It is not surprising that Sir Robert Carr was anxious to obtain the government of the colony, as from contemporary descriptions it appears to have been a fertile and productive territory. "In these Provinces are great store of wild ducks, geese, and deer, strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, barberries, bilberries, several sorts of oaks and pines, chestnuts and walnuts, sometimes four or five miles together; the more northerly the country, the better the timber is accounted."[161] The true value of Maine was realised by William Dyre, who pointed out to Charles II. the manifold advantages that he would gain if he purchased Maine for himself. By such an action the King would have absolute dominion over those seas and might settle a duty on all fisheries there; at the same time he might very easily reduce the turbulent spirits in Massachusetts "to a ready subjection," while enriching himself with masts, tar, timber, etc., and thus "conduce to the safety of his maritime affairs."[162] There were, however, other very different views on Maine, and John Josselyn, an Englishman of good family, does not speak well of either the country or its inhabitants, but there are reasons for supposing that he may have been maliciously inclined. The people of Maine in 1675 "may be divided," he writes, "into Magistrates, Husbandmen or Planters, and fishermen; of the magistrates some be Royalists, the rest perverse Spirits, the like are the planters and fishers.... The planters are or should be restless pains takers, providing for their Cattle, planting and sowing of Corn ... but if they be of a droanish disposition as some are, they become wretchedly poor and miserable.... They have a custom of taking Tobacco, sleeping at noon, sitting long at meals sometimes four times in a day, and now and then drinking a dram of the bottle extraordinarily."[163] The people of Maine may have been all that Josselyn said, but it is far from likely. They were sufficiently alert to resent the government of the Crown, and in 1668 the majority of the settlers acquiesced in the reassertion of authority by Massachusetts. For ten years the quarrel between Ferdinando Gorges and Massachusetts continued, but in 1678, although his grandfather is reported to have spent £20,000 on the colony, the grandson's claims were extinguished by the purchase of his rights for £1250. From this moment Maine ceased to exist as a separate colony, and continued incorporated with Massachusetts for many years.