Plymouth Rock

“ Few, if any, other places in America contain so many interesting landmarks as Plymouth. The famous Plymouth Rock, a granite boulder on which the Pilgrims are said to have landed from the shallop of the “Mayflower,” lies on the harbour shore near the site of the first houses built on Leyden Street, and is now sheltered by a granite canopy. Rising above the Rock is Cole’s Hill, where during their first winter in America the Pilgrims buried half their number, levelling the graves and sowing grain over them in the spring in order to conceal their misfortunes from the Indians. ”

“ So it must be the rock on which the Mayflower's passengers landed."
"I wonder why they didn't just step out on the beach," persisted Martine. "I should think that would have been ever so much more comfortable than hopping down on this rock."
"Others besides you have intimated the same thing," persisted the old gentleman; "but you must admit that a rock is a better foundation for the sentiment of a nation to base itself on than a sandy beach. Even our foreign-born children pin much of their patriotism to Plymouth Rock." ”

“ Nature seems quickly to obliterate the footprints of man, especially along the sea, and you may wander along Plymouth beach in the weird twilight and listen to the sullen boom of the breakers on the cliff, and see and hear as did they.
The sea has beaten for centuries against the great boulders, yet the stones have been but slightly changed. The coast is still "rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun," and the great granite boulders gleam white in the level rays of the descending sun, looking like great emeralds as the silvery crests of the breakers fall upon them. ”

“ To present the well-worn story of Plymouth Rock from an angle calculated to rouse even a semblance of fresh interest is comparable to offering a well-fed man a piece of bread, and expecting him to be excited over it as a novelty. ”

“ The house of their love had been built upon the sands; shining, golden sands, but sands for all that, and he told himself grimly—able, now and then, to stand away from his situation and see it with a saving grain of humor—that the lasting structure of his affection must be built not only upon the rock, but upon Plymouth Rock. ”

“ In order to feel the true sense of history,—not a worked-up sentiment, but the real thing,—you have to look at Plymouth, not in panorama but in detail. You have to accept with philosophy such modern phenomena as the Massasoit Shoe-Shine Parlors and the Plymouth Rock Garage, and keep your eyes open for certain types of old houses scattered in unexpected places everywhere.
One of these is a neat old house in excellent repair, the ends of the house of brick, the side toward the street of wood, plain gable roof, stout chimney, the whole thing painted white, and all fascinating within. ”

“ All Plymouth is made up of the results of pilgrimage. How many scores of fathoms deep the real Plymouth shore lies I do not know. It is down there somewhere where it cooled into bathylithic crust back in the gray dawn of time when the earth was made. There it is part of the same ledge of which Scituate and Cohasset are built. All above that is terminal moraine, rock detritus piled upon rock foundation by the glacier. ”

“ The Pilgrims were brought in their boat, a few at a time, from the vessel to the landing-place. To reach the shore, it is said that they found it convenient to step upon a large stone. [Pg 59] This is now known as Plymouth Rock. It is claimed that the first English woman to set foot upon this stone on the Plymouth shore was Mary Chilton.
53. The Famous Plymouth Rock.—Plymouth Rock is not very large; but it is sacred in the eyes and the hearts of every American. Every year thousands go to look upon "the stepping-stone of New England"; to linger by the graves of the Pilgrims ”

“ Into a world unknown,—the corner-stone of a nation!70
Monument now Guarding the Plymouth Rock. ”

“ Tide and tempest grind pebbles to shifting sand and give and take away beach and bar yearly, but they do not move the boulders very fast. Manomet shore and even Plymouth beach are rock-bound with these, large and small, today as they were when the Pilgrims fought their desperate, sea-beset way by them through the dusk of a winter northeaster and froze in safety under the lee of Clark's Island.
He who would see Plymouth and the Pilgrim land about it as the Pilgrims saw it may do so. Nature holds grimly onto her own and sedulously heals the scars that man makes. ”

