Forefathers' Day is rightly set, then, on the 21st, though we have really an all-winter landing of the Pilgrims, the ship remaining in the harbor and being more or less their refuge until the 5th of April, 1621. In some respects the place of their landing has vastly changed. The waterfront is ugly with rough wharves and coal pockets, store-houses and factories. The famous rock itself reposes beneath a monstrous granite canopy and seems to have so little connection with the sea that one at first sight is inclined to levity, wondering where the landing party got the gang plank which bridged such a distance. Yet it was in all reverence that I sought Plymouth, hoping to in some measure bridge the three centuries that lie between that day and this, and see the New World in some measure as they saw it, at the same season. For at least the seasons have not changed. The storms and the calms, the snow and the sunshine, come now, as then, in cycles that may not match day by day in all instances, but, taking year by year, come surprisingly near it. There is more in the Old Farmer's Almanack's serene forecast of the weather for an entire year ahead than most of us are willing to admit. There are people who back its oracle against the Weather Bureau and claim that they travel warmer and drier by so doing. Yet if one makes a study of Farmers' Almanack weather he finds that it wins by predicting the same storms and the same cold snaps, the same drought and the same rain for just about the same seasons, year after year, spreading the prophecy over days enough to give it considerable leeway. "About this time expect a storm," it says, and in the ten days of the aforesaid time the storm is pretty apt to come. So, to my joy, I found in Plymouth on my few days there on Forefathers' Day week just about the weather Bradford reports for that first voyage of the Mayflower's shallop to its harbor. "After some hour's sailing," says Bradford, "it began to snow and rain, and about the middle of the afternoon the wind increased and the sea became very rough and they broke their rudder and it was as much as two men could do to steer her with a couple of oars. But their pilot bade them be of good cheer as he saw the harbor, but the storm increased and night coming on they bore what sail they could to get in while they could see. But herewith they broke their mast in three pieces and their sail fell overboard in a very grown sea, so that they were like to have been cast away." [Illustration: Billington Path along the Border of "Billington Sea"]