In one other aspect the temporary lodgment of Thomas Weston’s “rude fellows” here in Weymouth from June, 1622, to April, 1623, has an interest in the Massachusetts annals. It is characteristic of a distinct phase in the first attempts at the European occupation of New England. I used the word “occupation” designedly, for those sporadic trading stations cannot be referred to correctly as settlements; they contained in themselves no power of self-perpetuation, being composed wholly of men engaged for wages in an effort at the trade exploitation of a region. This is wholly different from colonization in good faith. Thomas Weston acted on a well-defined plan, when, early in 1622, he dispatched his company to establish themselves somewhere on the shores of Massachusetts bay. He himself expressed it:--“Families,” he said, “were an encumbrance in any well-organized plantation; but a trading-post occupied by able-bodied men only could accomplish more in New England in seven years than in old England in twenty.” Nor was his, here at Wessagusset, by any means the earliest attempt of the sort. On the contrary, it had been preceded by a score of years; and, twelve months ago, on the 1st day of September, 1903, the 300th anniversary was observed of the similar, but even more abortive, experiment made by Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold on the island of Cuttyhunk, at the extreme western end of the Elizabethan group, off New Bedford. Again, three years later, in August, 1607, a similar attempt was made further to the eastward, when the Popham and Gorges plantation was established on the Kennebec. In that case, the adventurers did actually winter on the coast; but, as the survivors described their experience, they found the country “over cold, and in respect of that not habitable by Englishmen.” At this time, as probably long before and continuously thereafter, Monhegan island, southwest of Penobscot bay, seems to have been a rendezvous for fishermen; and when, in the early spring of 1622, those composing the advance of Thomas Weston’s company arrived at the Damariscove station, on the group of islands just south of Penobscot bay, they found that the men belonging to the ships there fishing “had newly set up a May-pole and were very merry.” But, a band of sea-farers only, there were no families in that company. These, one and all, were mere fishing or trading posts; and, so far as I have been able to learn, not until the Mayflower put into Provincetown harbor on what is now the 21st of November, 1620, had any women of European blood ever set foot on New England soil. That day is properly celebrated. It marked the close of the trade-exploiting period, and the beginning of true colonization.