might be for the general good.

4. And to these laws they promised "all due submission and obedience."

[Footnote 1: The compact is in Poore's _Charters and Constitutions_, p.
931, and in Preston's _Documents Illustrative of American History_, pp.
29-31. Read, by all means, Webster's _Plymouth Oration_.]

[Illustration: Plymouth Rock]

%34. The Founding of Plymouth%.--The selection of a site for their
home was now necessary, and five weeks were passed in exploring the
coast before Captain Standish with a boatload of men entered the harbor
which John Smith had noted on his map and named Plymouth. On the sandy
shore of that harbor, close to the water's edge, was a little granite
bowlder, and on this, according to tradition, the Pilgrims stepped as
they came ashore, December 21, 1620. To this harbor the _Mayflower_ was
brought, and the work of founding Plymouth was begun. The winter was a
dreadful one, and before spring fifty-one of the colonists had died.[1]
But the Pilgrims stood fast, and in 1621 obtained a grant of land[2]
from the Council for New England, which had just succeeded the Plymouth
Company, under a charter giving it control between latitudes 40° and
48°, from sea to sea.[3] It was from the same Council that for fifteen
years to come all other settlers in New England obtained their rights
to the soil.

[Footnote 1: In the trying times which followed, William Bradford was
chosen governor and many times reëlected. He wrote the so-called "Log of
the Mayflower,"--really a manuscript _History of the Plymouth
Plantation_ from 1602 to 1647,--a fragment of which is reproduced on the