the hill-side. They selected an eminence, and erected a platform on which they planted their ordnance so as to command all the country about.' This was Burial Hill, referred to in the poem, from which was an extensive prospect of Gurnet's Nose, the shore and ocean for miles around. The spot had been marked Plymouth on a chart of the coast made by Captain John Smith, and was the name of the port from which they had last sailed in England.

2

In a

Here the men erected a log-cabin "twenty feet square for their common use, to receive them and their goods." short time they had built three more houses for the use of the plantation and seven for individual families, which were arranged in two rows. Lots were measured off and assigned "for meersteads and garden-plots" to the nineteen families into which the hundred colonists had been grouped. They were fortunately not molested by the Indians, for a recent plague had swept away most of the natives of that region." Later, however, the settlers were frequently alarmed by the cries of the savages and the great forest fires kindled by them. The first visit from an Indian was that of the sagamore Samoset, who on March 16th walked boldly into the settlement calling out, "Welcome, Englishmen!" He was soon fol

lowed by Massasoit, the king of the neighboring tribe, who made a league of friendship with the whites which was kept inviolably for fifty years. In 1623 a formidable conspiracy against the English settlers was formed by the Massachusetts tribe, under the leadership of Wittuwamet and Pecksuot. It was promptly put down by Standish, both the chiefs being killed, and the former's head being set up on the fort. This incident forms a part of Longfellow's plot.

1 Bradford's Journal, December 20.

2 Prince's Chronological History, p. 168.

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3 Higginson's New England Plantation, 1630, and Morton's New England's Memorial (Davis), pp. 51, 52.

4 Holmes's Annals of America, pp. 166–68.

5 Idem, p. 181.

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The sufferings of the first winter (1620-21) were enough to shake the resolution of the Pilgrims. Though frost and foul weather hindered them much in their building, it was providentially a very mild winter for that latitude,' otherwise the colony could hardly have survived. Half of the entire company died, "the greatest part," says Bradford, "in the depth of winter, wanting houses and other comforts, being infected with the scurvy and other diseases, which their long voyage and unaccommodate condition brought upon them." Dudley wrote home: "It may be said of us almost as of the Egyptians, that there is not a house where there is not one dead, and in some houses many.' Wood tells us that this terrible mortality was due to their tainted sea-diet and lack of warm housing and bedding. Their sublime faith enabled them to support all these discouragements and disasters with extraordinary patience. Their manner of disposing of the dead alluded to in the poem is explained by this quotation from Dr. Holmes: Tradition gives us an affecting picture of the infant colony during this critical and distressing period. The dead were buried on the bank, at a little distance from the rock where the fathers landed; and, lest the Indians should take advantage of the weak and wretched state of the English, the graves were levelled and sown for the purpose of concealment."

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4

In spite of these accumulated hardships and appalling losses, the Pilgrims did not abandon their settlement. Strange to say, when the "Mayflower" set sail for England in April, not one took advantage of the chance to return home. Henceforth America was to be their home.

The Plymouth colony grew so slowly that by 1630 there were only three hundred persons in the community. Lack of

1 Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers, p. 123.

2 Bradford's Journal, in Young, pp. 197, 198.

3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 43.

4 Wood's New England's Prospect, chap. ii.
Holmes's Annals of America.

capital prevented them from engaging in cod-fishing, and furs bartered from the natives were almost their only articles of export. The merchant adventurers were disappointed at the small return from their investment; and though holding the settlers to their labor contract, refused them further aid. The colonists did succeed, however, in 1625, through their agent, Captain Standish, in borrowing £200 at the exorbitant rate of 30 per cent.

During the next six years they managed, by hard labor and strict economy, to buy up the shares of the London merchants for £1,800. From this time they were really free men, and could spend what they earned in developing the settlement. The Plymouth Plantation ended its distinct existence in 1691, when it was incorporated with the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

§3. The Characters.

