472 AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC QUESTIONS 



later. The French insisted upon their exclusive right to 

 occupy the shore areas allotted to them, even as against Brit- 

 ish settlers. 



Despite continued ill-feeling between French and English 

 fishing interests, both have nevertheless prospered, and the 

 friction between them has gradually diminished ever since. 



HI 



In seeking a home for themselves and their posterity, the 

 Pilgrim Fathers were largely influenced in their choice of a 

 place of settlement by the value they attached to the fisher- 

 ies of New England. Enthusiastic descriptions of the abun- 

 dance of cod in that region had reached them in England. 

 The reports of Gosnold in 1602; of Pring, who explored 

 the harbors of Maine in 1603 ; of Wayraouth in 1605 ; of 

 Popham and Gilbert who settled in Maine in 1608 ; and of 

 the romantic John Smith who caught 47,000 cod at Monhe- 

 gan in 1614, and who devoted pages "writ with his oune 

 hande " to the wealth of the fisheries in the New World, and 

 especially in New England, all of these had been read and 

 considered by the Puritans before making their exodus to 

 the West. Before abandoning forever the shores of the 

 Old World, they executed contracts with certain merchan 

 in England, to whom they agreed to furnish fish, hopin 

 thereby to defray the expenses of their voyage. In his his- 

 tory of Virginia, John Smith takes credit to himself fo 

 having been largely instrumental in inducing the Pilgri 

 to come to the New World on account of his favorable rep 

 sentations regarding the New England fisheries. In a 

 course on the trials of the New England colonists and th 

 wonderful industry in fishing, he enumerates the Engli 

 ships that had made "exceeding good voyages" to th 

 coasts, and continuing, says, "at last, upon these induce- 

 ments, some well-disposed Brunists [Puritans], as they are 

 termed, with some gentlemen and merchants of Leyden an 

 Amsterdam, to save charges, would try their oune conclu 

 sions, though with great losse and much miserie." H 



