These glowing reports at length won the Pilgrims, tied at first by the necessity of overcoming a contiguous wilderness, to scout in that region. Parties visited the banks of the “Fresh river,” as the Dutch styled it,[777] or the Connecticut, as it soon came to be called, “not without profit,” finding it “a fine place both for planting and for trade.”[778]
In 1633, Bradford and Winslow, who had himself bathed in the waters of the silvery river, went up to Boston to solicit from Winthrop a united effort to colonize the Connecticut valley. In the first spring after Winthrop’s landing, a Connecticut sachem, expelled from his hunting-grounds by the prowess of the Pequods, a fierce and numerous tribe, as powerful in New England as the “Six Nations” were in New York,[779] had come across the country to offer the pale-faces a settlement on the banks of the beautiful river, together with the alliance of his warriors and a yearly tribute of corn and beaver.[780] The Indian negotiator was well received, but Winthrop declined to accede to his request, since, “on account of their so recent arrival, they were not fit to undertake it.”[781] The Plymouth diplomats received the same answer; and returning home, they resolved to push into the Connecticut forests unassisted.[782]
Meantime the Dutch, hearing of this purpose and preparation, decided to preoccupy the land, and so, by antedating the Pilgrim settlement, claim the soil by priority.[783] They did indeed purchase, from a Pequod chief, a spot of land where Hartford now stands, and erecting a “slight fort” in June, 1633, planted cannon, and forbade any Englishman to pass.[784]
Undeterred by threats, the Pilgrims perfected their arrangements, and in October sailed by the “Good Hope” of the Dutch, after a parley and mutual threats[785]—in which they were struck only by a few Dutch oaths—and planted at Windsor the first English colony in Connecticut.[786] A twelvemonth later, a company of seventy Dutchmen quitted New Amsterdam with the avowed purpose of expelling the Pilgrim pioneers. But after observing the spirit and preparation of the little garrison, they concluded to end their war-trail in a reconciliation, and retired without violence.[787]
In the midst of their hardy enterprise, while the door of civilization was just ajar in Connecticut, an infectious fever came to scourge the Pilgrims. “It pleased the Lord to visit those at Plymouth,” says Bradford, “with a severe sickness this year, of which many fell sick, and upwards of twenty, men, women, and children, died; among the rest, several of those who had recently come over from Leyden; and at the last, Samuel Fuller, their surgeon and physician. Before his death, he had helped many and comforted all; as in his profession, so otherwise, being a deacon in the church and a godly man, forward to do good, he was much missed. All were much lamented, and the sadness caused the people to humble themselves and seek God; and towards winter it seemed good to him to stay the sickness.
“This disease swept away many of the Indians in that vicinage; and the spring before, especially all the month of May, there was such a quantity of strange flies, like wasps in size, or bumblebees, coming out of holes in the ground, spreading through the woods, and eating up every green thing, as caused the forest to ring with their hum ready to deafen the hearers.[788] They have not been heard or seen since; but the Indians then said their presence foretokened sickness, which indeed came in June, July, August, and the chief heat of summer.”[789]
At this period in colonial history, the tide of emigration seemed to flow at one time and to ebb at another. It was governed by the increase or the slack of persecution in England. In 1630, the date of the alienation of the provincial government, it was at the flood; in the succeeding year it actually receded. “Climate and the sufferings of the settlers were against free emigration; and besides, Morton, Radcliff, and Gardiner, were busy in the island against the colonists. In 1631, only ninety persons came over. But in 1632, the sluggish current quickened, and again set westward. Spite of threats, the Pilgrims had not been molested, and as Laud’s pesterings grew in virulence, many ships then prepared to start, and some of Britain’s noblest sons were about to desert her; among them Lord Say, Lord Rich, the ‘good Lord Brooke,’ Hazlerigge, Pym, Hampden, and Oliver Cromwell. But on the 31st of February, 1633, the king, in council, issued an order to stay the flotilla.”[790]
’Tis a high fact, and shows upon what slight hinges the weightiest events turn. The very foremost chiefs of the maturing revolution were at this time not only anxious to emigrate, but had actually embarked for America. Well would it have been for Charles, had he said to the disaffected Puritans,
“Stand not upon the order of your going,