And now, but not without great dissatisfaction to the colony of Massachusetts, the great emigration commenced to the attractive valley of Connecticut. The whole narrative reads like a chapter of patriarchal life or a beautiful Arcadian poem. “In the month of June,” says Bancroft, “the principal caravan began its march, led by Thomas Hooker, ‘the light of the western churches.’ There were of the company about one hundred souls; many of them were persons accustomed to affluence and the ease of European life. They drove before them numerous herds of cattle; and thus they traversed on foot the pathless forests of Massachusetts, Mrs. Hooker, who was at the time in delicate health, being borne in a litter; advancing merely ten miles a day through the tangled woods, across swamps and numerous streams and over the highlands that separated the several intervening valleys; subsisting, as they slowly wandered along, on the milk of the kine which browsed on the fresh leaves and early shoots; having no guide through the nearly untrodden wilderness but the compass, and no pillow for their nightly rest but heaps of stones. How did the hills echo to the unwonted lowing of the herds; how were the forests enlivened by the loud and fervent piety of Hooker. Never again was there such a pilgrimage from the sea-side to the delightful banks of the Connecticut.” Well might Massachusetts oppose this “severing of the commonwealth;” well might she remind them that “the removing of a candlestick was a great judgment in the church;” for this hand of Pilgrims which was leaving her infant towns “was gathered from among the most valued citizens, the earliest settlers and the oldest churches of the bay.” There was John Haynes, who had been governor of Massachusetts, and “Hooker, who had no rival in the public estimation as a preacher, excepting Cotton, whom he far surpassed in character, together with many others. They were in fact the civil and religious fathers of Massachusetts who were now leaving her.” Hooker, it is said, immediately on his arrival in the New World, where he was welcomed by his flock, who had preceded him from England, determined on removing them to a new ground. There were yet numbers of his persecuted friends ready to come over for his sake, and he wished for these, as well as for himself, more room than the older colony could afford him. The affluent and beautiful valley of the Connecticut promised him all that he required.