state and bound across
the unknown sea." We behold it "pursuing with a thousand misgivings the
uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and winter surprises
them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore.
The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging. The laboring
masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is
heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly from billow to billow; the
ocean breaks, and settles with engulfing floods over the floating deck,
and beats with deadening, shivering weight against the staggering
vessel."

Escaped from these perils, after a passage of sixty-six days, and
subsequent journeyings until the middle of December, they land on the
ice-clad rocks of Plymouth, worn out with suffering, weak and weary from
the fatigues of the voyage, poorly armed, scantily provisioned,
surrounded by barbarians, without prospect of human succor, without the
help or favor of their king, with a useless patent, without assurance of
liberty in religion, without shelter, and without means!

Yet resolute men are there: Carver, Bradford, Brewster, Standish,
Winslow, Alden, Warren, Hopkins, and others. Female fortitude and
resignation are there. Wives and mothers, with dauntless courage and
unexampled heroism, have braved all these dangers, shared all these
trials, borne all these sorrows, submitted to all these privations. And
there, too, is "chilled and shivering childhood, houseless but for a
mother's arms, couchless but for a mother's breast."

But these sepulchres of the dead!--where lie Turner, Chilton, Crackston,
Fletcher, Goodman, Mullins, White, Rogers, Priest, Williams, and their
companions--these touch the tenderest and holiest chords. Husbands and
wives, parents and children, have finished their pilgrimage, and mingled
their dust with the dust of New England. Hushed as the unbreathing air,
when not a leaf stirs in the mighty forest, was the scene at those
graves where the noble and true were buried in peace. "Deeply as they
sorrowed at parting with those, doubly endeared to them by the
remembrance of what they had suffered together, and by the fellowship of
kindred griefs, they committed them to the earth calmly, but with hope."
No sculptured marble, no enduring monument, no honorable inscription,
marks the spot where they were laid. Is it surprising that local
attachments soon sprung up in the breasts of the survivors, endearing
them to the pl