﻿OLD POXTO. 183 



they could not overcome. They first went to Holland, but were n ~-i 

 satisfied with the morals and conduct of the people, and they deter- 

 mined to seek a home in a new country, where there would be n 

 to interfere with their manner of worshipping God. 



America was at this time an almost unknown country, and 

 especially the northern and north-eastern portion of it, in which we 

 now live. 



Mr. Morton was a firm believer in the tenets of the Puritans, and 

 wished to escape with them to a land of freedom. But Mrs. ? . r 

 ton was in very feeble health, and it was thought by her fond hus- 

 band that the fatigue and hardships to which she would be expos-. '. 

 in even joining the emigrants to Holland, would hasten her death. 

 They accordingly remained in England, and their brothers in the 

 church took, as they thought, a final leave of England, and of then ; 

 but shortly after their departure Mrs. Morton died, leaving her hus- 

 band sad, but not despairing, for he had a firm and sustaining faith 

 in a meeting beyond the grave. There was now no obstacle to Mr. 

 Morton's joining his friends in Holland. But they had already left 

 that country, turning their hopes to America, and Mr. Morton sailed 

 with the first pilgrims in a ship called the Mayflower, which left the 

 harbor of Plymouth in England in the month of September, in the 

 year 1620. 



The voyage was long and tempestuous, and little Henry was very 

 sick; but in the month of November they arrived off the coast ">f 



U 



Cape Cod, but did not effect a landing until late in December. The 

 date of their debarkation is the twenty-second of December, 1620, 

 and is one which every New England boy and girl should fix in 

 their memory. 



/ 



The populous and flourishing city of Boston was at that time a 

 thick forest, inhabited only by savages and wild beasts, and there is 

 no probability that a white man had ever set his foot in the state of 

 Massachusetts at the time our Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth 

 Rock. They named their settlement Plymouth, from the town of 

 that name in England, at which they had embarked. 



The weather was cold and inclement ; there were no houses or 

 shelter of any kind to receive these poor emigrants, already exhaust- 

 ed with their' voyage. Trees were to be felled, the ground cleared 



