Vast numbers of the persecuted still continuing to pour in from England, the older settlements were presently found to be too narrow for their occupants, and, as in the full hive at midsummer, a spirit of diffusion urged them abroad. The people of Dorchester, New Town and Watertown felt the first impulse, and lured by the intelligence of fine pasture land on the banks of the Connecticut, many of them determined to remove thither. In the month of October, 1635, a company of sixty persons, men, women and children, set out on a second pilgrimage through the forests, which were yet pathless save to the Indians, driving their cattle before them, and taking with them merely provisions for the journey, further supplies, together with their household possessions, having been sent forward by sea. The American autumn is generally fine and steady, and, late as it was in the season, no danger was apprehended. But dangers and difficulties met them; the winter set in unusually early and with unexampled severity; and to add to their misfortunes, the vessels which were to supply them with necessaries were, some delayed by storms, and others wrecked. The history of their suffering is appalling; a few weathered out the terrible season, sustained by mast and acorns, and others reached the sea-shore, where, finding a vessel, they returned to Massachusetts. Their cattle fared as hardly as themselves, numbers of them perished, and the remainder picked up a scanty subsistence in the woods. It was a fearful beginning; but the Pilgrims, inured to hardships, were not daunted by that which would have quailed the courage of ordinary men. The next spring, they who had escaped with their lives to Massachusetts were ready to return to Connecticut, only to be followed by a much larger and more important emigration. In the meantime Winthrop, who had arrived from England with his commission, commenced to build the projected fort at the mouth of the Connecticut, when a Dutch vessel appeared to take possession, but, as in the case of the first settlement of the English at Windsor, the place had been held in defiance of the Dutch, so now, having two pieces of cannon, Winthrop prevented their landing, and completed the fort without further molestation, which he named Saybrooke, after the two noble patentees.