Morton’s verses can be found in their proper place in the _New Canaan_, but the principal charge now to be made against them is their incomprehensibility. Judged even by the standard of the present day, much more by that of the day when they were written, they are not open to criticism because of their “lasciviousnes.” They are decent enough, though very bad and very dull. As to the “detraction and scandall of some persons,” alleged against them,--if indeed they contained anything of the sort,--it was so very carefully concealed that no one could easily have understood it then, and Morton’s own efforts at explanation fail to make it intelligible now. The festivities around the May-pole were, however, but Morton’s amusements. Had he confined himself to these he might, so far as the people at Plymouth at least were concerned, to the end of his life have lived on the shores of Boston Bay, and erected a new pole with each recurring spring. The only resistance he would have had to overcome would have been a remonstrance now and then, hardly less comical than it was earnest. The business methods he pursued were a more serious matter. He had come to New England to make money, as well as to enjoy the license of a frontier life. He was fully alive to the profits of the peltry trade, and in carrying on that trade he was restrained by no scruples. The furs of course came from the interior, brought by Indians. In his dealings with the Indians Morton adopted a policy natural enough for one of his reckless nature, but which imperilled the existence of every European on the coast. The two things the savages most coveted were spirits and guns,--fire-water and fire-arms. Beads and knives and hatchets and colored cloth served very well to truck with at first. But these very soon lost their attraction. Guns and rum never did. For these the Indians would at any time give whatever they possessed. The trade in fire-arms had already attained some proportions when, in 1622, it was strictly forbidden by a proclamation of King James, issued at the instance of the Council for New England. The companion trade in spirits, less dangerous to the whites but more destructive to the savages, was looked upon as scandalous, but it was not prohibited. Morton cared equally little for either law or morals. He had come to New England for furs, and he meant to get them.