This appears to have been done at the direction of Governor Winthrop, for, in consequence of it, the Dutch Governor wrote a very complaisant letter to him, in which he represented that the lords, the States-General, had granted the same country to the West India Company. He requested, therefore that the English would make no settlements in Connecticut until the affair should be determined between the court of England and the States-General. This appears to have been a piece of policy in the Dutch Governor to keep the English still until the Dutch had got a firm footing upon the river. Several vessels this year went to Connecticut River to trade. John Oldham, from Dorchester, and three men with him, also traveled through the wilderness to Connecticut, to view the country and trade with the Indians. The sachem upon the river made him most welcome, and gave him a present in beaver. He found that the Indian hemp grew spontaneously in the meadows in great abundance. He purchased a quantity of it, and upon trial it appeared much to exceed the hemp which was grown in England. William Holmes, of Portsmouth, with his company, having prepared the frame of a house, with boards, and materials for covering it immediately, put them on board of a vessel and sailed for Connecticut. Holmes had a commission from the Governor of Plymouth and a chosen company to accomplish his design. When he came into the river he found that the Dutch had got in before him, made a light fort, and planted two pieces of cannon: this was erected at the place called Hartford. The Dutch forbade Holmes going up the river, stood by their cannon, and ordered him to strike his colors or they would fire upon him; but he was a man of spirit, assured them that he had a commission from the Governor of Plymouth to go up the river, and that he must obey his orders. They poured out their threats, but he proceeded, and, landing on the west side of the river, erected his house a little below the mouth of the small river in Windsor. The house was covered with the utmost dispatch, and fortified with palisadoes. The sachems who were the original owners of the soil had been driven from this part of the country by the Pequots, and were now carried home on board of Holmes’s vessel. Of them the Plymouth people purchased the land on which they erected their house. “This,” Governor Wolcott says, “was the first house erected in Connecticut.” The Dutch about the same time erected a trading-house at Hartford, which they called the “Hirse of Good Hope.”