42 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



Bureau and claim that they travel warmer and 

 drier by so doing. Yet if one makes a study of 

 Farmers' Almanack weather he finds that it wins 

 by predicting the same storms and the same cold 

 snaps, the same drought and the same rain for 

 just about the same seasons, year after year, 

 spreading the prophecy over days enough to give 

 it considerable leeway. "About this time expect 

 a storm," it says, and in the ten days of the 

 aforesaid time the storm is pretty apt to come. 



So, to my joy, I found in Plymouth on my few 

 days there on Forefathers' Day week just about 

 the weather Bradford reports for that first voy- 

 age of the Mayflower's shallop to its harbor. 

 "After some hour's sailing," says Bradford, "it 

 began to snow and rain, and about the middle of 

 the afternoon the wind increased and the sea be- 

 came very rough and they broke their rudder and 

 it was as much as two men could do to steer her 

 with a couple of oars. But their pilot bade them 

 be of good cheer as he saw the harbor, but the 

 storm increased and night coming on they bore 

 what sail they could to get in while they could see. 

 But herewith they broke their mast in three pieces 

 and their sail fell overboard in a very grown sea, 

 so that they were like to have been cast away." 



