It is not doubted that a small plantation was maintained here antecedent to the settlement in Massachusetts Bay, but it as certainly lacks confirmation that it had assumed either the proportions or outward appearance of a well and regularly built town at any time during the seventeenth century. If it were true, as Sullivan states, that in 1630 there were, exclusive of fishermen, eighty-four families about Sheepscot, Pemaquid, and St. George's, it also becomes important to know by what means these settlements were depopulated previous to the Indian wars. The commissioners of Charles II., sent over in 1665, reported that upon the rivers Kennebec, Sheepscot, and Pemaquid were three plantations, the largest containing not more than thirty houses, inhabited, say they, "by the worst of men." The commissioners gave impartial testimony here, for they were trying to dispossess Massachusetts of the government she had assumed over Maine since 1652. They wrote further, that neither Kittery, York, Wells, Scarborough, nor Falmouth had more than thirty houses, and those mean ones. This was the entirety of the grand old Pine-tree State two centuries ago. Colonel Romer had recommended, about 1699, the fortifying anew of Pemaquid, and the building of supporting works at the next point of land, and on John's Island. Nothing, however, appears to have been done until the arrival of Colonel David Dunbar, in 1730, to resume possession of the Sagadahoc territory in the name of the crown. Dunbar repaired the old works, giving them the name of Fort Frederick. At Pemaquid Point he laid out the plan of a city which he divided into lots, inviting settlers to repopulate the country. Old grants and titles were considered extinct. His possession at Pemaquid conflicting with the Muscongus patent was revoked through the efforts of Samuel Waldo. The garrison was replaced by Massachusetts troops, and the so-called Sagadahoc territory annexed to the County of York.[56] When in the neighborhood, the visitor will feel a desire to inspect the extensive shell heaps of the Damariscotta, about a mile above the town of Newcastle. They occur on a jutting point of land, in such masses as to resemble low chalk cliffs of guano deposits. The shells are of the oyster, now no longer native in New England waters, but once abundant, as these and other remains testify. The highest point of the bank is twenty-five feet above the river. The deposits are rather more than a hundred rods in length, with a variable width of from eighty to a hundred rods. The shells lie in regular layers, bleached by sun and weather. Among the many naturalists who have visited them may be named Dr. Charles T. Jackson,[57] and Professor Chadbourne, of Bowdoin College. Some animal remains found among the shells were submitted to Agassiz, who concurred in the received opinion that the shells were heaped up by men.