The first days of the Trimountain Colony resembled in some of their features those of the planting of New Plymouth. Although their shelter was of the scantiest, the settlers had not, like the settlers of Plymouth, to face at the outset the rigors of a Western winter. The Pilgrims arrived in December, on the shortest day of the year, whereas the day of the Puritans' landing was the very longest. Sickness and famine had nevertheless to be fought. Disease quickly carried off twenty per cent. of the people. About a hundred others returned home discouraged. The rest persevered, and proved themselves worthy followers of the New Plymouth Pilgrims. The Colony was, moreover, recruited by fresh comers from the old country; and through many vicissitudes, dissensions, and set-backs, much that was blasting to the spiritual and moral life and development of the Colony, it prospered materially and gathered strength. And there grew up the New England States. * * * * * [Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_ THE SITE OF THE OLD FORT, BURIAL HILL, PLYMOUTH] On the slope of Burial Hill,[9] surrounded by memorials of the Pilgrim Fathers and with the graves of their dead in the background; facing down that stream-skirted street of the Pilgrims once bordered by their humble dwellings and echoing to the tread of their weary feet; looking out upon the waters which bore to this haven, long years ago, the storm-tossed Mayflower and her eager human freight, there stands to-day a church which through the centuries has preserved unbroken records and maintained a continuous ministry. This is the First Church in Plymouth and the first church in America, the church of Scrooby, Leyden, and the Mayflower company, the church of Brewster and Bradford, of Winslow and Carver, whose first covenant, signed in the cabin of the little emigrant ship, is still the basis of its fellowship. Here Roger Williams, the banished of Boston and missionary of Rhode Island--a man according to Bradford of "many precious parts, but very unsettled in Judgment"--ministered for a time under Ralph Smith in the early stormy days of the sister colony; and here John Cotton, son of the famous Boston teacher and preacher--"a man of scholarly tastes and habits, somewhat decided in his convictions, diligent and faithful in his pastoral duties"[10]--was pastor for nearly thirty years from 1669. As the First Church in Boston is the fifth of its line, so is the First Church in Plymouth the fifth meeting-house used by the Pilgrim community. Its predecessor, a shrine of Pilgrim history around which precious associations clustered, was destroyed by fire in 1892; from the burning ruins was rescued the town bell cast by Paul Revere in 1801, and this sacred relic hangs and tolls again in the tower of the present edifice.