On their return voyage, they made a brief stop at Saco, and likewise at the mouth of the Kennebec. At the latter point they had an interview with the sachem, Anassou, who informed them that a ship had been there, and that the men on board her had seized, under color of friendship, and killed five savages belonging to that river. From the description given by Anassou, Champlain was convinced that the ship was English, and subsequent events render it quite certain that it was the "Archangel," fitted out by the Earl of Southampton and Lord Arundel of Wardour, and commanded by Captain George Weymouth. The design of the expedition was to fix upon an eligible site for a colonial plantation, and, in pursuance of this purpose, Weymouth anchored off Monhegan on the 28th of May, 1605, _new style_, and, after spending a month in explorations of the region contiguous, left for England on the 26th of June. [48] He had seized and carried away five of the natives, having concealed them in the hold of his ship, and Anassou, under the circumstances, naturally supposed they had been killed. The statement of the sachem, that the natives captured belonged to the river where Champlain then was, namely, the Kennebec, goes far to prove that Weymouth's explorations were in the Kennebec, or at least in the network of waters then comprehended under that appellation, and not in the Penobscot or in any other river farther east, as some historical writers have supposed. It would appear that while the French were carefully surveying the coasts of New England, in order to fix upon an eligible site for a permanent colonial settlement, the English were likewise upon the ground, engaged in a similar investigation for the same purpose. From this period onward, for more than a century and a half, there was a perpetual conflict and struggle for territorial possession on the northern coast of America, between these two great nations, sometimes active and violent, and at others subsiding into a semi-slumber, but never ceasing until every acre of soil belonging to the French had been transferred to the English by a solemn international compact. On this exploration, Champlain noticed along the coast from Kennebec to Cape Cod, and described several objects in natural history unknown in Europe, such as the horse-foot crab, [49] the black skimmer, and the wild turkey, the latter two of which have long since ceased to visit this region. ENDNOTES: