And now the Pilgrim enterprise began to take a wide range; they had already acquired rights on Cape Ann, as well as an extensive domain on the Kennebec, now covered by patent; and they were the first to plant an English settlement on the banks of the silvery Connecticut.[563] All around them the lusty shouts of the pioneers were heard. They no longer stood alone on the verge of the unbroken and primeval forest. Civilization, pushing restlessly towards the setting sun, began to supplement this nucleus colony. English planters were already seated at Saco and at Sagadahoc, in Maine.[564] The red men who haunted the coast-line of Massachusetts Bay, were pushed from their marshy hunting-grounds by the Puritan colonists who followed Endicott into the wilderness. And in the west, the patient, phlegmatic Dutch, “without haste, without rest,” had founded New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan, a town which bathed its feet in the waters of old Hendrick Hudson’s majestic river, and which has since expanded to be the metropolis of North America.[565] No occasion, now, to complain of a lack of company. With all the settlements amicable and cordial relations were cemented by the Pilgrim Fathers of Plymouth. With the Dutch planters, especially, a correspondence was had, by means of which mutually kind wishes and commercial offices were interchanged.[566] In 1627, Isaac de Rasières, “a chief merchant at New Amsterdam, and second to the Dutch governor of the New Netherlands,” visited Plymouth, where he tarried “some days,” and received friendly entertainment.[567] A neighborly business intercourse was commenced, and it was at this time that the Pilgrims became acquainted with the value and the uses of _wampum_.[568] This was the Indian coin—the dollars and cents of barbarism. It was made of small pieces of shell, white sometimes, but often purple, and ground, polished, drilled, and strung or beaded.[569] “Neither the English of this plantation nor of any other in these parts,” remarks Bradford, “had knowledge of wampum till now. But the settlers bought fifty pounds’ worth of it from De Rasières, who told them how vendable it was at their Indian stations, and did persuade them that they would find it so at Kennebec; and so it came to pass, for though at first it stuck, and they were two years in working off a small quantity, yet afterwards, when the inland tribes knew of it, the traders could scarce ever get enough to supply the demand, for many years together.”[570] De Rasières was a close and shrewd observer, and nothing escaped his keen eyes at Plymouth. On his return he wrote a letter in which he described at length the salient characteristics of the Pilgrim colony. Let us take a peep into the quaint old manuscript, and see how New England in its Pilgrim babyhood looked in his eyes: