and from that time took the whole trade into their own hands. These were obliged to take up money at an exorbitant interest, and to go deeply into trade at Kennebec, Penobscot, and Connecticut; by which means, and their own great industry and economy, they were enabled to discharge the debt, and pay for the transportation of thirty-five families of their friends from Leyden, who arrived in 1629.*

of eighteen hundred pounds, and Bradford, with eight others, gave their several bonds for the payment of it, in annual instalments of £200 every Michaelmas. These nine undertakers, as they were called, also agreed with the colonists to pay all their other debts in England, amounting to six hundred pounds.— Mass. Hist. Coll., iii., 46–51, 58. So poor, however, was their credit in the money market in London, that Mr. Allerton, on the joint order and obligation of the principal men of the colony, raised only £200, "at thirty in the hundred interest."-H.]

* [They were obliged to take up money at thirty, forty, and even fifty per cent. These thirty-five families, says Governor Bradford, 66 we were fain to keep eighteen months at our charge ere they could reap any harvest to live upon; all which together fell heavy upon us."-Mass. Hist. Coll., 58, 74. So severe were their pecuniary troubles. Yet their engagements were all faithfully discharged.

To enable themselves to pay the debts they had thus assumed, the undertakers obtained of the colonists an exclusive right to the trade of the colony for six years from the end of September, 1627.-Ib., 59-61. Prince, 245. The progress and extent of the trade of the colony deserves a more particular notice than the allusion in the text. On the return of the Fortune in 1621, they sent home a cargo of furs, clapboards, and sassafras, val

The patent had been taken in the name of Mr. Bradford, in trust for the colony; and the

ued at £500. This was taken by the French, and lost. In 1623, September 10, they sent a similar cargo in the Ann. Their trading voyages thus far were confined to one or two, by Winslow and Standish, to the fishermen "down East," and to the Indians of Massachusetts Bay for furs; and their exchanges were few, and on hard terms, with the vessels that now and then touched on their coast. In 1624 a carpenter was sent out by the company, who built "two very good and strong shallops, with a great and strong lighter." Their own pinnace had been stranded on the cape. In 1625 one of these was first used, in a voyage to the Kennebec, to dispose of the surplus corn of that year's abundant harvest. Governor Bradford gives an interesting account of the manner of this expedition. "We laid a deck over her midship to keep the corn dry; but the men were forced to stand in all weathers without any shelter, and the time of year begins to grow tempestuous, but God preserves and prospers them, for they bring home seven hundred weight of beaver, besides other fur, having little or nothing but our corn to purchase them. This voyage was made by Mr. Winslow and some old standards, for seamen we have none.' Prince, 235. See also Hubbard, 94. They were also engaged in fishing, and had erected buildings for this purpose at Nantasket and Cape Ann; but it was less profitable than trading. In 1626 corn was worth six shillings the bushel. The shallops being found inconveniently small and open, they employed a housewright, the ship-carpenter being dead, to saw the largest across the middle, lengthen her five or six feet, and put on a deck. She was then fitted with sails, &c., and did service seven years.-Ib., 240. They seem to have made but one, and that an unsuccessful, attempt to sail round Cape Cod to the south, which has been referred to in a previous note. What extent of trade they had with the region southwest of the cape we are not precisely informed, but it must have been considera

event proved that their confidence was not misplaced. When the number of people was

ble. For early in the summer of 1627, to avoid the shoals of the cape, they built a pinnace on the south side of the peninsula on the sea, at Manomet, not far from Sandwich, where also they built a house, and kept some men stationed. At this place two small creeks, one running into the ocean and the other into Cape Cod Bay, have their source within a few miles of each other. Having brought their goods up one of them, they carried them over land four or five miles, and down the other to the ocean, where their pinnace lay.-Ib., 244. This route was both shorter and safer, and has been used somewhat in later times, and, indeed, is the route of the proposed and much-talked of canal to connect Buzzard's and Cape Cod Bays. This same year, so profitable was the trade, that Bradford wrote to the council, June 15, complaining of " many who, without license, trade and traffic, and truck, to get what they can, whether by right or wrong, and then be gone."-Mass. Hist. Coll., iii., 56.