Such was the community that Longfellow chose as the setting for his story. He makes us feel, as we read the poem, that old Plymouth atmosphere with its strange mixture of stern enthusiasm, austere piety, and undemonstrative tenderness. Under a cold and forbidding outside glowed many a heart that was warm and true. The deep human feelings of the characters stand out in all the stronger relief because of this contrast with their surroundings. Just as the little mayflower (our trailing arbutus) is all the sweeter and more precious because it blooms among the rocks and dying leaves and melting snow, so is the blossoming of the love of the dear Puritan girl the more beautiful for its uncongenial environment.

This scenic background of "The Courtship" is not its only historical feature, for all the principal characters are based on real persons. Priscilla, Alden, and Standish had in Plymouth their living counterparts who are mentioned by name in the early chronicles. By comparing these originals with Longfellow's characters we may get a glimpse of his method of work. We shall then be able to say how far the poet has

added to or subtracted from their characters, and to what extent he has idealized them.

Much less is known of Priscilla Mullens than of either of her rival suitors. From this simple fact we may infer that hers was a sweet, retiring nature that avoided publicity. No doubt she regarded the log home her proper sphere, and was happy with the domestic duties of the fireside and garden.

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On the passenger list of the "Mayflower" were the names of "Mr. William Mullines and his wife, and two children, Joseph and Priscilla; and a servant, Robart Carter." A later record states that "Mr. Molines, and his wife, his son, and his servant, dyed the first winter. Only his daughter Priscilla survived and married with John Alden, who are both living and have eleven children." Her father was the tenth signer of the Compact, and Morton mentions him as a man pious and well deserving, endowed also with a considerable outward estate; and had it been the will of God that he had survived, might have proved a useful instrument in his place." It was a dreadful experience thus to lose all her relatives within a few weeks in a strange land. But there is evidence that she did not give herself up entirely to grief, but ministered to the sick and dying. "There die sometimes two or three a day," says an eye-witness. "Of a hundred persons scarce fifty remain; the living scarce able to bury the dead; the well not sufficient to tend the sick, there being, in their time of greatest distress, but six or seven, who spare no pains to help them.""

The records are meager, but from what we know of conditions at Plymouth, we may infer much in regard to Priscilla's good constitution, which must have been sound indeed to withstand such hardships. She must have been a brave girl to outlive those distressing experiences, and her womanly

1 Bradford's History of the Plimouth Plantation, p. 452.
2 Morton's New England's Memorial, p. 50.

3 Bradford's and Winslow's Journal (Young), p. 198.

character must have matured rapidly. Longfellow was descended from his beautiful heroine through his mother, Miss Wadsworth, and no doubt has drawn her true in the main to the family traditions faithfully handed down. She was "the loveliest maid in Plymouth," modest, yet frank, and true to her own heart; industrious, sympathetic, endowed with a delicate sense of humor, practical, and deeply pious. From an entry in the poet's Journal in December, 1857, we learn that he thought then of giving her name to the poem. "I begin a new poem," he wrote, "Priscilla,' to be a kind of Puritan pastoral; the subject, the courtship of Miles Standish."

We know slightly more of John Alden. He was born in England in 1599. His trade and general reputation are settled by a reference in Bradford: "He was hired for a cooper at Southampton where the ship victualled; and being a hopeful young man, was much desired, but left to his own liking to go or to stay, when he came here (to Plymouth, that is); but he stayed and married here." He was twenty-one years of age when he embarked in the "Mayflower,” and we find it hard not to believe that the presence of a certain maiden on that ship helped him to decide.

1

He was the seventh to sign the Compact, and took an active share in organizing the government of the new settlement. When the Pilgrims grouped themselves into nineteen families, so that they might build fewer houses, all single men that had no families being willing to join with some family, Alden, being a ready writer, was attached to Captain Standish as his secretary. Further than the fact of his having wedded Priscilla, little more is known of his history, except that he served as a magistrate for more than fifty years, and was of great assistance in planting the colony firmly. He died at Duxbury on September 12, 1687.

From these suggestions we may trace the character of Alden 1 History of the Plimouth Plantation.