OLD SAYBROOK.
The Connecticut River flows into Long Island Sound thirty-three miles east of New Haven at Saybrook Point. Between is the venerable village of Guilford, where Fitz Greene Halleck was born, and where the three regicides were also for some time hidden. Out in front is the bold and picturesque Sachem's Head, which got its name from a tragedy of the Pequot War in 1637. The Mohican chief Uncas pursued a Pequot warrior out on this point, and shooting him, put his head in the fork of an oak tree, where it remained many years. The group of Thimble Islands are off shore, having been repeatedly dug over by deluded individuals searching for the buried treasures of Captain Kidd. Saybrook Point was the place of earliest settlement in Connecticut. The first English patent for lands on these coasts was granted to Lord Saye and Seal and Lord Brooke, and the colony was given their double name. The original settlement was planned with great care, as it was expected to become the home of noted men, and a fort was built on an isolated hill at the river's mouth. According to the British historian, it was to Saybrook that Cromwell, Pym, Hampden and Haselrig, with their party of malcontents, intended to emigrate when they were stopped by the order of King Charles I. Had this migration been made, it might have greatly changed the subsequent momentous events in England ending with the execution of that king. A little westward of the old colonial fort guarding the river entrance, a public square was laid out, where, according to the town plan, their houses were to have been built. The first Yale College at Saybrook was a narrow one-story house eighty feet long, and looking much like a ropewalk, which was afterwards removed, with the college, to New Haven. Its founders were pious men, who in 1708 drew up the celebrated "Saybrook Platform," with a declaration that "the churches must have a public profession of faith, agreeable to which the instruction of the college shall be conducted."
The ancient fort at Saybrook, built by Plymouth people in 1635, stood upon a steep and solitary knoll near the Connecticut River, which in 1872 was carried off bodily by a railroad to make embankments across the adjacent lowlands. The earliest governor of the colony came out in 1636, Colonel Fenwick, afterwards one of the regicide judges. Old Saybrook is now a quiet village, chiefly spread along one handsome wide street, canopied over by the arching branches of its stately elms, under which the distant vista view looks almost like a scene through a veritable foliage tunnel. The broad Connecticut flows in front, back and forth with the tide from the Sound, its restfulness in keeping with the ancient town, as yet uninvaded by business bustle or manufacturing energy. The Saybrook fort repelled the Pequots in 1637; and afterwards, in the Connecticut boundary disputes with the Dutch at New York, the latter, according to the veracious chronicler, marched against it "brimful of wrath and cabbage," but seeing it would be stoutly defended, he adds that "they thought best to desist before attacking." The British captured it in 1814, and ascending the river in a sudden raid, destroyed a large number of vessels.
THE THAMES TO THE PAWCATUCK.
The river Thames, coming down out of the hills and receiving the Quinnebaug, flows into the Sound twenty miles east of the Connecticut, and here is the pleasant city of New London, with about fifteen thousand people. Thus the early settlers renewed in the New England colony the names of old London and Father Thames, replacing the original Indian titles of Pequot for the town and Mohegan for the river. New London is built on a hillside, famous for comfortable old mansions and noble trees on the hilly streets, running down the declivity to the harbor, in the upper part of which is a navy yard. On either side of the harbor entrance are the gray walls and grassy mounds of the ancient defensive works, Forts Griswold and Trumbull, which got their chief scars during the Revolution. The most sacred New London memory is of Nathan Hale, who lived there, his little house being preserved as a relic. The Thames is a fine estuary, and upon it are sailed the great Yale and Harvard boat-races. New London was the headquarters of the Connecticut navy during the Revolution, a fleet of twenty-six vessels. After Arnold's treason, he came in September, 1780, with ships and a large force of troops, captured Fort Trumbull and burnt the town. Afterwards they attacked Fort Griswold across the river, losing large numbers in storming it, and when the garrison had surrendered they were massacred. A fine granite Obelisk contains the names of the slain, and bears the inscription: "Zebulon and Naphtali were a people that jeoparded their lives till death in the high places of the Lord." The people of New London go down to the Sound for recreation and clam-bakes, the wide-spreading beaches having numerous hotels and summer cottages. All this region in the early times was the home of the Niantic Indians, a clan of the Narragansetts, their sachem being Ninigret, the brother of Canonicus and uncle of Miantonomoh, whose names are preserved in powerful American warships.
