In 1627, the governor of the infant Dutch plantation, wishing to be on friendly terms with the Pilgrim settlers of New Plymouth, who had by that time established themselves firmly and were extending their borders, wrote a letter of congratulation to them, on “their prosperity, praiseworthy undertakings, and the government of their colony; offering them good will and service in all friendly kindness, and good neighbourhood;” and very characteristically closing the letter by an offer of “any of their goods for any wares which they might be pleased to deal for.” In return, the Pilgrims expressed their thankful sense of the kindnesses they had received in Holland, and their grateful acceptance of this offered friendship. The following year, therefore, De Rasier, the second in command, arrived at a trading establishment which the Plymouth people had built for their convenience, twenty miles south of Cape Cod, bringing with him divers commodities; and a boat was sent to fetch him to the old colony, where he came “honourably attended by a noise of trumpeters.” A league of friendship and commerce was proposed; but the New England settlers, who doubted the right of the Dutch to the territory they held, which was claimed by England by right of Cabot’s previous discovery, demurred, recommending rather that a treaty should be entered into by their respective nations. Still the utmost harmony prevailed; De Rasier offered the aid of troops, if necessary, against the French; and advised them to leave the barren soil of Plymouth for the fine pasture land on the banks of the Connecticut. When he departed, a number of the colonists accompanied him to his vessel and made considerable purchases from him; and the New England chronicle records that they traded together for several years, to their great mutual benefit. The greatest benefit, however, being, that the Dutch taught the English settlers the value of the trade in wampum: “they told us,” says this old record, “how vendible it is at their fort Orania, and assure us we shall find it so at Kennebeck;” for the Plymouth people had already a trading station on that river: and so in the end it proved, they very soon being hardly able to supply the demand, making great profit by it. The Pilgrims seem to have been very plain-spoken on this occasion, and even while expressing all kind of good wishes for the prosperity of their friends the Dutch, they requested that their ships might not interfere with their trade for beaver-skins in Narragansett Bay.