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 opposite page.] [Footnote 2: This grant had no boundary. Each settler might have 100 acres. Fifteen hundred acres were set aside for public buildings.] [Footnote 3: Fiske's _Beginnings of New England_, pp. 80-87; Palfrey's _New England_, Vol. I, pp. 176-232; Thatcher's _History of the Town of Plymouth_.] [Illustration: Fragment of _History of the Plymouth Plantation_.] %35. A Puritan Colony proposed.%--Among those who obtained such rights was a company of Dorchester merchants who planted a town on Cape Ann. The enterprise failed, and the colonists went off and settled at a place they called Naumkeag. But there was one man in Dorchester who was not discouraged by failure. He was John White, a Puritan rector. What had been done by the Separatists in a small way might be done, it seemed to White, on a great scale by an association of wealthy and influential Puritans. The matter was discussed by them in London, and in 1628 an association was formed, and a tract of land was bought from the Council for New England.