up the Mohawk valley, struck a branch of the Delaware, and made their way to Indians near the site of Philadelphia-were found by Cornelis Hendricksen, as he came in the Unrest to explore the bay and rivers of Delaware. On his return to Holland, in 1616, the merchants by whom he had been employed claimed the discovery of the country between thirtyeight and forty degrees. He described the inhabitants as trading in sables, furs, and other skins; the land as a vast forest, abounding in bucks and does, in turkeys and partridges ; the climate temperate, like that of Holland; the trees mantled by the vine. But the states general refused to grant a monopoly of trade.

On the first day of January, 1618, the exclusive privilege conceded to the company of merchants for New Netherland expired; but voyages continued to be made by their agents as well as by rival enterprise. The fort near Albany having been destroyed by a flood, a new post was taken on Norman's Kill. But the strife of political parties still retarded the establishment of permanent settlements. By the constitution of the Low Countries, the municipal officers, who were named by the stadholder or were self-renewed on the principle of close corporations, appointed delegates to the provincial states; and these, again, a representative to the states general. The states, the true personation of a fixed commercial aristocracy, resisted popular innovations; and the same instinct which led the Romans to elevate Julius Cæsar, the commons of England to sustain Henry VII., the Danes to confer hereditary power on the descendants of Frederick III., the French to substitute absolute for feudal monarchy, induced the people of Holland to favor the stadholder. The antagonism extended to domestic politics, theology, and international intercourse. The friends of the stadholder asserted sovereignty for the states general, while the party of Olden Barneveldt and Grotius, with greater reason in point of historic facts, claimed sovereignty exclusively for the provincial assemblies. Prince Maurice, who

desired to renew the war with Spain, favored colonization in America; the party of Barneveld, fearing the increase of executive power, opposed it from fear of new collisions. The Orthodox, who satisfied the natural passion for equality by

denying personal merit, and ascribing every virtue and capacity to the benevolence of God, leaned to the crowd; while the Arminians, nourishing pride by asserting power and merit in man, commended their creed to the upholders of numerous local sovereignties. Thus the Calvinists, popular enthusiasm, and the stadholder, were arrayed against the provincial states and municipalities. The colonization of New York by the Dutch depended on the struggle, and the issue was not long doubtful. The excesses of political ambition, disguised under the forms of religious controversy, led to violent counsels. In August, 1618, Olden Barneveldt and Grotius were taken into custody.

In November, 1618, a few weeks after the first acts of violence, the states general gave a limited incorporation to a company of merchants; yet the conditions of the charter were not inviting, and no organization took place. In May of the following year, Grotius, the first political writer of his age, was condemned to imprisonment for life, and, by the default of the stadholder, Olden Barneveldt, at the age of threescore years and twelve, the venerable founder of the republic, was conducted to the scaffold.

These events hastened the colonization of New Netherland, where as yet no Europeans had repaired except commercial agents and their subordinates. In 1620, merchants of Holland, who had thus far had a trade only in Hudson river, wished to plant there a new commonwealth, lest the king of Great Britain should first people its banks with the English nation. To this end it was proposed to send over John Robinson, with four hundred families of his persuasion; but the pilgrims had not lost their love for the land of their nativity, and the states were unwilling to guarantee them protection. A voyage from Virginia, to vindicate the trade in the Hudson for England, proved a total loss. The settlement on that river grew directly out of the great continental struggles of Protestantism.

The thirty years' war of religion in Germany had begun ; the twelve years' truce between the Netherlands and the Spanish king had nearly expired; Austria hoped to crush the Reformation in the empire, and Spain to recover dominion

