of peace and prosperity. The colony had now become firmly
established, and every year emigrants, arriving from the mother
country, extended along the coasts and into the interior the comforts
and the refinements of civilization.

In the year 1630, ten years after the landing of the Pilgrims, a
company of gentlemen of fortune and of social distinction organized a
colony, upon a much grander scale than the one at Plymouth, to
emigrate to Massachusetts Bay, under the name of the Massachusetts
Colony. The leaders in this enterprise were men of decidedly a higher
cast of character, intellectual and social, than their brethren at
Plymouth. On the 12th of June this company landed at Salem, and before
the close of the year their number amounted to seventeen hundred. The
tide of emigration now began to flow very rapidly, and eight or ten
towns were soon settled. Toward the close of this year a few families
moved to the end of the peninsula now called Boston. The dense
wilderness spread around them. They reared their log huts near the
beach, at the north end, and by fishing, hunting, and raising Indian
corn, obtained a frugal existence. In the five following years very
great accessions were made to this important colony. Thriving
settlements sprang up rapidly all along the coast. The colonists
appear to have been conscientious in their dealings with the natives,
purchasing their lands of them at a fair price. Nearly all these men
came to the wilderness of this new world inspired by as lofty motives
as can move the human heart. Many of them were wealthy and of high
rank. At an immense sacrifice, they abandoned the luxuries and
refinements to which they had been accustomed at home, that they might
enjoy in New England that civil and religious liberty which Old
England no longer afforded them.

The Dutch had now established a colony at the mouth of the Hudson
River, and were looking wistfully at the fertile meadows which their
traders had found upon the banks of the Connecticut. The English were
apprehensive that the Dutch might anticipate them in taking possession
of that important valley. In 1630 the Earl of Warwick had obtained
from Charles I. a patent, granting him all the land extending west
from Narraganset Bay one hundred and twenty miles. This grant
comprehended the whole of the present state of Connecticut and
considerable more, reaching west to the Dutch settlements on the
Hudson River. Preparations were immediately mad