The next morning, after earnest and united prayer for divine guidance, a still larger party of twenty was sent on shore, more carefully to examine the spot which had been suggested for their village. Though it was not all they could desire, it still presented many attractions. It was a cold December day. They climbed the hill, and gazed with pleasure upon a prospect which was sublime and beautiful even on that bleak and windy day, when the boughs of the trees were naked and when the withered leaves were borne like snow flakes on the wintry air. They tried to imagine its loveliness in the luxuriance and bloom of a June morning. While they stood upon the hill, the clouds, which all the morning had been darkening the sky, began to increase in density and gather in blackness. The wind rose to a gale, and the windows of heaven seemed to be opened, as the rain fell upon them in torrents. All unsheltered they found themselves exposed to the fury of a New England northeast storm. Huge billows from the ocean swept the poorly protected harbor and broke in such surges upon the beach that it was impossible for them to return to the ship. They were totally unprepared for an emergency so unexpected. Night came, a long, dark, cold, stormy night. They sought shelter in the forest, constructed a rude camp which but poorly sheltered them from wind and rain, and building a large fire, found such comfort as they could in the imperfect warmth which it afforded. All the night of Wednesday and all day Thursday the northeast storm raged with fury unabated. Towards the evening of Thursday the 21st there was a lull in the tempest, so that the weary adventurers succeeded in working their way back to the ship. The next day was the ever-memorable Friday, December 22d. A wintry storm, with its angry billows, still swept the bay. The day opened upon the Pilgrims cold, cloudy and dreary. The long and anxiously looked for hour had now come, when the Mayflower, the only material tie which bound them to the Old World, was to be abandoned, and these bold men were to be left three thousand miles from their native shores, to struggle with all the known and unknown perils and hardships of the wilderness. Familiar as are the graphic words of Mrs. Hemans, the first verse of her memorable hymn so truthfully describes the scene which that morning was presented to the Pilgrims, as to be worthy of transcript here: “The breaking waves dashed high On a stern and rock-bound coast, And the woods against a stormy sky, Their giant branches toss’d.”