means or foul, in getting them to surrender the ground. Then they set to work and made a clearing.

They worked here all summer, and early in the fall went back to Dorchester for their families. They loaded a ship there with household goods and with stores of provisions for winter, and sent it around Cape Cod to come through Long Island Sound, and up the Connecticut River to meet them. Then with the women and children they started to return on foot. The delicate women, and the little children, were put on horseback, and the sturdy men and women marched along on foot driving their cattle before them.

It was late in October when they started, and this was slow traveling. The winter set in early, and the emigrants were famished with cold. Many died on the route, and the cattle, unable to find fodder in the thick wood, died also, or wandered away and were lost.

At last they took little heed of their beasts, except those which they rode, and made the best speed they could to their clearing. When they got there they found the river fast bound in ice, and the ship with provisions not yet arrived. A party of seventy men, women, and children, started down the river to meet it, eating acorns and nuts to keep themselves from starvation. Fortunately the river thawed before winter fairly set in, and they found the ship making its way up to them.

They went back, and building a fort to protect themselves from the Indians, named the town Windsor. And thus began the first settlement in Connecticut.

Three years after, another town was built at the mouth of the river and called the "New Haven Colony." This was a separate government till 1662, when it was joined to Connecticut and became a part of it.

As you see, all these last three colonies were off-shoots from the Puritan emigration. But James I., who had never favored the Puritans and would promise to show them no favor, gave away a large part of New England to Fernando Gorges in the year 1620, the very year Plymouth was settled. This tract stretched over Maine and New Hampshire, and included part of Massachusetts.

Fernando Gorges was a friend of the king and a member of the Church of England. He had for years been interested in America, was acquainted with Captain John Smith, and was one of the company who sent this brave adventurer to survey the coast of

New England. Maine was well known as a great fishing coast, and was famous also for the tall pines used for masts to English ships. After Gorges became proprietor of this tract of land, he was desirous to plant colonies there.

The French, who claimed all Canada and the St. Lawrence region under the name of New France, had settled in Nova Scotia and encroached upon the borders of Maine. Indeed it was a long time before the boundaries of this State were settled, as you will learn hereafter. Gorges and another gentleman, named John Mason, shared this large tract between them. The former took Maine, and Mason took New Hampshire. In 1623 the town of Dover was settled by a party of traders, who had dealings with the fishermen on the coast; and shortly after, the town of Portsmouth was built on the sea-coast. This was the beginning of the State of New Hampshire.

About the same time Gorges sent colonies to the towns of Saco and of York in Maine, and established a government there of which he was the proprietor in chief.

Shortly after Gorges had received all this land from James I., that king died, and his eldest son came to reign in his stead. This son, who was known as Charles I., was certainly not much worse than his father, and perhaps intended to be a better king. But he displeased the people very much. The Puritans in England had now grown to be a strong party, and had powerful leaders in the state. Oppression had brought out all their strength, while the Cavaliers, who had held power so long, were overbearing and oppressive and regardless of the rights of the people, who had come to sympathize with the Puritans and to look upon the court party as very corrupt and tyrannical.

Oliver Cromwell, a very able and ambitious man, was one of their leaders. He headed the Puritans in a war against the Cavaliers, and finally got King Charles into his power, and tried him before a court of judges on the charge of treason against the liberties of the people of England. This court condemned him to death, and his head was cut off by the headsman in his own city of London.

Then Oliver Cromwell was made Lord Protector of England for his whole life, and used that office very much as if he were king. There is a story told of Cromwell, that when a student in college he had once played in some drama with his comrades. In this play he finds a royal purple mantle and a golden crown, and puts it on his head. The story says that Cromwell played the part with great

effect, and that his ambition was so stirred by it that he never rested all his life till he could wear the royal honors of a king. I do not know if the story is true, but it is certain that a very slight thing sometimes shapes the life of a man from his boyhood.

Ambitious as Cromwell was for power, he made much better and wiser laws for the English people than King Charles or his pigheaded old father.

Of course the Massachusetts colonies, settled by Puritans, had a better time when Cromwell was in power, because they sympathized with his government and had always been of his party. They now claimed a right over the provinces of Maine and New Hampshire. Gorges had been one of the party of loyalists who remained faithful to the king, and his rights were not respected by the Puritans. Early Meeting-house. He seems, however, to have been a sincere, honest man, and did a good work for America in his efforts to settle the country.

