There were one hundred people on board,--mothers and fathers, brothers
and sisters and little children. They were very crowded; it was cold
and uncomfortable; the sea was rough, and pitched the Mayflower about,
and they were two months sailing over the water.

The children cried many times on the journey, and wished they had
never come on the tiresome ship that rocked them so hard, and would
not let them keep still a minute.

But they had one pretty plaything to amuse them, for in the middle of
the great ocean a Pilgrim baby was born, and they called him
"Oceanus," for his birthplace. When the children grew so tired that
they were cross and fretful, Oceanus' mother let them come and play
with him, and that always brought smiles and happy faces back again.

At last the Mayflower came in sight of land; but if the children had
been thinking of grass and flowers and birds, they must have been very
much disappointed, for the month was cold November, and there was
nothing to be seen but rocks and sand and hard bare ground.

Some of the Pilgrim fathers, with brave Captain Myles Standish at
their head, went on shore to see if they could find any houses or
white people. But they only saw some wild Indians, who ran away from
them, and found some Indian huts and some corn buried in holes in the
ground. They went to and fro from the ship three times, till by and by
they found a pretty place to live, where there were "fields and little
running brooks."

Then at last all the tired Pilgrims landed from the ship on a spot now
called Plymouth Rock, and the first house was begun on Christmas Day.