“ More than “two hundred years ago,” when first the foot of civilization pressed the unturned sod of New England’s rock-bound soil, a man, past the prime of life, having lost his place in England, determined on seeking a new name in a new country. Accordingly, he embarked with his only earthly treasures, his wife and the family coat of arms, and, after a dangerous voyage, reached Plymouth Rock, only to encounter more dangers. ”

“ Upwards of fifty thousand persons come here every summer, making reverent pilgrimages to the cradle of American civilization. For these, and for all who love the antique and historic, Plymouth has well-nigh unrivaled attractions. Here is the renowned rock, down by the water-side, overarched by a stately granite canopy, in whose top are the bones of several of the Pilgrims. Up in the village rises the massive structure of Pilgrim Hall, consecrated to relics and memorials of the first colonists. ”

“ Because new housekeepers come into existence with each new day. So, if there be any man who comes to Plymouth who does not know the story of Plymouth Rock, it is here set down for him, as accurately and briefly as possible. ”

“ In this picture (1332. Landing of the Pilgrims) one painter has shown us what kind of a day he thought it was. The skies are dark, the wind is blowing hard, and the waves are rough. The men [20] pull the boat close to a rock, and hold her steady while the wanderers step upon it.
PLYMOUTH ROCK
This rock has ever since been called Plymouth Rock, and it has been kept and carefully guarded through all the many, many years that have passed since the Pilgrims first stepped upon it. ”

“ Plymouth Rock pullets are not always early layers, for they often grow for ten or twelve months before laying, though some say as early as six months after being hatched. The best plan the keep Plymouth Rocks is to get the pullets hatched as early as possible. ”

“ There is something very strong and homely about the pitch of the roof—a balanced, firm old line, in splendid proportions with the huge chimney and low walls. A weathered gambrel has a way of looking at home in the fields, a sort of boulder-shape firmly settled. And the Standish house, with its flat field-rock for a doorstep, looks like a very old settler indeed.
For a long time we sat on the doorstep and watched the outline of Plymouth Town across the harbor, and the white gulls flying, and the crows. The son of Standish of Standish knew where to pitch a house. ”

“ It is estimated that over one hundred thousand visitors come to Plymouth annually. They all go to see the Rock; most of them clamber up to the quaint Burial Hill and read a few of the oldest inscriptions; they glance at the National Monument to the forefathers, bearing the largest granite figure in the world, [Pg 192] and they take a turn through Pilgrim Hall. But there is one place they often forget to see, and that is the harbor itself.
We began our tour through Plymouth through the eyes of a Pilgrim man and maid watching the departing Mayflower. ”

“ There is not much that is suggestive of the old life to be seen there. Except the hills, the heaven, and the sea, there is nothing antique; save a few carefully cherished relics, nothing that has survived the day of the Pilgrims.” And another writer of recent times declares “it would be difficult to name any other place in America with such a profoundly 411interesting historical event as that which has made the name of Plymouth Rock forever famous in the annals of devotion and freedom. ”

“ Appropriately the spot was named New Plymouth, after the last port of call in Old England.
The Pilgrims landed on a huge boulder of granite, the Pilgrim Stone, still reverently preserved by their descendants: a rock which was
to their feet as a doorstep
Into a world unknown—the cornerstone of a nation! [5]
The early struggles of the Plymouth planters and the hardships they endured form a story of terrible privation and suffering on the one hand and heroic endurance and self-sacrifice on the other. ”

“ We are his seed; nor life nor death shall daunt us.
The port is Freedom! Pilgrim heart, sail on!”
—L. B. R. Briggs
December 21, 1920
From the ode read at the celebration
of the 300th anniversary
of the Landing of the Pilgrims.
[33]
The Memorial
to the
Pilgrim Women
On the corner of North Street and the Water side, not far from Plymouth Rock, is a small park enclosed by hedges of box and privet; in the center against a background of lilac trees, a tall granite fountain supports on the front, a standing figure representing a Pilgrim woman. ”

