On the 11th November, 1620, after a solemn agreement among all the pilgrims to hold to each other and submit to their governor, John Carver, the first landing was effected. Falling on their knees upon the beach, the emigrants now returned thanks to God for their merciful deliverance from the perils of the deep, and, this pious duty over, sixteen men, under the doughty Captain Miles Standish, were sent forth on a reconnaissance, while the women busied themselves in washing their travel-soiled garments, and making preparations for the general comfort. The result of the reconnaissance was far from satisfactory. Standish and his men had to cut their way through dense underwood, and were unable to open any communication with the natives, who fled at their approach. A little maize which had been buried by the Indians as their store for the winter was all the wanderers brought back to the vessel from the promised land. Later trips being equally unsuccessful, the emigrants re-embarked, and the _Mayflower_ was taken a little further up the western coast of Cape Cod, whence excursions were made to different points in an open boat by a few sturdy explorers, who landed on Clark’s Island――so called after the first man to step on its shores――and finally, on the 11th December, crossed the modern harbor of Plymouth, and landed on or near the rock which has since been revered as the sacred “corner-stone of a nation,” the “altar and bulwark of religion and liberty.” Illustration: LANDING PLACE OF THE PILGRIMS, AT PLYMOUTH. Convinced that the fertile, well-watered tract stretching away from the sea to the pine-clad hills was the very site for a settlement, the men hastened to report their discovery to their expectant comrades on board ship, and on the 15th December, the _Mayflower_ left her anchorage off Cape Cod to sail to Clark’s Island and halt half between it and the rock of Plymouth, so-called in remembrance of the port in the south of England from which the little vessel had made her final start. Illustration: TOMB OF THE MATE OF THE “MAYFLOWER.”