This energetic beginning was followed up by other vigorous proceedings, and so prosperous did the colonies founded by Winthrop become, that a tide of emigration to Connecticut rapidly set in, alike from the mother country and from her dependencies. In the latter end of 1635, thousands of pilgrims arrived from England, and in June, 1636, the whole of the church of Newton, one of the later communities of Massachusetts, led by its ministers, Hooker and Stone, went forth to seek, in the fruitful lands in the South, a freer field for their spiritual growth. The narrative of their journey reads like a chapter of romance. Their cattle were driven before them, and Mrs. Hooker, who was an invalid, was carried in a litter in their midst. The leaders on horseback, the remainder on foot, threaded their way slowly through the vast forests of Massachusetts, and, after a tramp of many weeks, they reached the site of the present town of Hartford, so called after the English home of Stone. Here a final halt was made. Building and cultivating at once began, and Hartford bid fair soon to rival Windsor in prosperity, when the first low muttering of the storm which was to involve old and new settlements in one common ruin was heard in the distance. The natives, alarmed by the rapid growth of the power of the English, began that series of aggressions which resulted in the first great Indian war; but before we enter into its details, we must turn for a moment to the South, and account for the presence of the Dutch as neighbors of the New England settlers. The close of the sixteenth century witnessed the overthrow of the Spanish power in the Netherlands, and, relieved from the oppression under which it had so long groaned, the Dutch republic was able, like the rest of the world, to turn its attention to that golden prize, the short passage to India, the supposed existence of which had instigated so many important expeditions from other countries. Already, long before their independence was acknowledged by the Spanish, the United Netherlands possessed a navy second to none in Europe, and, in the very year (1597) of the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht, the advanced guard of Dutch geographers were struggling for their lives in the dreary solitudes of Nova Zembla. Leaving the adventures of Barentz, Heemskerk, and others, we join, as the first Dutchman to travel in the districts now under consideration, the celebrated Henry Hudson, who, after one or two unsuccessful voyages to the North-east, under the auspices of the English Muscovy Company, was invited, in 1609, to take service with the Dutch East India Company. He consented, and was appointed by his new employers to the command of yet another expedition to the extreme North, his instructions, however, being this time of a sufficiently elastic nature to admit of his altering his course if desirable.