Beaver, otter and valuable deer skins found their way in great quantities to the new truck house, while Merrymount became “a sort of a drunkard’s resort and gambling hall” and worse. The jolly host of Merrymount, revelling in “riotous prodigality,” had a great Maypole erected for the entertainment of visiting factors who wanted to dance and frisk with pleasurable Indian maids. Fishing and trading vessels along the coast much preferred to do business with the open-handed Morton rather than the close-fisted Pilgrims. Therefore, trading goods were as easily come by at Merrymount as were beaver skins. Everyone was quite happy about the situation except the fathers at Plymouth. Morton had even discovered their profitable new trading grounds in Maine. The first year the Pilgrims extended their fur trading operations to Maine, in 1625, they gathered in 700 pounds of beaver besides some other furs on the Kennebec, mostly in exchange for the corn they had by then learned to grow at Plymouth. But now Morton was outbidding them with his more attractive trading goods and getting nearly everything of value in that vicinity too. The very existence of the Plymouth Colony seemed to be at stake. Complaints, cajolings and threats were of no avail. Morton, the lawyer, was too clever. Something had to be done and force was the final resort. Captain Standish was sent with some soldiers to arrest the obnoxious neighbor on the charge that he was violating the royal proclamation prohibiting trade in guns and powder. “Captain Shrimp,” as Morton contemptuously called Standish, succeeded in his mission only after a fight. He captured Morton and took him to Plymouth. There he tried his best to have the erstwhile “host of Merrymount” hanged. But in the end Morton’s only punishment was to be shipped back to England. As it came about, the Wessagusset area was no sooner eliminated as a competitor for the beaver trade than the Pilgrims were faced with new and much more formidable rivals in the same neighborhood. These were the Puritans, the advance guard of whom arrived at Salem under Captain John Endicott in 1628. As recruits of the great Massachusetts Bay Company they were soon coming by the thousands. Under the leadership of Governor John Winthrop they overran the Boston Bay region. And there wasn’t much the fathers at Plymouth could do about these new neighbors except to offer religious advice on the relative merits of Brownism and Separation. * * * * *