From this time Maine became a province of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and remained so for many years, until she became one of the United States, and Fernando Gorges never regained his right as lord proprietor.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE DUTCH IN AMERICA.

The Country of Holland. - How they keep off the Sea. - Dutch Traders. - Henry Hudson sent to America. - Hudson River discovered. - Fur-trade. New York City begun. Indians afraid of Windmills. - Warfare with Indians. - Kieft's Massacre.

as

By looking closely on the map you will find on the sea-coast of Europe, hidden away behind the islands of Great Britain, a little country called Holland. It is not of very great importance now, a European power, but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially at the time this country was settled, it was one of the briskest, busiest, most thriving places in the world. The people of this country are called Dutch, and they are an interesting people to read about.

Holland is the queerest little country in Europe. It is as flat as a pancake, lying so much lower than the ocean that the mighty waves are constantly trying to encroach upon it, and the whole face

of the land would be drowned out of sight, and all the houses and people swept away, if its undaunted inhabitants had not built great walls of mud and stone, and sticks and straw, as the cunning beaver

builds his dam, to keep

out their uncomfortable neighbor, the ocean. Those great beaverdams, which they call dikes, are all along the sea-coast for miles and miles, and are planted thickly with willows, whose deep-striking roots help to strengthen the works and make the country look as if it were set behind a green hedge. All over the land are windmills, which keep up a perpetual whirring and whizzing of their sails like so many great birds. This persevering little Holland was far ahead of England in general comfort at the time of which we are reading. Her people were a nation of thriving merchants. Although she had hardly a stick of timber to cut in her length and breadth, she built more ships and better ones than England. She was also the market-garden of the latter country, and supplied the English with the turnips, carrots, green peas, and cabbages, which they were not yet good enough gardeners to raise at home.

Dutch Windmill.

A large company of merchants, called the Dutch East India Company, brought all the luxuries of the East to the Dutch cities, from whence they were sold all over Europe. This trade brought a greater degree of comfort into Holland than was then common in England. Many a merchant's house had stores of linen and stuffs of silk, hangings of tapestry, and even rugs for the floor, such as were only seen among the English nobles. They manufactured brick and glass, and many other useful materials, long before these arts were practiced in their neighbor country.

These Dutch, always on the look-out for a good opportunity to

turn an honest penny, did not forget America.

They began early to fix their eyes on this new country, and to examine into the facilities it offered for trade.

Henry Hudson.

In 1609 an English sea-captain offered his services to the Dutch East India Company to go on voyages to America, if they chose to fit him out. This was Henry Hudson, a man who had already been on two voyages for the Plymouth Company in England, to see if he could discover a passage west to Asia. That was his hobby, as it had been the hobby of nearly all the great navigators since Columbus. So, in 1609, Henry Hudson sailed for the Dutch East India Company in a little vessel called the Half-moon. It is said that Captain John Smith, who was a friend of Hudson, had told him that he had heard there was an open channel to the South Sea somewhere between New England and the coast of Virginia.

Hudson sailed for New England, and began to explore the coast for this far-famed passage. He anchored first on the coast of Maine, which was then a great wilderness of tall pine-trees. Then he sailed all along the coast of New England, which looked very lonely and bleak, for this was thirteen years before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, and there was not one white man on all its shores. From thence Hudson sailed southward to New York Bay, and then up into the harbor, and at length into the mouth of the beautiful river which now bears his name. This river he concluded must be the object of his search, the channel of which Smith had told him.

This seems very absurd to us now, when every little place on our whole globe is laid down upon the maps. But Hudson did not have such maps. He was one of the men who, by their discoveries, have helped us to make them. Two hundred and fifty years ago even the great sea-captains did not know so much about geography as a clever school-boy of to-day.

Well, he sailed up and up the pleasant river, in the pleasant month of September. All along the banks, where now are fine country houses and pretty villages, were Indian wigwams and fields yellow with Indian corn. And the savages, hooting and yelling trooped to the shores to see the strange canoe of the pale-faces sail by.

Pretty soon the Indians began to venture to the ship, bringing