Again the company sent Mr. Allerton to England with a cargo of furs, to meet their engagements there, and to obtain authority to establish a trading-post on the Kennebec River. The Dutch were establishing trading-posts and agricultural colonies near the mouth of the Hudson, and many friendly messages and courteous acts were interchanged between these two parties. There were many English refugees in Leyden who, upon the death of their pastor, Mr. Robinson, were anxious to join their friends in America. They had expressed this desire very earnestly; but they were poor. They were unable to provide themselves with an outfit, or even to pay for their passage across the Atlantic. In order to aid these exiled and impoverished brethren, Governor Bradford, Captain Standish, and several others, formed a company and purchased of the Plymouth colony all their right to trade with the Indians for six years. For this they paid twelve thousand dollars. The main object of the purchasers seemed to be to raise money enough to bring over their friends from Holland. There were eight of the Pilgrim fathers united with four gentlemen in London who assumed these responsibilities. Very truly Mr. Baylies writes: “The generosity of the chiefs of the colony to their Leyden brethren is unparalleled. They almost deprived themselves of the common necessaries of life to get them over, and to support them until they were able to support themselves; laboring at the same time under heavy debts, for which they paid exorbitant interest. But their necessities seemed only to stimulate them to greater exertions.”[40] This new company, having obtained a patent for a trading-post on the Kennebec River, erected a house in a place called Cushenoe, now the city of Augusta. Here they collected, for purposes of trade, a large supply of coats, shirts, rags, blankets, biscuit, pease, etc. In the month of August, 1629, thirty-five families arrived at Plymouth from Leyden. Nine months after, in May, 1630, another ship arrived, bringing several more families. The new company, of which the Governor and the captain were the principal men, paid all their expenses, though they amounted to two thousand seven hundred dollars. Houses were assigned to them; grounds were purchased for them, and they were fed from the public stores for more than a year. When we remember that there was no blood relationship between these parties, no partnership, no bond of union excepting Christian charity; that the benefactors were poor, struggling for their own support, and that many of those whom they were thus aiding they had never seen before, we must regard this act as one of extraordinary generosity.