%32. Why the Separatists went to New England%.--They had come to Holland as an organized community, practicing English manners and customs. For a temporary residence this would do. But if they and their children's children after them were to remain and prosper, they must break up their organization, forget their native land, their native speech, their national traditions, and to all intents and purposes become Dutch. This they could not bring themselves to do, and by 1617 they had fully determined to remove to some land where they might still continue to be Englishmen, and where they might lay the foundations of a Christian state. But one such land could then be found, and that was America. To America, therefore, they turned their attention, and after innumerable delays formed a company and obtained leave from the London Company to settle on the coast of what is now New Jersey.[1] [Footnote 1: Eggleston's _Beginners of a Nation_, pp. 159-176.] This done, Brewster and Bradford and Miles Standish, with a little band, sent out as an advance guard, set sail from the Dutch port of Delft Haven in July, 1620, in the ship _Speedwell_. The first run was to Southampton, England, where some friends from London joined them in the _Mayflower_, and whence, August 5, they sailed for America. But the _Speedwell_ proved so unseaworthy that the two ships put back to Plymouth, where twenty people gave up the voyage. September 6, 1620, such as remained steadfast, just 102 in number, reëmbarked on the _Mayflower_ and began the most memorable of voyages. The weather was so foul, and the wind and sea so boisterous, that nine weeks passed before they beheld the sandy shores of Cape Cod. Having no right to settle there, as the cape lay far to the northward of the lands owned by the London Company, they turned their ship southward and attempted to go on. But head winds drove them back and forced them to seek shelter in Provincetown harbor, at the end of Cape Cod. [Illustration: The Mayflower[1]] [Footnote 1: From the model in the National Museum, Washington.] [Illustration: THE MASSACHUSETTS COAST (map)] %33. The Mayflower Compact%.--Since it was then the 11th of November, the Pilgrims, as they are now called, decided to get permission from the Plymouth Company to remain permanently. But certain members of the party, when they heard this, became unruly, and declared that as they were not to land in Virginia, they were no longer bound by the contracts they had made in England regarding their emigration to Virginia. To put an end to this, a meeting was held, November 21, 1620, in the cabin of the _Mayflower_, and a compact was drawn up and signed.[1] It declared 1. That they were loyal subjects of the King. 2. That they had undertaken to found a colony in the northern parts of Virginia, and now bound themselves to form a "civil body politic." 3. That they would frame such just and equal laws, from time to time, as might be for the general good.