Plymouth trade, not Only with the mother country, but with other colonies, grew apace. As early as 1627, in order to facilitate communication to the southward with the Indians and with the Dutch settlement on the Hudson, the Pilgrims may be said to have made the first move toward a Cape Cod Canal. “To avoid the compassing of Cape Cod and those dangerous shoals,” wrote Bradford, “and so to make any voyage to the southward in much shorter time and with less danger,” they established a trading post with a farm to support it, and built a pinnace, at Manomet on the river flowing into Buzzard’s Bay. Their route lay by boat from Plymouth to Scusset Harbor, where they landed their goods for a portage overland of three or four miles to the navigable waters of the river and the coasting vessel there. And in September of that same year, Isaac de Rasieres, secretary of the Dutch Government at New Amsterdam, landed at Manomet with sugar, stuffs, and other commodities, and was duly convoyed to Plymouth in a vessel sent out by the Governor for such purpose. De Rasieres entered Plymouth in state, “honorably attended by the noise of his trumpeters,” and wrote a fine account of the town which is preserved for our interest. The colony, by 1637, had grown to comprise the towns of Plymouth, Duxbury, and Scituate; in no long time it included the present counties of Plymouth, Bristol, and Barnstable, and a bit of Rhode Island. Traders, fishermen, an adventurer now and again had visited the Cape, even a few settlers, unauthorized by Plymouth, had broken ground there; but up to 1637 its early history is indissolubly bound up with that of Plymouth. In April of that year the first settlement was organized at Sandwich when certain men of Saugus, who were of a broader mind than their neighbors of Massachusetts Bay, wished to emigrate to the milder rule of Plymouth. Under due restrictions, they were granted the privilege to “view a place to sit down, and have sufficient land for three score families.” They chose Sandwich. And with the first ten of Saugus came fifty others of Saugus and Duxbury and Plymouth. All was duly regulated; and two men who were found clearing ground without permission, and without having fetched their families, were charged with “disorderly keeping house alone.” If the Saugus men expected a free hand in their new home, they were to be undeceived: the chief ordering of their affairs was from Plymouth, and in 1638 certain prominent townsmen were fined as “being deficient in arms” and for not having their swine ringed. It was the law of the colony “that no persons shall be allowed to become housekeepers until they are completely provided with arms and ammunition; nor shall any be allowed to become housekeepers, or to build any cottage or dwelling, without permission from the governor and assistants.” Rightly, no doubt, Plymouth meant to avoid the danger of any such disorderly element as had infested Weymouth. [Illustration: A FIRST COMER]