This year the Dutch visited them again. With kind letters from the colony they sent a variety of goods, such as sugar, linen, Holland finer and coarser stuffs, etc. Their secretary de Rasieres came with them in their bark to Manomet, to the house the settlers had established there. He brought attendants, and his coming was heralded by trumpets. He requested them to send a boat to take him on to New Plymouth, as he could not travel so far overland. So they sent a boat to Manoanscussett, and brought him to the plantation with most of his people. After some few days’ entertainment he returned to his bark, and some of the leading settlers went with him and bought some of his goods. After this beginning they often sent over to them, and had intercourse for many years. Amongst other commodities they sold the Dutch a good deal of tobacco in exchange for linen, stuffs, etc.; and tobacco was profitably traded with them by the New Plymouth colony, till the Virginians learned of the Dutch settlement. But what become most profitable, in time, was the beginning they then made in the trade for wampum. They bought £50 worth of it from the Dutch who told them how much they sold of it at Fort Orange, and assured them they would find it so at Kennebec. At first they could not sell it—in fact it was two years before they cleared this small quantity. Afterwards, when the Indians further inland began to know of it, for many years they could scarcely get enough for them. This, with their other sources of supply, reduced their trade with the fishermen, and in the main also with the scattered settlers. It was strange to see the great change it wrought in a few years among the Indians themselves. The natives of these parts and in Massachusetts hitherto had none or very little of this wampum, except the Sachems and some of the chiefs who wore a little of it for ornament. It was, however, largely made and used by the Narragansetts and Pequots, who grew rich and powerful while the Indians here were poor and beggarly, and had no use for it. Nor did the English of New Plymouth or any of the other settlements, until told of it by the Dutch, so much as know what it was, much less that it was a commodity of such value. But after it grew to be valuable here, the local Indians took to it too, and learned how to make it, gathering the shells from the shores. It has remained a current commodity now for about twenty years, and it may prove a drug in time. In the meantime it makes the tribes hereabouts rich and powerful and proud, and provides them with arms and powder and shot, through the depravity of some unworthy persons, both English, Dutch, and French, and likely to be the ruin of many. Hitherto the Indians round here had no guns or other arms but their bows and arrows, nor for many years after; they scarcely dared handle guns, they were so afraid of them; and the very sight of one, though out of kilter, was a terror to them. But the