The greatest New England river, the Connecticut, was first explored by the redoubtable Dutch navigator, Captain Adraien Blok. When he made his memorable voyage of discovery from New Amsterdam along Long Island Sound, Blok ascended the Connecticut to Enfield Falls. Its source is in the highlands of northern New Hampshire upon the Canadian boundary, at an elevation of twenty-five hundred feet, and it flows four hundred and fifty miles southward to the Sound. Its Indian title was Quonektakat, or "the long tidal river," from which the name has been derived. It is noted for beautiful scenery and has many cataracts, the chief being Olcott Falls, at Wilder in Vermont, South Hadley in Massachusetts, and Enfield in Connecticut. The soils of its valley are extremely fertile, making a garden-spot in the otherwise generally sterile New England, the most luxuriant crop being the tobacco-plant, known as "Connecticut seed-leaf," used largely for cigar-wrappers, and often yielding two thousand pounds to the acre. Steamboats navigate the river to Hartford, about fifty miles from the Sound. The blazing red beacon of the Cornfield Point Lightship is the outer guide for the mariner entering its mouth, while the white lights of Saybrook guard the inner channel. The lower Connecticut flows through a region of farms, enriched by copious dressings of manures made from the fish caught in the stream, and it passes picturesque shores and pleasant villages in the domain of Haddam, an extensive tract which the Indians originally sold to Hartford people for thirty coats. Middletown, the "Forest City," at a great bend in the lower river, has many mills making pumps, tapes, plated wares, webbing and sewing-machines, its shaded streets leading up the hill-slopes, bordering the water, that have in them valuable quarries of rich brown Portland stone. The county Court-house of Middletown is a quaint little miniature of the Parthenon. The Wesleyan Methodist College, having three hundred students, is located here, the chief buildings being the Memorial and Judd Halls, built of the native Portland stone, the latter the gift of Orange Judd. The large buildings of the Connecticut Insane Hospital, also of Portland stone, overlook the river from a high hill southeast of the city, and are in a spacious park. To the northward of Middletown, level green and exceedingly fertile meadows adjoin the river, their product being the noted onion crops of Wethersfield, which permeate the whole country. This was the earliest Connecticut settlement in 1635, and here in the next year convened the first Connecticut Legislature to make the arrangements for the war against the Pequots which annihilated that tribe. In one of its old mansions General Washington had his headquarters, where, in conjunction with the French officers, the plans were prepared for the campaign closing the Revolution by the victory at Yorktown.