f their future home. It was
the 12th of October when they left the shores of Massachusetts Bay.
For fourteen days they toiled along through the wilderness, driving
their cattle before them, and enduring incredible hardships as they
traversed mountains, forded streams, and waded through almost
impenetrable swamps. On the 9th of November they reached the
Connecticut at a point near the present city of Hartford. The same
journey can now be taken with ease in two and a half hours. In less
than a year three towns were settled, containing in all nearly eight
hundred inhabitants. A fort was also erected at the entrance of the
river, to exclude the Dutch, and it was garrisoned by twenty men.

The Indians now began to be seriously alarmed in view of the rapid
encroachments of the English. They became sullen, and annoyed the
colonists with many acts of petty hostility. There were soon many
indications that Sassacus was meditating hostilities, and that he was
probably laying his plans for a combination of all the tribes in a
resistless assault upon the infant settlements.

The Wampanoags, under Massasoit, were still firm in their friendship;
but it was greatly feared that the Narragansets, whose power was very
formidable, might be induced to yield to the solicitations of the
Pequots.

Roger Williams, who had taken refuge in Rhode Island to escape from
his enemies in Massachusetts, was greatly beloved by the Indians. He
had become quite a proficient in the Indian language, and by his
honesty, disinterestedness, and courtesy, had particularly won the
esteem of the Narragansets, in the midst of whom he resided. The
governor and council of Connecticut immediately wrote to Mr.
Williams, soliciting him to visit the Narragansets, and exert his
influence to dissuade them from entering into the coalition.

This great and good man promptly embarked in the humane enterprise.
Bidding a hurried farewell to his wife, he started alone in a
dilapidated canoe to sail along the shores of Narraganset Bay upon his
errand of mercy. A violent tempest arose, tumbling in such a surf upon
the shore that he could not land, while he was every moment threatened
with being swallowed up in the abysses which were yawning around him.
At length, after having encountered much hardship and surmounted many
perils, he arrived at the imperial residence of Canonicus. The
barbarian chieftain was at home, and it so happened that some Pequot
embassadors had but a sho