“He could not contain himself but running upon me with both hands, first violently snatcht off my Hat and threw it away and then giving me some buffets in the head said Sirrah get you up to your chamber. I had now lost one hat and had but one more. The next Time my Father saw it on my head he tore it violently from me and laid it up with the other, I know not where. Wherefore I put my Mountier Cap which was all I had left to wear on my head, and but a little while I had that, for when my Father came where I was, I lost that also.” Fulke Greville (Lord Brooke). Fulke Greville (Lord Brooke). Finally the father refused to let him wear his “Hive,” as he called the hat, at the table while eating, and thereafter Ellwood ate with his father’s servants. The vogue of beaver hats was an important factor in the settlement of America. The first Spanish, Dutch, English, and French colonists all came to America to seek for gold and furs. The Spaniards found gold, the Dutch and French found furs, but the English who found fish found the greatest wealth of all, for food is ever more than raiment. Of the furs the most important and most valuable was beaver. The English sent some beaver back to Europe; the very first ship to return from Plymouth carried back two hogsheads. Winslow sent twenty hogsheads as early as 1634, and Bradford shows that the trade was deemed important. But the wild creatures speedily retreated. Johnson declares that as early as 1645 the beaver trade had left the frontier post of Springfield, on the Connecticut River. From the earliest days both the French and English crown had treated the fishing and fur industries with unusual discretion, giving a monopoly to the fur trade and leaving the fisheries free, so the latter constantly increased, while in New England the fur trade passed over to the Dutch, distinctly to the advantage of the English, for the lazy trader at a post was neither a good savage nor a good citizen, while the hardy fishermen and bold sailors of New England brought wealth to every town. For some years the Dutch appeared to have the best of it, for they received ten to fifteen thousand beaver skins annually from New England; and they had trading-posts on Narragansett and Buzzards Bay. Still the trade drew the Dutch away from agriculture, and the real success of New Netherland did not come with furs, but with corn. James Douglas (Earl of Morton). James Douglas (Earl of Morton).