English monarch had made a grant; they were there with their wives and children. It were a sin, said they, to leave so fertile a land unimproved. Their religious enthusiasm, zeal for popular liberty, and numbers, did not leave the issue uncertain. Altercations continued for years. The Dutch fort remained in the hands of the Dutch West India company till it was surrounded by English towns. At last, the English in Connecticut grew so numerous as not only to overwhelm its garrison, but, under a grant from Lord Stirling, to plant a part of Long Island. In 1640, the second year of the government of William Kieft, the arms of the Dutch on the east end of that island were thrown down in derision, and a fool's head set in their place.

While the New England men were thus encroaching on the Dutch on the east, a new competitor for possessions in America appeared in Delaware bay. Gustavus Adolphus, the greatest benefactor of mankind in the line of Swedish kings, had discerned the advantages which might be expected from colonies and widely extended commerce. In 1624, the royal zcal was encouraged by William Usselinx, a Netherlander, who for many years had given thought to the subject. At his instance, in June, 1626, a commercial company, with exclusive privileges to traffic beyond the straits of Gibraltar and with the right of planting colonies, was sanctioned by the king, and, on the first of May, 1627, incorporated by the states of Sweden. The stock was open to all Europe for subscription; the king himself pledged four hundred thousand dollars of the royal treasure on equal risks; the chief place of business was established at Gottenburg; a branch was promised to any city which would embark three hundred thousand dollars in the undertaking. The government of the future colonies was reserved to a royal council; for "politics," says the charter, "lie beyond the profession of merchants." Men of every rank were solicited to engage in the enterprise; it was resolved to invite "colonists from all the nations of Europe." Other nations employed slaves in their colonies; and "slaves," said they, "cost a great deal, labor with reluctance, and soon perish from hard usage; the Swedish nation is laborious and intelligent, and surely we shall gain more by a free people with

wives and children." To the Scandinavian imagination, hope painted the New World as a paradise; the proposed colony as a benefit to the persecuted, a security "to the honor of the wives and daughters" of those whom wars and bigotry had made fugitives; a blessing to the "common man;" to the "whole Protestant world." It may prove the advantage, said Gustavus in 1629, of "all oppressed Christendom."

But the reviving influence of the pope menaced Protestant Christendom with ruin. The insurrection against intellectual servitude, of which the Reformation was the great expression, appeared in danger of being suppressed, when, in May, 1630, Gustavus Adolphus resolved to invade Germany and vindicate the rights of conscience with his sword. The cherished purpose of colonization yielded for the moment, and the funds of the company were arbitrarily applied as resources in the war. It was a war of revolution; a struggle to secure German liberty by establishing religious equality; and the great events on which the destinies of Germany were suspended did but enlarge the design of Gustavus in America. At Nuremberg, on the sixteenth of October, 1632, only a few days before the battle of Lützen, where humanity won one of its most glorious victories and lost one of its ablest defenders, the enterprise, which still appeared to him as "the jewel of his kingdom," was recommended to the people of Germany.

In confirming the invitation to Germany, Oxenstiern, in April, 1633, declared himself to be but the executor of the wish of Gustavus. The same wise statesman, one of the great men of all time, the serene chancellor, who, in the busiest scenes, never took a care with him to his couch, renewed the patent of the company in June of that year, and in December, 1634, extended its benefits to Germany. The charter was soon confirmed by the deputies of the four upper circles at Frankfort. "The consequences" of this design, said Oxenstiern, "will be favorable to all Christendom, to Europe, to the whole world." And were they not so? The first permanent colonization of the banks of the Delaware is due to Oxenstiern.

Yet more than four years passed away before the design was carried into effect. We have seen Minuit, the early governor of New Netherland, forfeit his place amid the strifes of

faction. He now offered the benefit of his experience to the Swedes, and, leaving Sweden, probably near the close of the year 1637, he sailed for the bay of Delaware. Two vessels, the Key of Calmar and the Griffin, formed his whole fleet; the Swedish government supplied the emigrants with a religious teacher, with provisions, and merchandise for traffic with the natives. Early in the year 1638, the little company of Swedes and Finns arrived in the Delaware bay; the lands from the southern cape, which the emigrants from hyperborean regions named Paradise Point, to the falls in the river at Trenton, were purchased of the natives; and, near the mouth of Christiana creek, within the limits of the present state of Delaware, Christiana fort, so called from the child who was then queen of Sweden, was erected.

The records at Albany still preserve the paper in which Kieft, then director-general of New Netherland, claimed for the Dutch the country on the Delaware: their possession had long been guarded by forts, and had been sealed by the blood of their countrymen. But at that time the fame of Swedish arms protected the Swedish flag in the New World; and, while Banner and Torstenson were humbling Austria and Denmark, the Dutch did not proceed beyond a protest.