Beyond the Thames is Groton, known as the home of Silas Deane, the early American diplomatist, a hilly township, with little good soil. On its verge are Fort Hill, where Sassacus, the sachem of the Pequots, had his royal fortress, and Mystic, with the popular resort of Mystic Island just off shore. To the northward of Mystic is Pequot Hill, where Colonel Mason attacked that tribe in May, 1637. He had marched out of Rhode Island with ninety English and over four hundred Mohicans and Narragansetts under the sachems Uncas and Miantonomoh, but when they arrived at the Pequot stronghold, the Indian allies were afraid to attack and drew off. Nothing daunted, Mason and his colonial soldiers prepared to do the work alone, and as a preliminary knelt down in prayer. At the sight of this, another sachem, Wequash, who had been their guide, was amazed and asked an explanation, and when he understood it, became so impressed that he was converted, afterwards preaching throughout New England. Mason and his men assaulted the stronghold in the darkness, and got inside the palisades, but being overwhelmed by the superior numbers, fell back after setting fire to the wigwams. The fire compelled the Pequots to flee, and then the English and friendly Indians surrounded the hill and shot down the fugitives, there being six hundred Pequots shot or burnt, this being the death-blow to the tribe. Old Cotton Mather, who recorded it, wrote: "It was a fearful sight to see them frying in the fire, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God." Sassacus, from Fort Hill, sent reinforcements, but they were too late, although they harassed Mason's retreat, and Sassacus was soon forced also to flee, the remnant of the Pequot tribe being killed or captured in Sasco Swamp.
This region was Pawcatuck, and its chief town now is Stonington, built on a fine harbor, near the Rhode Island boundary, which is protected by the protruding arm of Watch Hill Point, the whole coast thereabout being filled with summer hotels and cottages. Stonington is on a narrow rocky peninsula, and of this town, in the early part of the nineteenth century, President Dwight of Yale College wrote, referring to its reputation, that "Stonington and all its vicinity suffers in religion from the nearness of Rhode Island." The place was bombarded for three days, in 1814, by a British fleet, but all attempts to land were successfully repulsed. Watch Hill Point is a high bold promontory, with sand beaches stretching both ways and hooking around westward so as to enclose Stonington harbor. To the eastward is Westerly on the Pawcatuck River, noted for its fine granite quarries and textile factories.
EASTERN LONG ISLAND.
From the Long Island shore, opposite the mouth of Connecticut River, there protrudes northeastward an elongated and almost bisected peninsula, ending in Orient Point. The eastern end of Long Island divides into two arms, this being the northern one, having at its outer extremity Plum Island, the passage between being the famous "Plum Gut," a short cut occasionally taken by cunning yachtsmen racing around Long Island. Orient Point was originally the "Oyster Pond Point," its name having been modernized, and Plum Island, covering more than a square mile, is said to have been bought from the Indians by the first colonists in 1667 for a hundred fish-hooks and a barrel of biscuit. A succession of islands stretches out from it over northeastward towards the Rhode Island shore, and these guard the entrance to the Sound. The southern arm of Long Island extends much farther eastward than the northern one, and ends in Montauk Point. Enclosed between these branching peninsulas is Shelter Island, thus appropriately named from its well protected harbors. It is a delicious island, about four by six miles in extent, picturesque and irregular in outline, having cliffs and promontories dropping off into tiny coves and bays with little beaches, their shores rich with the attractions that shells and sea mosses give. In the interior are rolling hills and fresh-water ponds. Out in front on either hand are the blue waters of Peconic and Gardiner's Bays, with the broad Atlantic beyond. This island was the home of the Manhasset Indians, and that was its early name. To its hospitable shores fled some of the persecuted Quakers of New England, when driven out by the Puritans, the settlement being made as early as 1652. The records tell that in the eighteenth century George Whitefield came and preached here with such fervor and success that he was constrained to ask, "And is Shelter Island become a Patmos?" It is in a delightful location, and from the breezy hill-tops which have a grand outlook over the azure waters there can be seen a vision
"——of islands that together lie