“Pilgrim Spring on the Meerstead set off to Elder William Brewster in the original allotment December, 1620 erected by the Town 1915 “Freely drink and quench your thirst Here drank the Pilgrim Fathers first.” Near a little pool below the spring stands a fine statue of a Pilgrim Maiden, by H. H. Kitson. It is inscribed: “To those intrepid English women whose courage, fortitude, and devotion brought a new nation into being, this statue of the Pilgrim maiden is dedicated.” Presented to the Town of Plymouth by the National Society of New England Women. The statue is full of life, vigorous and alert, typical of the strength and cheerful courage with which the youthful Pilgrims met the hardships and dangers of their new homes. Above the spring, on the upward path to the street, the National Society of Daughters of the American Colonists have placed a stone seat in remembrance of the women who came in the ship Ann in 1623. From here the brook in its little valley can be seen winding to the sea; on its banks, the gardens which still bloom behind the old houses on Leyden Street, occupy the same ground as those “garden plottes” where the Pilgrim women cultivated the herbs which they consigned to England, three hundred years ago. Perhaps no gardens in America can claim a longer history of continuous use. At the mouth of the brook was the herring weir, built before 1627 to control the annual run of herring up the stream to the fresh water ponds above. The herring still run in the spring through a similar weir, and are still a source of revenue to the town. The Town Brook with its springs of “sweet water,” the herring fishing, and the ford which lead to the Indian encampment on the southern hill, made one of the important centers of the community life, and the gardens and sunny exposures of the little houses on the bank, protected by the guns on the Fort Hill above them, must have given some quiet and happy moments to the anxious and homesick Pilgrim women. [Illustration] Burial Hill Called Fort Hill until 1698 THE FORT On the top of the hill, beyond the row of the first houses, and overlooking the town, the Pilgrims in 1622–23 built with great labor, a fort and stockade; Governor Bradford describes it: “A fort of good timbers, both strong and comely, which was a good defense, made with a flat roof, and battlements, and on which their ordinance was mounted, and where they kept constant watch, especially in time of danger.”