06 PILGRIM FATHERS. RELICS. [CHAP. VII. 



associations, will not complain of the antique style of many of 

 the buildings, and the low rooms with paneled walls, and huge 

 wooden beams projecting from the ceilings, such as I never saw 

 elsewhere in America. Some houses built of brick brought from 

 Holland, notwithstanding the abundance of brick-earth in the 

 neighborhood, were pointed out to us in Leyden-street, so called 

 from the last town in Europe where the pilgrims sojourned after 

 they had been driven out of their native country by religious 

 persecution. In some private houses we were interested in 

 many venerated heir-looms, kept as relics of the first settlers, 

 and among others an antique chair of carved wood, which came 

 over in the Mayflower, and still retains the marks of the staples 

 which fixed it to the floor of the cabin. This, together with a 

 seal of Governor Winslow, was shown me by an elderly lady, 

 Mrs. Haywood, daughter of a Winslow and a White, and who 

 received them from her grandmother. In a public building, 

 called Pilgrim Hall, we saw other memorials of the same kind ; 

 as, for example, a chest or cabinet, which had belonged to Pere 

 grine White, the first child born in the colony, and which came 

 to him from his mother, and had been preserved to the fifth 

 generation in the same family, when it was presented by them 

 to the Museum. By the side of it was a pewter dish, also given 

 by the White family. In the same collection, they have a chair 

 brought over in the Mayflower, and the helmet of King Philip, 

 the Indian chief, with whom the first settlers had many a des 

 perate fight. 



A huge fragment of granite, a boulder which lay sunk in the 

 beach, has always been traditionally declared to have been the 

 exact spot which the feet of the Pilgrims first trod when they 

 landed here ; and part of this same rock still remains on the 

 wharf, while another portion has been removed to the center of 

 the town, and inclosed within an iron railing, on which the 

 names of forty-two of the Pilgrim Fathers are inscribed. They 

 who can not sympathize warmly with the New Englanders for 

 cherishing these precious relics, are not to be envied, and it is a 

 praiseworthy custom to celebrate an annual festival, not only 

 here, but in places several thousand miles distant. Often at 