“ A further excursion may be made into the Erme valley, with its numerous prehistoric remains, and to the blowing-house at the junction of the Hook Lake. This is comparatively late, as there is a wheel-pit.
North of Plymouth interesting excursions may be made to the Dewerstone, perhaps the finest bit of rock scenery on Dartmoor, or rather at its edge, where the so-called Plym bursts forth from its moorland cradle. The summit of the Dewerstone has been fortified by a double line of walls. A walk thence up the river will take a visitor into some wild country. ”

“ The shallop is steered to its side; the company steps upon the Rock, and the Landing of the Forefathers, now so reverently commemorated, is completed. Look along the shore at this day, north or south, and you may see cliffs as 37 Cole’s Hill was then, with the mouth of Town Brook near by the Rock, which later made a safe little harbor for their boats in the rear of the dwellings which they erected on the south side of Leyden Street. ”

“ It has hitherto been a point in dispute whether the limestone at Plymouth does or does not contain organic remains; but I hope that the specimens which I now send the Society will be considered as deciding the question; it must be admitted at the same time, that the instances where shells occur are by no means frequent, and that they are not then found in any quantity. I send herewith a tooth, which, together with many others, and the head and bones of a large animal, was found in the Breakwater quarries at Oreston, at the bottom of a cave or hollow in the limestone rock. ”

“ At Penniscen Bay, on the north side of the parish, the cliff exhibits many alternations of limestone and slate; this limestone is more crystalline than the black limestone of Rock Ferry, approaching nearer to the Plymouth limestone in its appearance; but organic remains have not yet been discovered in it. ”

“ There are three thousand men employed about these great docks and stores, and they form the most extensive naval establishment in the world. Near Mount Wise are the Raglan Barracks, where there is a display of cannon taken from the Turks.
In Plymouth Sound is a bold pyramidal rock, the Isle of St. Nicholas, which [Pg 439] is a formidable fortress. Mount Edgcumbe is on the western shore, and on the eastern side is Plymouth's pretty park, known as the Hoe, where the old Eddystone Lighthouse will be set up. ”

“ The sea of centuries has beaten against the great drumlins of boulder-till and has not moved the boulders that bind them together. At the most it has but washed out the smaller ones, leaving the sea front surfaced with great white granite rocks that gleam like marble in the sundown to the limits of the washing tide, then shine olive green with the froth of the waves. From the sands of White Horse Beach to those of the Spit in Plymouth harbor there is no place where that storm-tossed shallop might have made a landing with any hope of safety. ”

“ The earth sphered up all around us, in every quarter of the horizon, like the crater of a vast volcano, and the great hollow within the mountain circle was as smoky as Vesuvius or Etna in their recess of eruption. The little village of Plymouth lay right at our feet, with its beautiful expanse of intervale opening on the eye like a lake among the woods and hills, and the Pemigewasset, bordered along its crooked way with rows of maples, meandering from upland to upland through the meadows. ”

“ As you round the hilly coast from Wembury and come within the Sound, you enter upon a panoramic scene, where the great Breakwater, itself nearly a mile and a half long, with a sea-passage on the hither side of a mile’s breadth, rests upon the blue waters like some pigmy undertaking, and the ironclads seem quite trivial. The ordinary vision is altogether at fault at Plymouth, and requires careful adjustment to an unfamiliar scale of things; and in the meanwhile the stranger, walking round the coast, discovers that in tramping these last miles the way is quite twice as long as it seems. ”

“ The first Pilgrim land trail is today Leyden street, leading from the water's edge to their fort on Burial Hill. You may follow it, though the marks of Pilgrim feet are buried beneath city pavement, save perhaps on the crest of the hill itself, and though bluebird and robin flutter shyly to its upper end in spring as did their pilgrim fathers before them, the arbutus, from earliest days to this the Plymouth flower, no longer grows on its margin. He who has not longed to pick a mayflower in Plymouth on Mayday is not a New Englander. ”