Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/704

 694 Reviews of Books gation, and topography of the Connecticut River. Its historical sec- tion comprises three hundred pages. It begins with the arrival of the Dutch at the mouth of the river in 1614, and ends with the col- lapse of the Eastern and Western Unions in 1782. More attention than usual is paid to the discovery and early settlement of the lower valley by the Dutch. Made plain also are the parts played by the Pilgrims and Puritans in the English occupation of the region. With the river as a thread there then follow the events which made up an important part of the history of New England during a century — the Pequot War, King Philip's War, the French and Indian Wars, the New Hampshire grants, and the attempt at founding a separate state. New Connecticut, in the upper valley. The familiar story is well told and gives the lie afresh to the complaint that picturesque America is lacking in historical associations. With a wealth of local histories to draw from, Judd, Sheldon, Thompson, Chase, Wells, and others, a very fair proportion has been observed until the subject of Dartmouth College is reached. There un- due emphasis is placed upon local politics, while hardly any reference is made to the part which the inhabitants of the upper valley took in the Revolution. The constant fear under which they lived of invasion from Canada is not mentioned ; the Westminster Massacre barely ap- pears ; and the panic caused by the threatened coming of Burgoyne has no place. By contrast, two chapters are devoted to the political ambitions of the professors of Dartmouth College, in the intricate ques- tion of allegiance to New Hampshire or Vermont, which long agi- tated the river towns of the upper valley. The second part of the book treats of the navigation of the river from the days of canoes to the end of the steamboat period. We wish that a chapter had been added describing, as clearly as the several paths from Massachusetts to Connecticut are described in chapter iii., the ferries and the devious ways by which the settlers' ox-carts travelled along the banks of the river. In part iii. the author begins with Pittsburg and West Stewartstown in the extreme north, and makes his bow and pays his compliments, somewhat after the fashion of the county gazetteers, to each town and city on either bank until Saybrook and the Sound are reached. Yet it is one of the assets of the river that so many institutions of learning are situated on its banks, and that so many artists and men of letters should have made their homes beside it. A few minor slips occur ; c. g., Sophia, not Maria, Smith founded Smith College. The book is well printed, and profusely and beautifully illustrated. It has an index, and in its table of contents a synopsis is given of each chapter. K.vte M. Cone. Groscillicrs and Radisson. flic First White Men in Minnesota, 1655- 56, and 1650-60, and their Discoi-ery of the Upper Mississippi River. By Warren Upham, Secretary of the Minnesota Historical Society. (St.