Later, Dutch voyagers returned to those shores and trafficked with the natives; and finally, in 1623, when Director May arrived in New York harbor on his mission of colonization from the West India Company, he dispatched a number of his Walloon families to the mouth of the Connecticut River. At the same place the arms of the States( General of the Netherlands were formally erected in 1632, and in 1633 Director-General Van Twiller bought from the Indians a tract of land called Connittelsock, situated on the western Connecticut bank, on which tract, at a point sixty miles above the mouth of the stream, a Dutch fort and trading-house, named Good Hope, were built. Indeed, the English pioneers of 1633, proceeding down the Connecticut, found the Dutch already in possession there. But the Dutch occupation of the mouth and valley of the Connecticut River was never otherwise than merely nominal, a fact which, in view of the easily conceivable future importance of that quarter in connection with the maintenance of Dutch territorial claims, is certainly striking, and characteristically illustrates Dutch deliberation and inefficiency in colonizing development as contrasted with English alacrity ami thoroughness. Moreover, all the connecting circumstances indicate that the establishment by the Dutch of a fort and trading-post on the Connecticut was not prompted by serious designs of consecutive settlement, but was a pure extemporization in the interest of ultimate insistence upon lawful ownership of that region. From 1623, the year in which Manhattan Island was regularly settled,

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