FOREFATHERS' DAY 47 



Southerly toward it the shallop sailed in 1620, 

 under flocks of whirling white gulls, through 

 flocks of black and white Labrador ducks that 

 then wintered in numbers along our shores, from 

 Clark's Island to the mouth of Town Brook. 



Factories and dwellings line Town Brook, now 

 in place of the primeval forests of pine and oak. 

 Its waters leap one dam after another, but can- 

 not escape pollution till their dark tide mingles 

 with that of the clear sea. But for all that the 

 contour of the chasms in the big sand hills 

 through which it flows to the sea is changed but 

 little. The low sun leaves it in shadow most of 

 the day and one can fancy the Pilgrim children 

 and perhaps their elders glancing often up its 

 shadowy canon under black growth, a mysterious 

 gulch down which at any time might stride the 

 savages they so feared, or other, worse terrors of 

 the unknown wilderness. The little knowledge 

 of their day was but a tiny oasis in the vast desert 

 of unknown things, and in that country to the 

 south and west that was so alluring under the 

 golden glow of the sun through its soft blue haze 

 might dwell both gorgons and chimeras dire. 

 For though the children were not with the ex- 

 plorers when they landed from the shallop on 



