did behold to burne for a mile space, and the very same day that wee weighed Anchor, they came down to the shore in greater number, to wit, very neere two hundred by our estimation, and some of them came in theire Boates to our ship, and would have had us come in againe, but we sent them back, and would none of their entertainment.” One would love to know more than is provided in Martin Pring’s brief narrative in order to estimate fairly whether the English had given provocation to the Indians for this threatened attack at Plymouth. The only hint of provocation is the taking of a canoe back to England. Had Plymouth been populated by two hundred Indians in 1620 it seems unlikely that the Pilgrims could have survived. The English adventurers transferred their explorations to the coast of Maine, where in 1605 George Waymouth, and in 1606 Martin Pring, made investigations preparatory to the major colonization attempt of the English Plymouth Company at Sagadahoc, the mouth of the Kennebec River. This colony failed after a year through a breakdown in leadership. For our purposes it is significant that the English sent no further explorations into Massachusetts waters for eight years after the voyages of Gosnold and Martin Pring. It looks as though the enmity of the Massachusetts Indians dissuaded English merchants from further plans to set up a colony in that region. Plymouth’s next visitor was that great French explorer and empire builder, the founder of Canada, Samuel de Champlain. A group of French merchants organized by the governor of Dieppe, that old French port which had been sending fishermen to America for more than a century, succeeded in 1603 in getting from Henri IV a commission to found a colony. After spending the summer of 1603 exploring the St. Lawrence, the leaders decided that a more southern climate was desirable. Accordingly in 1604, De Monts and Pont-Grave, with Samuel de Champlain as geographer and chronicler of the expedition, explored the Bay of Fundy and founded a colony on Dochet Island in Passamaquoddy Bay. Half the colonists died during the first winter, and the colony was moved across the Bay to a better site at what is now Annapolis, Nova Scotia. Meantime Champlain spent the summers of 1605 and 1606 exploring the New England coast, familiarizing himself with all the shores as far south as Woods Hole in Massachusetts. He wrote a splendid account of these expeditions, which is still good reading; and for the first time produced a good map of the Massachusetts coast, with detail maps of Gloucester, Plymouth, Eastham and Chatham harbors. [Illustration: Champlain’s Map of Plymouth Harbor, 1605 _Legends on Champlain’s Map of Port St. Louis with comments_ A. SHOWS THE PLACE WHERE VESSELS ANCHOR The figures show the fathoms of water. The depths are now much less than those indicated on the map, and the difference may represent an actual change. B. THE CHANNEL C. TWO ISLANDS