The settlers had lived comfortably enough with their pagan neighbors; and so busy were they about their own affairs, temporal and spiritual, that they were not annoyingly zealous in proselyting. But when John Eliot, apostle to the Indians, came down from Boston to arbitrate the parochial troubles of Sandwich, he improved the occasion to forward the work nearest his heart. An Indian of the Six Nations shrewdly observed to a Frenchman that “while we had beaver and furs, the missionaries prayed with us; but when our merchandise failed they thought they could do us no further good.” No such charge could be brought against Eliot. “We may guess that probably the devil decoyed these miserable salvages hither,” set forth the “Magnalia,” “in hopes that the gospel should never come here to destroy or disturb his absolute empire over them. But our Eliot was on such ill terms with the devil as to alarm him with sounding the silver trumpets of heaven in his territories and make some noble and zealous attempts ... to rescue as many as he could from the old usurping landlord of America.” The silver trumpets sounded in vain at Sandwich. Eliot was baffled by the difficulties of the local dialect, by the too pliant acquiescence of one sagamore, and by the ironic compliance of a huge sachem known as Jehu who stalked into meeting, stood silent at the door, and, silent still, went forth again never to reappear there. Eliot returned to Boston, but it is probable that his hope was the inspiration of much good that followed. Richard Bourne took hold of the matter by the right handle: he was “a man of that discernment that he conceived it was in vain to propagate Christian knowledge among any people without a territory where they might remain in peace.” And he proceeded to obtain for his wards a tract of over ten thousand acres on the “South Sea,” where in time, as birds to the safety of some southern island, flocked Indians from far and near; and where still, though of deteriorated breed, may be found a few Mashpee Indians. “There is no place I ever saw so adapted to an Indian town as this,” wrote the Reverend Gideon Hawley in 1757. “It is situated on the Sound, in sight of Martha’s Vineyard; is cut into necks of land, and has two inlets by the sea; being well watered by three fresh rivers and three large fresh ponds lying in the centre of the plantation. In the two salt water bays are a great plenty of fish of every description; and in the rivers are trout, herring &c. In the woods, until lately, has been a great variety of wild game consisting of deer &c., and adjacent to the rivers and ponds otters, minks, and other amphibious animals whose skins have been sought for and made a valuable remittance to Europe ever since my knowledge of these Indians.” The description of the land on the thickly settled south shore of to-day is clearly recognizable; there are trout in the brooks, and fish in the sea, though the Indian and the “amphibious animals” be rarer denizens.