Excerpt from An Address Delivered Before the Suffolk County Historical Society: Oct 1st, 1889 The settlements of Plymouth, Salem, Boston and those adjacent thereto would naturally be fixed by the voyagers on or near the ocean they had crossed and a harbor where supplies could be brought from the country they had left. There after, in the selection of sites at Hartford, Windsor, Wethersfield, Say brook, New Haven, Gardiner's Island, Southold, Southampton, East-Hampton, other elements complicated the problem. The interior was a wilderness, the home of the savage and the wild beast. The progress of the traveler was slow, dangerous and the road uncertain and hard to keep. The ocean, bay and river were more easily crossed. Colonies located thereon were more easily supplied, visited, succored and defended. In the wilderness, man to man, the hostile Indian might equal the hostile Englishman. On the ocean, bay or river one small vessel of the latter could beat the canoes of a continent. Not by chance or accident, or without careful thought were the early settlements in this country so located that the settlers could be sustained, supplied, visited, succored, defended. Thus fixed, the forest, the stream, the harbor contributed game and fowl and fish to sustain the pioneer. Thus established, he could export surplus products derived from the waters, the air or the earth. Lion Gardiner, from Saybrook Fort looking over the waters of the Sound, saw with the eye of a soldier, a financier and practical business man the advantageous position of the beautiful isle that to this day bears his name. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.