post at Hartford was thus finally
cut off from effective support.

This was a horrible winter to the advanced guard of English settlers
on the upper Connecticut. The navigation of the river was completely
blocked by ice before the middle of November; and the vessels which
were to have brought their winter supplies by way of Long Island Sound
and the river were forced to return to Boston, leaving the wretched
settlers unprovided for. For a little while some scanty supplies of
corn were obtained from the neighboring Indians, but this resource
soon failed. About seventy persons straggled down the river to the
fort at its mouth. There they found and dug out of the ice a sixty-ton
vessel, and made their way back to Boston. Others turned back on the
way they had come, and struggled through the snow and ice to "the
Bay." But a few held their grip on the new territory. Subsisting first
on a little corn bought from more distant Indians, then by hunting,
and finally on ground-nuts and acorns dug from under the snow, they
fought through the winter and held their ground. But it was a narrow
escape. Spring found them almost exhausted, their unsheltered cattle
dead, and just time enough to bring necessary supplies from home. The
Dorchester people alone lost cattle to the value of two thousand
pounds.

The Newtown congregation, in October, 1635, found customers for their
old homes in a new party from England; and in the following June
Hooker and Stone led their people overland to Connecticut. They
numbered one hundred, with one hundred and sixty head of cattle. Women
and children were of the party. Mrs. Hooker, who was ill, was carried
on a litter; and the journey, of "about one hundred miles," occupied
two weeks. Its termination was well calculated to dissipate the evil
auguries of the previous winter. The Connecticut Valley in early June!
Its green meadows, flanked by wooded hills, lay before them. Its oaks,
whose patriarch was to shelter their charter, its great elms and
tulip-trees, were broken by the silver ribbon of the river; here and
there were the wigwams of the Indians, or the cabins of the survivors
of the winter; and, over and through all, the light of a day in June
welcomed the newcomers. The thought of abandoning Connecticut
disappeared forever.

[1] From Johnston's "History of Connecticut." By permission of, and
by arrangement with, the authorized publishers, Houghton, Mifflin
Co. Copyright, 1887, by Al