Plymouth, the French at St. Christophers, and innumerable other little settlements on secluded bays or on lonely islands, owed their prosperity or preservation to the timely arrival of a “Dutch trading captain.” It would be interesting to trace how many little bands of people, abandoned by their own companies or governments, were thus nursed into strength by the Holland traders, who sought them out, and knew their needs.[261] Footnote 259: Gerard Malynes writing in 1622, quotes rates of insurance to various ports. He does not give New England, but quotes San Domingo as 12 per cent each way, and the East Indies at 15 per cent. _Cf._ his _Consuetude vel Lex Mercatoria_ (London, 1636), p. 108. Footnote 260: Bradford, _Plymouth_, pp. 198, 204, 209, 222, 234. Footnote 261: _Cf._ S. L. Mims, _Colbert's West Indian Policy_ (Yale Univ. Press, 1912), pp. 20 _f._ Assured now of sufficient food, and with the Indian trade well established, the settlers felt that their position in these respects was secure. There were, however, two matters which gave them cause for anxiety. One was the interference by outsiders with their trade on the Kennebec, and the other was their ill-defined situation in regard to the Adventurers in London. In spite of the abandonment of the enterprise by the latter, their claims would continue in existence unless legally extinguished; and it was essential for the settlers to come to some agreement with them, in order that their property and goods should not be liable to seizure in the future. Negotiations, begun by Allerton in 1626, were completed by him on a second trip the year after, when he not only secured a patent for a definite tract on the Kennebec from the Council for New England, but consummated the deal with the Adventurers by which all claims of every description were to be canceled by the payment to them of £1800, in annual instalments of £200 each. The payment of this sum, together with £600 of additional debt, was undertaken by Bradford, Brewster, Standish, and Winslow, with four others in the colony and four friends in England, in exchange for a monopoly of the colony's trade for six years.[262] Footnote 262: Bradford, _Plymouth_, pp. 212, 221, 226.