64.  The Pilgrims, with Captain Myles Standish, sail for England and then for America; they reach Cape Cod, and choose a governor there.—­In 1620 a company of Pilgrims sailed for England on their way to America.  Captain Myles Standish, an English soldier, who had fought in Holland, joined them.  He did not belong to the Pilgrim church, but he had become a great friend to those who did.

About a hundred of these people sailed from Plymouth,[5] England, for the New World, in the ship Mayflower.  Many of those who went were children and young people.  The Pilgrims had a long, rough passage across the Atlantic.  Toward the last of November (1620) they saw land.  It was Cape Cod, that narrow strip of sand, more than sixty miles long, which looks like an arm bent at the elbow, with a hand like a half-shut fist.

[Illustration:  Map of Cape Cod and part of New England.]

Finding that it would be difficult to go further, the Pilgrims decided to land and explore the cape; so the Mayflower entered Cape Cod Harbor, inside the half-shut fist, and then came to anchor.

Before they landed, the Pilgrims held a meeting in the cabin, and drew up an agreement in writing for the government of the settlement.  They signed the agreement, and then chose John Carver for governor.

[Footnote 5:  Plymouth (Plim’uth).]

65.  Washing-day; what Standish and his men found on the Cape.—­On the first Monday after they had reached the cape, all the women went on shore to wash, and so Monday has been kept as washing-day in New England ever since.  Shortly after that, Captain Myles Standish, with a number of men, started off to see the country.  They found some Indian corn buried in the sand; and a little further on a young man named William Bradford, who afterward became governor, stepped into an Indian deer-trap.  It jerked him up by the leg in a way that must have made even the Pilgrims smile.

[Illustration:  AN INDIAN DEER-TRAP.]

[Illustration:  BRADFORD CAUGHT.]

66.  Captain Standish and his men set sail in a boat for a blue hill in the west, and find Plymouth Rock; Plymouth Harbor; landing from the Mayflower.—­On clear days the people on board the Mayflower, anchored in Cape Cod Harbor, could see a blue hill, on the mainland, in the west, about forty miles away.  To that blue hill Standish and some others determined to go.  Taking a sail-boat, they started off.  A few days later they passed the hill which the Indians called Manomet,[6] and entered a fine harbor.  There, on December 21st, 1620,—­the shortest day in the year,—­they landed on that famous stone which is now known all over the world as Plymouth Rock.

Standish, with the others, went back to the Mayflower with a good report.  They had found just what they wanted,—­an excellent harbor where ships from England could come in; a brook of nice drinking-water; and last of all, a piece of land that was nearly free from trees, so that nothing would hinder their planting corn early in the spring.  Captain John Smith of Virginia[7] had been there before them, and had named the place Plymouth on his map of New England.  The Pilgrims liked the name, and so made up their minds to keep it.  The Mayflower soon sailed for Plymouth, and the Pilgrims set to work to build the log cabins of their little settlement.