But enterprise, and a desire to search for still more
fertile domains, together with the temptation offered by the vast and
unknown regions that lay along their western and northern borders, had
induced many bold adventurers to penetrate more deeply into the forests.
The precise spot, to which we desire to transport the imagination of the
reader, was one of these establishments of what may, not inaptly, be
called the forlorn-hope, in the march of civilization through the country.
So little was then known of the great outlines of the American continent,
that, when the Lords Say and Seal, and Brooke, connected with a few
associates, obtained a grant of the territory which now composes the state
of Connecticut, the King of England affixed his name to a patent, which
constituted them proprietors of a country that should extend from the
shores of the Atlantic to those of the South Sea. Notwithstanding the
apparent hopelessness of ever subduing, or of even occupying a territory
like this, emigrants from the mother colony of Massachusetts were found
ready to commence the Herculean labor, within fifteen years from the day
when they had first put foot upon the well-known rock itself.
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