32. The hard voyage was over at last, and on the 9th of November Cape
Cod appeared. They knew about Cape Cod from the map and book of
Captain John Smith, who had tried to plant a colony there some years
before, but they intended to land somewhere near the Hudson River, and
turned south along the coast. Shoals and breakers barring their
passage that way, they returned, and, on November 11th, anchored in
Cape Cod harbor. "Being now passed the vast ocean and a sea of
troubles, before their preparation unto further proceedings . . . they
fell down upon their knees and blessed the Lord, the God of Heaven,
who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered
them from all perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on
the firm and stable earth, their proper element."
33. So there they were, and as yet no one had left the ship. It was
winter. The cold blue ocean beat the cold white shore, and the dark
forest further back rustled and moaned in the north wind, whistling
bleak welcome. What could those women and children do there? West from
the sea lay an unexplored country, no one knew how large; dark forest
uninhabited, save for the dusky Indian, clothed the land in an
unbroken mystery of wilderness; north and south stretched the desolate
coast, stretched five hundred miles ere it reached the nearest
European settlement; east lay the ocean, not to be recrossed.
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