e Pilgrims, as they are now called, decided to get permission from
the Plymouth Company to remain permanently. But certain members of the
party, when they heard this, became unruly, and declared that as they
were not to land in Virginia, they were no longer bound by the contracts
they had made in England regarding their emigration to Virginia. To put
an end to this, a meeting was held, November 21, 1620, in the cabin of
the _Mayflower_, and a compact was drawn up and signed.[1] It declared

1. That they were loyal subjects of the King.

2. That they had undertaken to found a colony in the northern parts of
Virginia, and now bound themselves to form a "civil body politic."

3. That they would frame such just and equal laws, from time to time, as
might be for the general good.

4. And to these laws they promised "all due submission and obedience."

[Footnote 1: The compact is in Poore's _Charters and Constitutions_, p.
931, and in Preston's _Documents Illustrative of American History_, pp.
29-31. Read, by all means, Webster's _Plymouth Oration_.]

[Illustration: Plymouth Rock]

%34. The Founding of Plymouth%.--The selection of a site for their
home was now necessary, and five weeks were passed in exploring the
coast before Captain Standish with a boatload of men entered the harbor
which John Smith had noted on his map and named Plymouth. On the sandy
shore of that harbor, close to the water's edge, was a little granite
bowlder, and on this, according to tradition, the Pilgrims stepped as
they came ashore, December 21, 1620. To this harbor the _Mayflower_ was
brought, and the work of founding Plymouth was begun. The winter was a
dreadful one, and before spring fifty-one of the colonists had died.[1]
But the Pilgrims stood fast, and in 1621 obtained a grant of land[2]
from the Council for New England, which had just succeeded the Plymouth
Company, under a charter giving it control between latitudes 40 deg. and
48 deg., from sea to sea.[3] It was from the same Council that for fifteen
years to come all other settlers in New England obtained their rights
to the soil.

[Footnote 1: In the trying times which followed, William Bradford was
chosen governor and many times reelected. He wrote the so-called "Log of
the Mayflower,"--really a manuscript _History of the Plymouth
Plantation_ from 1602 to 1647,--a fragment of which is reproduced on the
opposite page.]

[Footnote 2: This grant had no boundary. Each settler might