over its ancient provinces. The states general, whose existence was menaced by a combination of hostile powers, were summoned to display unparalleled energy in their foreign relations; and on the third of June, 1621, the Dutch West India company, which became the sovereign of the central portion of the United States, was incorporated for twenty-four years, with a pledge of a renewal of its charter. It was invested, on the part of the Netherlands, with the exclusive privilege to traffic and plant colonies on the coast of Africa from the Tropic of Cancer to the Cape of Good Hope; on the coast of America, from the straits of Magellan to the remotest north. Subscription to its joint stock was open to every nation; the states general made it a gift of half a million of guilders, and were stockholders to the amount of another half million. The franchises of the company were immense, that it might lay its own plans, provide for its own defence, and in all things take care of itself. The states general, in case of war, were to be known only as its allies and patrons. While it was expected to render efficient aid in the impending war with Spain, its permanent objects were the peopling of fruitful unsettled countries and the increase of trade. It might acquire provinces, but only at its own risk; and it was endowed with absolute power over its possessions, subject to the approval of the states general. The company was divided into five branches or chambers, of which that in Amsterdam represented four ninths of the whole. The government was intrusted to a board of nineteen, of whom eighteen represented the five branches, and one was named by the states.

A nation of merchants gave away the leave to appropriate continents; and the corporate company, invested with a boundless liberty of choice, culled the rich territories of Guinea, Brazil, and New Netherland.

CHAPTER XIII.

NEW NETHERLAND AND NEW SWEDEN.

COLONIZATION on the Hudson and the Delaware was neither the motive nor the main object of the establishment of the Dutch West India company; the territory was not described either in the charter or at that time in any public act of the states general, which neither made a formal specific grant nor offered to guarantee the possession of a single foot of land. Before the chamber of Amsterdam, under the authority of the company, assumed the care of New Netherland, while the trade was still prosecuted by private enterprise, the English privy council listened to the complaint of Arundel, Gorges, Argall, and Mason of the Plymouth company against "the Dutch intruders ;" and by the king's direction, in February, 1622, Sir Dudley Carleton, then British ambassador at the Hague, claiming the country as a part of New England, required the states general to stay the prosecution of their plantation. This remonstrance received no explicit answer; while Carleton reported of the Dutch that all their trade there was in ships of sixty or eighty tons at the most, to fetch furs, nor could he learn that they had either planted or designed to plant a colony. The English, at that time disheartened by the sufferings and losses encountered in Virginia, were not disposed to incur the unprofitable expense of a new settlement; and the Dutch ships, which went over in 1622, found none to dispute the possession of the country.

The organization of the West India company, in 1623, was the epoch of its zealous efforts at colonization. In the spring of that year, the New Netherland, a ship of two hundred and sixty tons' burden, carried out thirty families. They were

chiefly Walloons, Protestant fugitives from Belgian provinces. April was gone before the vessel reached Manhattan. A party under the command of Cornelis Jacobsen May, who has left his name on the southern county and cape of New Jersey, ascended the river Delaware, then known as the South river of the Dutch, and on Timber creek, a stream that enters the Delaware a few miles below Camden, built Fort Nassau. At the same time Adriaen Joris, on the site of Albany, threw up and completed the fort named Orange. Eighteen families were settled round the fort in huts of bark, and were protected by covenants of friendship with the various tribes of Indians.

The next year, 1624, may be taken as the era of a continuous civil government, with Cornelis Jacobsen May as the first director. It had power to punish, but not with death; judgments for capital crimes were to be referred to Amsterdam. The ship that took over emigrants returned laden with furs, and the Dutch in the New World were reported to be bravely prosperous.

In 1625, May was succeeded by William Verhulst. The colony was gladdened by the arrival of two large ships freighted with cattle and horses, as well as swine and sheep. At Fort Orange a child of Netherland parentage was born. In that year, Frederick Henry, the new stadholder, was able to quell the passions of religious sects, and unite all parties in a common love of country. Danger from England was diminished; for Charles I., soon after his accession, entered into a most intimate alliance with the Dutch. Just then Jean de Laet, a member of the chamber of Amsterdam, in an elaborate work on the West Indies, opportunely drew the attention of his countrymen to their rising colony, and published Hudson's glowing description of the land.

Under such auspices, Peter Minuit, a German of Wesel, in January, 1626, sailed for New Netherland as its directorgeneral. He arrived there on the fourth of May. Hitherto the Dutch had no title to ownership of the land; Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan from its native proprietors. The price paid was sixty guilders, about twenty-four dollars, for more than twenty thousand acres. The southern point