CHAPTER X. SETTLEMENT OF CONNECTICUT. The Connecticut river was discovered about the same time both by the Dutch and the English, who both claim the honour, which is supposed by some writers to be due to the Dutch; the English, however, were the first settlers on its banks. In 1651, Wahquimacut, the sachem of one of the Indian tribes which inhabited the Connecticut valley, being pressed by his enemies the Pequods on the east, and the Mohawks on the west, made his appearance in Boston, and afterwards in Plymouth, to invite a settlement in his country, the beauty and fertility of which he described in glowing colours. The Plymouth colony, which had declined the invitation of Lord Baltimore into the milder region of Maryland, listened more willingly to that of the Indian sachem, and Governor Winslow himself visited the valley, and found it no less attractive than had been represented. The report of this new and delightful region, lying on a river which offered every facility for an advantageous trade with the Indians, soon reached England, and the council for New England granted a patent of the Connecticut valley to the Earl of Warwick, a puritan nobleman and a friend and disciple of Hooker, who had already emigrated. This grant, however, was soon after transferred to Lord Say and Seal, Lord Brooke and others; and John Winthrop, son of Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts, a man whose excellent endowments, high religious character and great learning, made him universally loved and respected, being at that time in England on the business of Massachusetts, returned to the New World, as agent of the noble patentees and their friends, with a commission to build a fort at the mouth of the Connecticut, together with houses suitable not only for emigrants in general, but for persons of wealth and condition. This grant included the whole extent of the country “from the Narragansett river, 120 miles in a straight line near the shore, towards the south-west, as the coast lies towards Virginia, from the Atlantic Ocean _to the South Sea_;” it being still supposed that the continent of America was narrow, and that the South, or Pacific Sea, was easily attainable from the Atlantic shore. But before Winthrop reached America with his commission, settlements had already been made on the Connecticut. The people of Plymouth, following the advice of the friendly sachem, built a trading house at a place called Windsor, and commenced a traffic with the Indians in furs; and the Dutch, jealous of the English, had sent a colony from Manhattan, and established what they called the House of Good Hope somewhat lower down the river. A more important movement, however, than either of these had set in towards the valley of the Connecticut, of which we must speak more in detail.