202                                HISTORY OF
 

CHAPTER VI.
 

Faithfully describing the ingenious people of Con¬
necticut and thereabouts—Showing, moreover,
the true meaning of liberty of conscience, and a
curious device among these sturdy barbarians, to
keep up a harmony of intercourse, and promote
population.

That my readers may the more fully compre¬
hend the extent of the calamity, at this very mo¬
ment impending over the honest, unsuspecting
province of Nieuw Nederlandts, and its dubious
governor, it is necessary that I should give some
account of a horde of strange barbarians, border¬
ing upon the eastern frontier.

Now so it came to pass, that many years pre¬
vious to the time of which we are treating, the
sage cabinet of England had adopted a certain
national creed, a kind of public walk of faith, or
rather a religious turnpike, in which every loyal
subject was directed to travel to Zion—taking
care to pay the toll gatherers by the way.

Albeit a certain shrewd race of men, being very
much given to indulge their own opinions, on all
manner of subjects (a propensity exceedingly of¬
fensive to your free governments of Europe), did