Neither had the English who now coveted the valley’s beaver meadows. However, they had lately done some exploring and liked what they found. Edward Winslow of New Plymouth went up the river in 1632 and was so impressed that he selected a site for a house. And John Winthrop of the Bay Colony let it out that because his colony extended “to the south sea on the west parte,” the Connecticut River, or the greater part of it anyway, belonged to Massachusetts under its charter. So the Hollanders at New Amsterdam, a bit alarmed, bestirred themselves to complete the fort which had been commenced by them some ten years earlier. After buying “most of the lands on both sides” of the Connecticut River from the Indians, they built a strong house of yellow bricks at their old trading post and set up two cannon there to secure the river above them. But, even while their commissary, Jacob van Curler, was building this fort in 1633, it was being enveloped by the New Englanders. Fur traders from Massachusetts Bay fought their way straight west through the wilderness that summer to reach the upper Connecticut valley north of Fort Good Hope. In the fall a party of Pilgrims from New Plymouth sailed up the river from the south for the same purpose. It was John Oldham, an adventurous trader of ten years experience in New England, who pioneered the way for the English. With three companions he blazed what was to become known as the “Old Connecticut Path” from Watertown in Massachusetts to the Connecticut River. On his return he made an enthusiastic report on the valley and its beaver meadows, while delegations of Mohegans from the Connecticut valley offered alliances and otherwise made things most attractive to prospective settlers. They wanted the men of Massachusetts, or any other white men with guns, to settle among them. It was the only way they knew to even scores with their recent conquerors, the Pequots. There were 4,000 Englishmen clustered about Massachusetts Bay at the time and quite a few were of a mind to get away. Puritanical intolerance, given free rein in this new American colony, was making too much of a strait jacket out of life for many of them. Connecticut sounded almost too good to be true. Some of the bold ones began making plans to migrate to the bounteous valley the following year.