ISAAC HULL
One of the pleasantest old houses in Saybrook is the Hart mansion, which stands in the main street of the village, heavily draped by the foliage of three elm-trees of great size and beauty. It was a favorite retreat of that gallant sailor, Isaac Hull, who lost his heart there.[337] Like Nelson, he was the idol of his sailors, for he was as humane as he was brave. He seldom ordered one of his old sea-dogs to be flogged, but would call a culprit before him, and after scolding him soundly with affected roughness of tone and manner, would tell him to return to his duty. The Old Ironsides was loved with a love almost like that which man bears to woman. Ladies would have kissed the hem of her sails; men scraped the barnacles from her bottom, and carried them home in their pockets. I have seen no end of canes, picture-frames, and other souvenirs of this famous ship treasured by fortunate possessors; and one of the old merchants of Boston had his street door made of her oak.
Saybrook is languid. It is dispersed along one broad and handsome street, completely canopied by an arch of foliage. You seem, when at the entrance, to be looking through a green tunnel. In this street there is no noise and but little movement. The few shops were without custom. After the spasm of activity caused by the arrival of the train—when it seemed for the moment to rub its eyes and brisk up a little, carriages and pedestrians having mysteriously disappeared somewhere—the old town dozed again.
The Connecticut is here tame and uninteresting, with near shores of salt-marsh flatness. Yellow sand-bars, green hummocks, or jutting points skirted with pine-groves, inclose the stream, which is broad, placid, and shallow. There are no iron headlands, or dangerous reefs. Nature seems quite in harmony with the general quietude and restfulness.
A few years ago there existed at the Point the remains of a colonial fortress, with much history clustering around it. It was raised in the very infancy of English settlement at the mouth of the Connecticut; and when the Revolution came, the old dismounted cannon, that had perhaps done duty with Howard or Blake, were again placed on the ramparts. The railway people have reduced the hill on which it stood to a flat and dreary gravel waste.[338] This is walking into antiquity with a vengeance! It is perhaps fortunate that the Coliseum, Temple Bar, and St. Denis are not where they would be valued for the cubic yards of waste material they might afford.
The Dutch anticipated the English in the settlement on Connecticut River. The Hollanders at Fort Amsterdam, and the then rival colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, were each desirous of obtaining a foothold which each felt too weak to undertake alone. The country had been subjugated by the Pequots, whose territory neither colony might invade without bringing the whole nation upon them.
The Dutch were also first to visit the river, and to inform the Pilgrims of its beauty and advantages for traffic. In 1633, Massachusetts having rejected overtures for a joint occupation, Plymouth determined to establish a trading-post upon the river without her aid. Apprised of this intention, the Dutch dispatched an expedition, which disembarked where Hartford now is. A house was hastily erected, and ordnance mounted, with which the Hollanders gave notice that they meant to keep out intruders.