"Sabino" omitted from his formal statement--but inserted it in another part of his paper--the claim which Popham writers usually bring into the foreground, namely, that the Popham Colony was "the _first_ colonial occupation of the soil of New England under English enterprise." What rank will he assign to Bartholomew Gosnold's occupation of Cuttyhunk, on the south shore of Massachusetts, in 1602? Gosnold there and then made a settlement, which he intended to be permanent. He and his men built a fort and a storehouse, and collected a valuable freight to send home to England. The cellar walls of the house they occupied can be identified at the present day. They planted wheat, barley and oats. "Here," says Bancroft, (i. p. 112,) "the foundations of the first New England colony were to be laid." We do not claim that Gosnold founded a colony. He attempted it, and failed; but he did all that the Popham people did, and even more. He made American colonization an honorable enterprise, and showed that it could be made profitable. Gosnold's men were not convicts. They each had a share in the undertaking; and jealousy as to the distribution of their gains led to the return of the whole company to England. The sale of their freight made it a profitable adventure. They spread the most favorable reports of the regions they had visited, and brought the best evidence that it was a country worth possessing. The Popham men, on the other hand, returned to England in penury and disgrace, "burdening the bounds where they had beene with all the aspersions that possibly they could deuise, seeking by that meanes to discourage all others." The death of Queen Elizabeth prevented Gosnold's return to the Elizabeth Islands; but his representations and cheerful energy awakened an interest in America that resulted in the Charter of 1606, under which the Northern and Southern Virginia settlements were projected. When we compare what Gosnold and his men did in 1602, with what Popham and his felons did in 1607, it requires a degree of audacity rising to sublimity to assert, that "the Popham Colony was the _first_ colonial occupation of the soil of New England under English enterprise."