The first direct knowledge which the Plymouth settlers had of their Dutch neighbours at Manhattan seems to have been by the driving ashore of one of their ships in Narraganset Bay, in March, 1623.-Prince, 211. Their first intercourse with them was in March, 1627, when a letter was received from Isaac de Razier, agent of the Dutch Company, and "second to the governor," proposing to open a traffic with them. Governor Bradford made a courteous reply, consenting to deal with them, but informing them of their commission to expel intruders on their limits (40° south), and especially desiring them to "forbear trading with the natives in Plymouth Bay, and the Narraganset River, and Sowames." The Dutch rejoined, affirming their right to trade in those parts, by commission from the States of Holland, "which they would defend." Governor Bradford proposed a conference, and in September De Razier came to Plymouth, and they made some arrangements towards a mutually advantageous commerce. He first acquainted them with

increased, and new townships were erected, the General Court, in 1640, requested that he

wampum, of which they afterward made much profit. Bradford still insisted that the Dutch should "clear the title of their planting in those parts," significantly adding, that thereafter it might be settled "not without blows."-See the correspondence, &c., Mass. Hist. Coll., iii., 51–57.

It is probable from what has been said, as well as from the earlier date and commercial character of the settlement at New-York, that the Dutch were first used to traffic on the Connecticut River. Indeed, Morton says expressly that they told: them of Plymouth of it as a good place for planting and trade; but "their hands being full otherwise, they let it pass." They were afterward induced to think seriously of it by the representations of some Indians, who had been driven from their country by the Pequods.-Memorial, 171. The settlers at Massachusetts Bay, in 1631, declined entering into the scheme (Winthrop's Journal, 52), and Plymouth undertook the plantation alone. The expedition was conducted by Lieutenant Holmes, who carried with him the frame of a house, and, pass. ing up the river, in defiance of the Dutch, who had a fort with ten pieces of cannon a little above Hartford, erected and fortified his house at Windsor October 25, 1633.-Trumbull, Hist. of Conn., i., 21. Prince, 435, 436. The question of the prior discovery of the river, it seems, therefore, must be decided in favour of the Dutch, though Trumbull (1. c.) asserts the contrary. The question of prior occupancy, which was then a vexed one, and now possesses some historical interest, is one of words, as the Dutch had a fort there first, and the Plymouth people a trading-house first; or else, by their own showing, those of Plymouth have the worst of the case. There is no evidence, and it is highly improbable, that, as Smith asserts (Hist. of New-York, 19, 8vo ed.), the Dutch built a fort there in 1623. The title to the lands, by purchase of the Indians, was clearly in the English. They claimed through the herediVOL. III.-D

would surrender the patent into their hands.* To this he readily consented; and, by a written instrument under his hand and seal, surrendered it to them, reserving for himself no more than his proportion, by previous agreement. This was done in open court, and the patent was immediately redelivered into his custody.

While they were few in number, the whole body of associates or freemen assembled for

tary lord of the soil, the Dutch through a usurper.-See Hazard, ii., 262. Hutch., Mass., ii., 416, 417. Winslow's Letter to Winthrop in 1643. There can be no doubt of the course o trade after the river was settled by the English.-Winthrop, i., 138. It was a capital market for furs, otter, and beaver, and formed a route to Canada by water, saving a few miles only of land carriage.-Trumbull, i., 23.

January 13th, 1630, a patent was granted by the Council for New-England to the colonists at Plymouth, of a tract of fifteen miles on each side of the Kennebec. About the same time Mr. Shirley and others took out a patent for lands on the Penobscot, and sent out Edward Ashley, one of their number, to superintend their operations there. In this enterprise those of Plymouth were induced, though reluctantly, to join, and a trading-house was built.-Mass. Hist. Coll., iii., 70-74. Winthrop, i., 166. This establishment was soon after taken by the French, who retained it, in spite of all efforts to dislodge them, till 1654. The trade to the Kennebec seems to have been quite profitable. "Our neighbours of Plymouth," says Governor Winthrop (Journal, i., 138), "had great trade this year (1634) at Kennebec, so as Mr. Winslow carried with him to England about twenty hogsheads of beaver."-H.]

* Hazard, i., 298, 468.