they could see the water on the deck washing from side to side, as the ship rolled, carrying their pans and clothes with it. They could only lie, and groan, and pray, in stink and misery, while the water from ill-caulked seams dripped on them from above. In one of the storms during the passage, the Mayflower broke her mainbeam. Luckily one of her passengers had a jackscrew, by means of which the damage was made good. But the accident added the very present fear of death to the other miseries of the passage.

The Mayflower made the land on the 9th/19th November, after a passage in which the chief events were the storm, birth and death above mentioned. On coming towards the shore the landfall was seen to be the strange curving crook of Cape Cod, in Massachusetts. The pilgrims’ patent was for a settlement in Virginia, far to windward in the south. There was no settlement of white people at Cape Cod. As they had made the land so far to the north the pilgrims thought that their best plan would be to beat down to the Hudson River and look for a place near the Dutch settlement in what is now New York. The crew of the ship refused to do this. Winter was coming on. They were not disposed to beat down a dangerous coast, to a doubtful welcome, in the teeth of the November gales. They told the pilgrims that they must go ashore where they could. Men were sent ashore to examine the land. On the 11th November, the pilgrims met together “to covenant and combine themselves together into a civil body politic.” The whole party numbered 102, of which 73 were male and 29 female. More than half of the number had come from Leyden. The covenant was signed by forty-one men, seven of whom were labourers. John Carver was selected the first governor of the community.

During the next few weeks, parties of the pilgrims searched for a good site for the settlement. On the 22nd of December the site was found in the grounds adjoining what is now Plymouth Harbour. The Mayflower was brought into the harbour, and on Monday, 25th December, the first house was begun. By the middle of January most of the pilgrims were ashore.

It is said that their first winter in the New World was mild. It was certainly very terrible to them. Want of fresh food, the harshness of the change of climate, the exposure and labour in the building of the town, and the intense cold of even a mild New England winter, were more than they could endure. Nearly half of them were dead within six months. Among the dead was the governor, John Carver, who died shortly after his re-election to office. His place was taken by William Bradford. In the early spring of 1621, an Indian called Samoset came to the pilgrims. He told them that the place where they had settled was called Patuxet, and that the Indians had deserted those parts owing to an outbreak of the plague. The Mayflower, sailing back to England in April, carried with her a tale of great mortality and the prospect of possible pestilence when the hot weather came.