The Pilgrims had other competitors in Maine also. In 1630 a trading post was established at Pemaquid Point under a patent obtained by two English merchants for twelve thousand acres between the Damariscotta and Muscongus Rivers. About the same time John Oldham and Richard Vines obtained a grant at the mouth of the Saco River, which remained a most profitable fur trading center for some years. Then there was the Laconia Company, organized by Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Captain John Mason to put new life in their Piscataqua colony. Laconia, described as a vast hinterland area of rivers and lakes, was an extension of their original patent to the “Province of Maine.” Gorges and Mason now planned to send cargoes of Indian trucking goods up the Piscataqua River into Laconia, to Lake Champlain, to be bartered for peltries. Thus they hoped to compete with the Dutch and the French for the hinterland trade. Captain Walter Neale, as governor of the Laconia Company, and Ambrose Gibbons, as factor, did very well from 1630 to 1633, establishing several trading posts on the Piscataqua River. But they never reached Lake Champlain. Maybe they had it confused with Lake Winnepesaukee. In any case, as they discovered, the rivers of Maine flowed from the north, not from the west, and they couldn’t penetrate deep enough into the interior to tap the hinterland trade of the Dutch and the French. Probably the most dangerous of the Pilgrims’ rivals in Maine about this time was the trading post on Richmond’s Island off Cape Elizabeth. Thomas Morton, the jolly host of Merrymount, had traded here as early as 1627. After his banishment from America one of his most roguish associates, Walter Bagnall, took over the island and is said to have gained 1,000 pounds sterling from his trade in a period of three years. Then this “wicked fellow” was murdered by the natives. Bagnall’s successor, John Winter, also did a flourishing business on Richmond’s Island as factor for some English merchants, employing some sixty men at one time in both fishing and fur trading activities. The records indicate that he was about as unscrupulous in his dealings as was his predecessor, cheating and otherwise mistreating the Indians at every turn. He charged them at the rate of thirty-three pounds for a hogshead of brandy which cost him seven. For powder which cost him twenty pence per pound he raised the rate to three shillings in trade. But the natives preferred his goods. In spite of such competition, however, Maine became the Pilgrims’ chief source of furs. In one period of two years the trading post at Cushenoc alone is known to have gathered in more than 7,000 pounds of beaver. The route of the beaver-laden shallops from the Maine coast was indeed Plymouth’s life-line. Wampum played no small role in the success of this extended operation which was so vital to the colony’s existence, although the tight control exercised over the fur trade by the Pilgrim fathers was the main factor.