This settlement, apparently so important, amounted to nothing. The Indians were ever ready, it is said, to sign any agreement whatever which would extricate them from a momentary difficulty, but such promises were broken as promptly as made on the white man's theory, perhaps, that "all is fair in love and war." Certain it is that Philip, having returned to Mount Hope, sent in no more guns, but was busy as ever gaining resources for war and entering into alliances with other tribes. At last Philip was notified from Plymouth that unless the arms were given up by September 13, force would be used to compel the act. At the same time messengers were also dispatched to the government of Massachusetts, at Boston, which, it will be remembered, was chosen as umpire to arbitrate between the two contending parties. Philip, shrewd enough to have perceived the jealousy and rivalry between the two colonies, set off at once to Boston, and thus assumed the position of the "law and order" party. With the rarest diplomacy he flattered the Massachusetts colony by certain territorial concessions and made such an adroit statement of his case, representing that Plymouth had encroached on the other colonies by summoning him for trial before her own court, and virtually declaring war without consulting them, that the Bostonians not only refused to help Plymouth at this time but coolly criticised her action as wrong and unwarrantable. They also wrote a letter to Plymouth, assuming that there was perhaps equal blame on both sides, and declaring that there did not appear to be sufficient cause for the Plymouth people to commence hostilities. In their letter they wrote: "We do not understand how Philip hath subjected himself to you. But the treatment you have given him, and your proceedings toward him, do not render him such a subject as that, if there be not at present answering to summons there should presently be a proceeding to hostilities. The sword once drawn and dipped in blood may make him as independent upon you as you are upon him." In short, the Bostonians believed that the whole difficulty arose from the Puritans' "lust for inflicting justice" and might have been avoided. It was while Philip was at Boston that Josselyn, the English traveler, saw him. "The roytelet of the Pokanokets," he informs us, "had a coat on and buskins set thick with beads in pleasant wild work, and a broad belt of the same. His accoutrements were valued at twenty pounds. . . . Their beads are their money; of these there are two sorts, blue beads and white beads; the first is their gold, the last their silver. These they work out of certain shells, so cunningly that neither Jew nor devil can counterfeit."