The Weekly Kansas chief. [volume] (Troy, Kan.) 1872-1918, 1881-12-22
WHEN DID THE PILGRIM FATHERS
LAND AT PLYMoUTHp

Up TO the 10Th, it had been all uncertainty ;
and in tbs records there is nowhere the least al
fusion TO any place having been selected, OF to
any particular spot having been visited, by that
party in the shallop. History and tradition
seem to be in entire accord. Some other date,
then, than the 2lst, must be looked for as the
date of landing.
That memorable day was not this Wednesday,
the 3Oth, when possession was taken of Ply
mouth, and twenty of the people remained
there. The next morning." says the careful
journalist, "being Thursday the 81 [3lst n. S. I
OF December, IL was stormie and welt. that we
eould not go ashore" But this IL a qualification
only of the preceding Statement in the same SEN
tenee of the resolution Of the night before-'re-
solving IN the morning to come all ashore & to
build houses" That '.wee could not goe ashore
does not mean that nobody did so, but that the
purpose of a general landing was frustrated by
the bad weather; for, before noon of this day
as we are told before the paragraph is finished,
''the Shaliop went off with much adoe with pro-
vision" from the ship. On Friday even this
was impossible; but on Saturday the storm
abated, and then $50 many of us as could went
on shore, fclled and carried tymber to provide
themselves stnffe for building.n
So many as conld. but not the whole. This
careful and reiterated distinction between the
whole and a part can hardly have been without
a purpose but whether il was or not we get at
the exact fact-the appointment of q time for
the Decentralization Of the whole company and
It's ucidN rum uaN 10 Jay Dy the Storm. The
event which tradition perpetuates-the Journal
list, whether he meant to or not, carefully dis
tinguishes-the landing of all the Pilgrim Faith
ers. not part of them, upon Plymouth Rsck.
Turn once more to Mounts Relation: s.Mon-
day, the 18th day, We went on Shore some to fell
timber, some to saw, some to riue (rive) and
some To carry; so no man rested all that day.
Here Eve" means the whole company; all on
that day landed on the Rock; all, for the first
time, took part in the building of the new home !;
''nO man rested all that day." Turn then to
Bradfor,l's History. He relates succintly the
sailing from Provineetown Harbor and the AZ
rival in Plymouth bay. "And afterwards he
continues, they ''tOoke better view of We place,
and resolved wher to pitch their dwelling; and
We y day, besane to ereete We first house for
comone use to receive them and their goods y
1t was "they," the whole body of the colonists,
who ''resnlved wher to pitch their dwellings,
after coming from Provincetown Harbor; not a
pioneer party who visited the bay before. And
surely Bradford knew, for he was one of that
party in the shallop. Indeed, it is probably
Bradford who wrote the Relation, as well as the
History.
This, then, was the day which, thirty or forty
years afterward, the boy Faunce heard the old
men talk about as the day they landed from the
Mayfiower upon Plymouth Rock; it was the dis
tinctiOn of being the first to leap ashore on this
day, when for the first time the women seem. to
have left the ship at Plymouth, that is given by
tradition to Mary Chiffon and John Alden-the
18th of December, 1920, which, in New STYLE
falls upon the 4th of January, 162l.-NoremJer
ItldRic