to begin their settlement "on a high ground" which offered them many advantages. Their own description tells what the place was as they then saw it. "There is a great deal of land cleared, and hath been planted with corn three or four years ago; and there is a very sweet brook runs under the hillside, and many delicate springs of as good water as can be drunk, and where we may harbor our shallops and boats exceeding well; and in this brook much good fish in their seasons; on the farther side of the river also much corn-ground cleared. In one field is a great hill, on which we point [propose] to make a platform and plant our ordnance, which will command all round about. From thence we may see into the bay, and far into the sea; and we may see thence Cape Cod. Our greatest labor will be fetching of our wood, which is half a quarter of an English mile; but there is enough so far off."

That day they made a beginning there; and at night, resolving that in the morning they would come ashore in full force to build houses, they left a few men encamped on the spot. Two days of tempest followed, in which it was impossible for those on shipboard to communicate with those on shore. But on Saturday they began, with all their available strength, to provide material for building, cutting down trees for timber and dragging them to the place. Some remained through the next day to keep guard on shore while keeping the Sabbath; but the public worship was where the church was, on the Mayflower.

1 The " great hill" is "Burial Hill, rising one hundred and sixty-five feet above the level of the sea, and covering about eight acres. The view from this eminence - embracing the harbor, the beach, the Gurnet, Manomet Point, Clark's Island, Saquish, Captain's Hill in Duxbury, and the shores of the bay for miles around-is unrivaled by any sea-view in the country."Young, p. 167, 168. So says Pierpont:

"The earliest ray of the golden day

On that hallowed spot is cast;

And the evening sun, as he leaves the world,

Looks kindly on that spot last."

Monday was the great ecclesiastical festival of Christmas -a day which neither Christ nor his apostles had made holy -a holiday which, in the view of the Pilgrims, was more nearly related to the pagan Saturnalia than to any due commemoration of the world's Redeemer, and against which they had testified even in Holland. It was with a not unpleasant consciousness of being in a new world that they returned to their work. "We went on shore," they say, some to fell timber, some to saw, some to rive, and some to carry; so no man rested all that day." On that day they "began to erect the first house for common use, to receive them and their goods." Another circumstance made it a memorable Christmas to them. The supply of beer with which they had left England was beginning to fail. On that day, they say, we began to drink water aboard. But at night the master caused us to have some beer; and so on board we had, divers times, now and then, some beer, but on shore none at all." They had something to learn about the virtues of water as a drink.

With frequent interruptions by "foul weather, that they could not go ashore," they pursued their work. Three days after the Christmas when "no man rested," they began to build their fortification on Burial Hill. On the same day they laid out a street now known as Leyden Street, and made arrangements for building a common house, and private houses for the nineteen families into which they divided their company. Under their busy hands, the street soon began to show the beginning of a civilized settlement. Now and then "great smokes of fire," miles away, reminded them that, while they trusted in God, they must be ready to defend themselves. Some of them attempted to find the Indians, in hope of establishing friendly relations with them; but they could find only deserted wigwams. No Indian showed himself near them; but they never knew how many savages might be lurking and watching in the woods around them. When the common house-only about twenty feet square—

was so nearly completed that it needed only the thatched roof that was to cover it (Jan. 9=19), they distributed by lot, according to Bible precedents, "the meersteads and garden-plots" of their little town, and agreed that every man should build his own house, thinking that "by that cause men would make more haste than working in common."

The day came when they had purposed, as a church, to keep the Sabbath on shore (Jan. 1424), the majority of the congregation being there. But that morning, about six o'clock, in a high wind, the thatch of their "great new rendezvous" took fire from a spark, and went off in a blaze. The house was full of beds laid side by side; loaded muskets were hanging on the walls or standing in corners; powder was under the beds in canisters or powder-horns; Carver and Bradford, lying sick, were in imminent danger of being "blown up with powder." But they "rose with good speed," and the building and all the lives were saved, though the chief loss came on those two. The people on shipboard, more than a mile from the shore, saw the fire, and naturally supposed that the Indians were there; but they could do nothing, for the tide was out. When the coming in of the tide, an hour later, permitted them to land and to see how little harm the fire had done, we may be sure the worship of the assembled church, under that wintry sky, though it may have deviated in some points from their ordinary public worship, was fervent with the thankfulness of joy. For the next Sunday (Jan. 21=31) their simple record is, "We kept our meeting on land."

The church that embarked at Delft-Haven, and re-embarked at Southampton-the organized church that has floated in the Mayflower so many weeks and weary months, keeping its holy Sabbaths, mingling its prayers and psalms with the voices of the wind and the sea-is landed at last "on the wild New England shore." From the day when it begins to hold its worshiping assembly on Burial Hill, organized Christianity-Christ's catholic Church in its simplest and most prim