ed the vital significance of the place, but, by their very
emotion, have sanctified it.

It really makes little difference whether the testimony of Thomas Faunce
was strictly accurate or not; it really makes little difference that the
Hammatt Billings canopy is indeed dreadful. Plymouth Rock has come to
symbolize the corner-stone of the United States as a nation, and symbols
are the most beautiful and the most enduring expression of any national
or human experience.

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, 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. It was the Mayflower, battered
and beaten, her sails blackened and mended, her leaks hastily caulked,
which was the first vessel to sail into Plymouth Harbor--a harbor so
joyfully described as being a "most hopeful place" with "innumerable
store of fowl and excellent good ... in fashion like a sickel or fish
hook."

[Illustration]

All that first dreadful winter, while the Pilgrims were struggling to
make roofs to cover their heads, while, with weeping hearts, they buried
their dead, and when, according to the good and indestructible instincts
of life, which persist in spite of every calamity, they planted seed for
the coming spring--all this while the Mayflower lay at anchor in the
harbor. Every morning they could see her there; any hour of the day they
could glance out at her; while they slept they were conscious of her
presence. And just so long as she was there, just so long could they see
a tangible connection between themselves and the life, which, although
already strangely far away, was, nevertheless, the nearest and the
dearest existence they had known. And then in April, the familiar
vessel, whose outlines were as much a part of the seascape as the Gurnet
or the bluffs of Manomet, vanished: vanished as completely as if she had
never been. The water which parted under her departing keel flowed
together. There was no sign on earth or sea or in the sky of that last
link between the little group of colonists