About the year 1613, five little ships set sail from Holland on
voyages for discovery and trade in the New World. They were the
Little Fox, the Nightingale, the Tiger, and two called the
Fortune. The Tiger was under the command of a bold sailor named
Adriaen Block and he brought her across the ocean to New
Netherland, which is now New York. There was then a small Dutch
village of a few houses on Manhattan Island.

While she was anchored off the island, the Tiger took fire and
burned. But Block was not discouraged. He set to work at once and
built another boat--one of the first built in America. She was 40
feet, 6 inches long by 11 feet, 6 inches wide, and he called her
the Restless. In the summer of 1614 he sailed her up the East
River and out into Long Island Sound where no white man had ever
been before. He named both the Bast River and the Sound
"Hellegat," after a river in Holland, and a narrow passage in the
East River is still known as "Hell-Gate."

Block sailed along the low wooded shores of Connecticut, past the
mouth of the Housatonic, which he named the "River of the Red
Mountain," and reported it to be "about a bowshot wide," and by
and by he came to a much larger stream emptying into the Sound.
This was the Connecticut, and Block turned and sailed up the
river as far as the point where Hartford now stands. He noticed
that the tide did not flow far into this river and that the water
near its mouth was fresh, so he called it the "Fresh River."

When the Dutch in Manhattan heard of this new country which he
had discovered, they began a fur trade with the Indians who lived