all provissions." The partnership was then to be dissolved, each colonist and each merchant taking from the common property according to his shares of stock. The arrangement was clumsy, because it involved a system of labor in common; but it was generous toward the settlers. Penniless immigrants to Virginia became "servants," as separate, helpless individuals, to work for seven years under overseers, and at the end of the time to receive merely their freedom and some wild land. The penniless Pilgrims were servants for a time, in a sense; but only as one large body, and to a company of which they themselves were part: and their persons were controlled, and their labors directed, only by officers chosen by themselves from their own number. The settlers, it is true, felt aggrieved that the merchants did not grant them also for themselves one third of their time, together with the houses they might build and the land they might improve. But it is clear now that under such an arrangement the merchants would have lost their whole venture. As it was, they made nothing. 64. Two heart-breaking years dragged along in these negotiations with the Virginia Company and the London merchants; and the season of 1620 was far wasted when (September 16) the Mayflower at last set sail. Most of the congregation stayed at Leyden, with their aged pastor, John Robinson, to await the outcome of this first expedition, and only 102 of the more robust embarked for the venture. They meant to settle "in the northern part of Virginia," somewhere south of the Hudson. But the little vessel was tossed by the autumn storms until the captain lost his reckoning; and they made land, after ten weeks, on the bleak shore of New England, already in the clutch of winter (November 21). The tempestuous season, and the dangerous shoals off Cape Cod, made it unwise to continue the voyage. For some weeks they explored the coast in small boats, and finally decided to make their home at a place which Smith's map (§ 58) had already christened Plymouth; but it was, not till the fourth day of $65] THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT 57 January that they "peganne to erecte the first house, for commone use, to receive them and their goods." THE MAYFLOWER IN PLYMOUTH HARBOR. From an imaginative painting by W. F. Halsall, in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth. 3 65. Meantime, they had adopted the Mayflower Compact. The charter from the Virginia Company had provided that they should be governed by officers of their own choosing. The grant, however, had no force outside Virginia; and "some of the strangers among them let fall mutinous speeches," threatening to take advantage of this condition and "to use their own libertie." To prevent such anarchy, the Pilgrims, before landing, drew up and signed a "Compact," believing "that shuch an acte by them done might be as firme as any patent." This famous agreement has sometimes been called, carelessly, a written constitution of an independent state. This it is 1 These dates are New Style. Cf. § 37, note. Some common errors regarding the Pilgrim "landing" are criticized by Channing, I, 320. 2 The exact contents of the charter are not known; but Robinson's farewell letter to the emigrants, when they were leaving Europe, refers to them as having "become a body politik . . . to have only for your gouvernors them which yourselves shall make choyse of" (Source Book, No. 45). 3 Part of the expedition had joined it in England, without previous connection with the Leyden congregation. They had also a few " servants." not. It does not hint at independence, bu expresses lavish allegiance to the English crown. And it is not a constitution: it does not determine what officers there should be, nor how or Iny name of God Amen we whose names are underwriten. faith Haueing underfakon, for & glorie of god, and aduancemento THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT. From the original manuscript of when they should be chosen, nor what powers they should have. It resembles the preamble to a constitution. The signers merely declare their intention (in the absence of established authority) to maintain order by upholding the will of the majority of their own company.1 The way in which the new government was put in action is told by Bradford in few words: "Then [as soon as the Compact had been signed, while still in the Mayflower cabin] they choose, or rather confirmed, Mr. John Carver their 1 Source Book, No. 46. More truly regarded, the Compact is the first of a long series of similar agreements in America, in regions where settlement has for a time outrun government, first, on the coast of Maine and New Hampshire, then in the woods of Kentucky and Tennessee, then on the prairies of Illinois and Iowa, and very recently in Western mining camps § 67] DISAPPOINTMENTS AND HARDSHIPS 59 Gouvernor for that year. [Carver had probably been made governor before, under authority of the charter; such action would now need to be "confirmed."] And after they had provided a place for their goods . . . and begunne some small cottages, as time would admitte, they mette and consulted of lawes and orders." 66. Expectations of quick-won wealth in America still dazzled men's minds. In 1624 Captain John Smith wrote: "I promise no Mines of gold; yet, . . . New England hath yeelded already, by generall computation, £100,000 at least in the fisheries. Therefore, honourable countrymen, let not the meanness of the word fish distaste you, for it will afford as good gold as the Mines of Guiana, or Potassie, with less hazard and charge, and more certainty." Individual traders, too, had sometimes made sudden fortunes in the fur trade. Accordingly, the Pilgrims expected to give most of their energies to these sources of magic riches. Robinson wrote, as late as June 14, 1620:: Pastor "Let this spetially be borne in minde, that the greatest parte of the .collonie is like to be imployed constantly, not upon dressing ther perticuler lands and building houses, but upon fishing, trading, etc." 67. Such delusions faded quickly before stern facts. The first months, in particular, were a time of cruel hardship. Bradford, Says "Now, summer being done, all things stand upon them with a wetherbeaten face; and the whole countrie, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hiew. . . . In 2 or 3 months time, halfe their company dyed . . . wanting houses and other comforts; [and of the rest] in the time of most distres, ther was but 6 or 7 sound persons care for all the sick and dying. to Of the eighteen married women who landed in January, May found living only four. The settlement escaped the tomahawk that first terrible winter only because a plague (probably the smallpox, caught from some trading vessel) had destroyed the Indians in the neighborhood. But when spring came and the Mayflower sailed for England, not one person of the steadfast colony went with her. In Holland they had carefully pondered the dangers that might assail them, and had highly concluded "that all greate and honorable actions must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courages." For many years more the settlement had a stern struggle for bare life. For the fur trade, of course, the inexperienced EDWARD WINSLOW when six years old. From a miniature painted in 1602, now in the possession of the Rev. William C. Winslow of Boston. Winslow is the only Pilgrim of whom we have an authentic likeness. Except for Standish he is probably the only one who in England could rank as a "gentleman," though Brewster approached that standing. Pilgrims were wholly un fit; and, in any case, to set up a permanent colony, with women and children, called pressingly for attention to raising food and building homes. ex The "supplies " pected from the London partners came, from year to year, in too meager measure to care even for the new immigrants who appeared along with them; and the crops of European grains failed season after season. Fortunately, during the first winter, the colonists found a supply of Indian corn for seed, and a friendly native to teach them how to culti vate it; and the old cornfields of the abandoned Indian villages saved them the formidable labor of clearing away the forest. The slow progress, even then, toward a secure supply of food is shown vividly in a letter from Edward Winslow at the end of the first year (Source Book, No. 48 a): "We have built seven dwelling houses, and four for the use of the plantation [for common use, that is, as storehouses, etc.], and have made preparation for divers others. We set, the last spring, some twenty acres of Indian corn, and sowed some six acres of barley and pease. . . . God be praised, we had good increase of [the] Indian corn, and of our barley, |