Meantime, tidings of the loveliness of the country had been borne to Scandinavia, and the peasantry of Sweden and of Finland longed to exchange their farms in Europe for homes on the Delaware. At the last considerable expedition, there were more than a hundred families eager to embark for the land of promise, and unable to obtain a passage in the crowded vessels. The plantations of the Swedes were gradually extended, and, when the Dutch renewed their fort at Nassau, Printz, the then Swedish governor, in 1643, established his residence on the island of Tinicum, a few miles below Philadelphia. A fort, constructed of hemlock logs, defended the island, and houses began to cluster in its neighborhood. Pennsylvania, like Delaware, traces its lineage to the Swedes, who had planted a suburb of Philadelphia before William Penn became its proprietary. New Sweden grew up on the bay and the river Delaware.

While the limits of New Netherland were narrowed by

competitors on the east and on the south, and Long Island was soon to be claimed by the agent of Lord Stirling, the colony was almost annihilated by the neighboring Algonkin tribes. Angry and even bloody quarrels had arisen between dishonest traders and savages maddened by intoxication. In 1640, the blameless settlement on Staten Island had, in consequence, been ruined by the undiscriminating vengeance of the tribes of New Jersey. An Indian boy who had been present when, years before, his uncle had been robbed and murdered, had vowed revenge, and, in 1641, when grown to man's estate, remembered and executed the vow of his childhood. A roving but fruitless expedition into the country south of the Hudson was the consequence. The Raritans were outlawed, and a bounty of ten fathoms of wampum was offered for every member of the tribe. The approach of danger brought with it the necessity of consulting the people, and the commons elected a body of twelve to assist the governor. De Vries, the head of the committee, urged the advantage of friendship with the natives. But the son of a chief, stung by the conviction of having been defrauded and robbed, aimed an unerring arrow at the first Hollander exposed to his fury. In 1642, a deputation of the river chieftains hastened to express their sorrow, and deplore the never-ending alternations of bloodshed. The murderer they could not deliver up; but, after the custom of the Saxons in the days of Alfred, of the Irish under Elizabeth, in exact correspondence with the usages of earliest Greece, they offered to purchase security for the murderer by a fine for blood. Two hundred fathom of the best wampum might console the grief of the widow. "You yourselves," they added, "are the cause of this evil; you ought not craze the young Indians with brandy. Your own people, when drunk, fight with knives and do foolish things; you cannot prevent mischief till you cease to sell strong drink to the Indian."

Kieft was inexorable, and demanded the murderer. In February, 1643, a small party of Mohawks from the vicinage of Fort Orange, armed with muskets, descended from their fastnesses, and claimed the natives round Manhattan as tributaries. At the approach of the formidable warriors of a braver Huron

race, the more numerous but cowering Algonkins crowded together in despair, begging assistance of the Dutch. Kieft, though warned that the ruin would light upon the Dutch themselves, seized the moment for an exterminating massacre. In the stillness of a dark winter's night, the soldiers at the fort, joined by freebooters from Dutch privateers, and led by a guide who knew every by-path and nook where the savages nestled, crossed the Hudson, for the purpose of destruction. The unsuspecting tribes could offer little resistance. Nearly a hundred perished in the carnage, which daybreak did not

end.

Proud of his deed of treachery, Kieft greeted the returning troops with exultation. But his joy was short. No sooner was it known that the midnight attack had been made not by the Mohawks, but by the Dutch, than every Algonkin tribe round Manhattan took up arms with savage frenzy. From the shores of New Jersey to the borders of Connecticut not a bowery was safe. It was on this occasion that Anne Hutchinson perished with her family. "Mine eyes," says a witness, "saw the flames at their towns, and the frights and hurries of men, women, and children." The director was compelled to desire peace.

On the fifth of March, 1643, a convention of sixteen sachems assembled in the woods of Rockaway; and at daybreak De Vries and another, the two envoys from Manhattan, were conducted to the centre of the little senate. Their best orator addressed them, holding in one hand a bundle of small sticks. "When you first arrived on our shores you were destitute of food; we gave you our beans and our corn; we fed you with oysters and fish; and now, for our recompense, you murder our people." Such were his opening words. Having put down one little stick, he proceeded: "The traders whom your first ships left on our shore, to traffic till their return, were cherished by us as the apple of our eye: we gave them our daughters for their wives; among those whom you have He laid down murdered were children of your own blood." another stick; and many more remained in his hand, each a memento of an unsatisfied wrong. "I know all," said De Vries, interrupting him, and inviting the chiefs to repair to

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