THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 51 



upon it. But the enterprise was so poorly managed on 

 this side of the water that, after a decade of experience, 

 it afforded the promoters no profit. For years the colony 

 was in an unpromising condition, the growth of Ports- 

 mouth was slow, and during the remainder of the seven- 

 teenth century this region furnishes little of interest to 

 the subject of the fisheries. 1 



The seat of the first permanent settlement in Maine was 

 the island of Monhegan, a place famous in the Old World 

 for its fisheries many years before the time of Plymouth 

 and Massachusetts Bay. The first permanent settlement 

 on the mainland, however, was at Pemaquid in 1625. 

 Fishermen and hunters had settled at Cape Porpoise by 

 1630, and settlements of a similar character were made near 

 Portland about the same time, the first house being built 

 in old Falmouth in 1632. Other early settlements were 

 made along the coast as far eastward as Penobscot Bay 

 for the prosecution of the coast fisheries. 2 



In 1631, two merchants of Bristol, England, obtained 

 a grant of land known as the ''Pemaquid grant,' which 

 gave them the exclusive right to fish in their own waters. 

 The grant included several thousand acres of mainland, 

 the Damariscove islands, and all other islands within seven 

 leagues of the shore, which included Monhegan. The 

 grant lay wholly east of Gorges' claim, and, therefore, 

 within the claims maintained by the French at that period. 

 This region was already an old fishing resort for English 

 vessels, but unfortunately there are only few records now 

 remaining of the fisheries, and none of the doings of the 

 fishermen as early colonizers. Thus it will be seen that 

 by the time the settlement of Massachusetts Bay colony 

 was well established, there was a chain of settlements 

 stretching in a more or less interrupted line from Plymouth 



1 Sabine, pp. 287-289 passim. 



2 Wiasor, III, p. 321. 



