I do not believe that we can really appreciate their sense of complete severance--their sense of utter isolation. And I do not believe that we can appreciate the wild thrill of excitement, the sudden gush of freshly established connection that ran through the colony, when, seven months later--the following November--a ship sailed into the harbor. It was the Fortune bringing with her news and letters from home--word from that other world--and bringing also thirty-five new colonists, among them William Brewster's eldest son and Robert Cushman. Probably the greetings were so joyful, the messages so eagerly sought, the flutter of welcome so great that it was not until several days had passed that they realized that the chief word which Thomas Weston (the London merchant who was the head of the company which had financed the expedition) had sent them was one of reproof. The Mayflower had brought no profitable cargo back to England, he complained, an omission which was "wonderful and worthily distasted." While he admitted that they had labored under adverse circumstances, he unkindly added that a quarter of the time they had spent in discoursing and arguing and consulting could have profitably been spent in other ways. That the first official word from home should be one of such cruel reprimand struck the colonists--who had so wistfully waited for a cheering message--very hard. Half frozen, half starved, sick, depressed, they had been forced to struggle so desperately to maintain even a foothold on the ladder of existence, that it had not been humanly possible for them to fulfill their pledge to the Company. Bradford's letter back to Weston--dignified, touching--is sufficient vindication. When the Fortune returned she "was laden with good clapboards, as full as she could stowe, and two hogsheads of beaver and other skins," besides sassafras--a cargo valued at about five hundred pounds. In spite of the fact that this cargo was promptly stolen by a French cruiser off the English coast, it nevertheless marks the foundation of the fur and lumber trade in New England. Although this first visitor brought with her a patent of their lands (a document still preserved in Pilgrim Hall, with the signatures and seals of the Duke of Lenox, the Marquis of Hamilton, the Earl of Warwick, and Sir Ferdinando Gorges), yet to us, reading history in the perspective of three hundred years, the disagreeable impression of Weston's letter outweighs the satisfaction for the patent. When the Fortune sailed away it was like the departure of a rich, fault-finding aunt, who suddenly descends upon a household of poor relations, bringing presents, to be sure, but with such cutting disapproval on her lips that it mars the entire pleasure of her visit.