The first of these may be called the Connecticut valley route. President E. B. Andrews, of Brown University, whose father was an active friend of slaves at Montague in western Massachusetts, describes this route as running from New York, New Haven, or New London up the Connecticut River valley to Canada.[399] This is corroborated by some writer in the _History of Springfield, Massachusetts_, where it is noted that there was a steady movement of parties of runaways up the valley on their way to the adjacent provinces.[400] Mr. Erastus F. Gunn, of Montague, Massachusetts, writes that the travel along this route was largely confined to the west side of the river, and was through Springfield, Northampton and Greenfield into the State of Vermont.[401] Fugitives disembarking at New Haven[402] went north through Kensington, New Britain and Farmington, and probably by way of Bloomfield or Hartford to Springfield. Sometimes they came up the river by steamboat to Hartford, the head of navigation, and continued their journey overland.[403] A trail probably much less used than the routes just mentioned, seems to have connected the southwestern part of Connecticut with the valley route.[404] In Massachusetts there were ramifications from the valley route,[405] which may have terminated among the hills in the western part of the state, for all that one can now discover. [399] Letter of Mr. Andrews, Providence, R.I., April, 1895. [400] Pp. 470, 471. [401] Letter of Mr. Gunn, Montague, Mass., Nov. 23, 1895. [402] Letter of Simeon E. Baldwin, New Haven, Conn., Jan. 27, 1896; letter of Simeon D. Gilbert, New Haven, Conn., Feb. 27, 1896. [403] Letter of D. W. C. Pond, New Britain, Conn. Mr. Pond is one of the surviving agents of New Britain. [404] Letters of George B. Wakeman, Montour Falls, N.Y., April 21 and Sept. 26, 1896. Letter of the Rev. Erastus Blakeslee, Boston, Mass., Aug. 28, 1896. [405] The stations, as indicated on the map, are named in letters from L. S. Abell and Charles Parsons, Conway, Mass.; C. Barrus, Springfield, Mass.; Judge D. W. Bond, Cambridge, Mass.; and Arthur G. Hill, Boston, Mass. See also article on "The Underground Railway," by Joseph Marsh, in the _History of Florence, Massachusetts_, pp. 165-167.