[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] The instructions under which he acted directed him to purchase the archipelago, or group of islands, at the mouth of the Norwalk River, together with all the adjoining territory on the mam-land, and " to erect thereon the standard and arms of the High and Mighty Lords States-General; to take the savages under our protec-tion, and to prevent effectually any other nation encroaching on our limits." The purchase of 1640 was in the line of stole policy, being-conceived and consummated as a countercheck to the English, who, having by this time appeared in considerable numbers on the banks of the Connecticut River, were making active pretensions to the whole western territory along the Sound and in the interior, and were thus seriouslv menacing the integrity of the Dutch colonial empire. Wre may here appropriately pause to glance at some pertinent as-pects of British colonial progress in New England — aspects with which, we shall be bound to grant, those of contemporaneous Dutch development in New Netherland do not compare over-favorably.