important aid to the youthful William III. of Orange in repelling the enemy, and distinguished himself, though then seventy years old, at the celebrated battle of Senef in 1674.1

After the Count of Nassau's departure matters in Brazil grew rapidly worse. As if the pressure of adverse circumstances from without were not enough to produce ruin, by a strange fatuity the West India Company invited misfortune by the appointment of officers most of whom were incompetent, while others proved to be traitors. In despair the Company, in 1646, appealed for aid to the States-General, who granted a subsidy of one and a half millions of florins, and despatched a fleet carrying a force of four thousand men. Nothing of importance was gained, however. Then in 1647 Count John Maurice was once more solicited to accept the Governor-Generalship; but he saw that things had gone too far for remedy, and he wisely declined the honor.2 Another attempt to send relief to the colony in 1649 was frustrated by internal dissensions and jealousies, at home and abroad. Shortly after, Cromwell declared war against Holland for affording shelter to the fugitive Charles II.; and, while all the strength of the Republic was necessarily concentrated upon the endeavor to resist so formidable an adversary, Portugal made use of the opportunity to finally destroy the power of the Dutch in distant Brazil, and in 1654 the West India Company saw that fair and vast acquisition pass completely and forever out of its hands. At a peace or convention concluded by the United Netherlands with Portugal in 1661, the latter agreed to pay eight millions of florins ($3,200,000) to the Company as an indemnification for its loss, together with the concession of certain privileges to Dutch traders or settlers similar to those granted to Portuguese under Dutch rule, and this was the last of the splendid Colonial Empire of the West which was to have rivaled that in the Orient.

At home, too, as was to be expected, the affairs of the Company were now in ruinous confusion. When, in 1644, the charter of the East India Company was about to expire at the end of its second period of twenty-one years, and that of the West India Company was approaching the close of its first term of twenty-four years, an effort was made to combine the two into one association. The directors of the West India Company offered to transfer to those of the other Company all their property in the shape of territories, forts, vessels, etc., together with a sum in cash of more than three. millions and a half of florins. But the East India Company refused

1 Netscher, Holland. au Brés., pp. 138-140; Cuvier, Hist. d. Sciences Naturelles, 2:142. The American who has seen Rembrandt's "Anatomy Lesson," and Paul Potter's "Bull," in the Royal Museum at the Hague, will remember that these famous

pictures are found in the "Mauritshuis." It is
named after John Maurice, of Nassau, who caused
it to be built while he was still in Brazil.
2 Netscher, Holland. au Brés., p. 139.

to enter into the combination, on the ground that the assets of the West India Company were five millions of florins less than their liabilities, and that this deficit would have to be raised on the credit of the former, which would cause an immediate fall in the value of their stock. This refusal, remarks Van Kampen, was the "death sentence" of the West India Company. But another fatal blow was the long-threatened and final loss of Brazil, ten years later, in 1654. After that destruction was inevitable. "Its affairs fell into such a state," says the author of "La Richesse de la Hollande," "that it no longer paid any dividends or interest, much less the principal of the sums that had been advanced. As early as 1667 it was contemplated to sell the property of the Company, as well as the rights which it enjoyed under its charter; but the project did not go into effect. Burdened with a debt of six millions without the means of liquidating the same, without the hope even of acquiring the power to do so, it was determined to dissolve the Company in 1674." This

dissolution took place. Thereupon a new West India Company was organized, to which a charter was granted for twenty-five years, to begin with the 1st of January, 1675. By one stroke the debt of the old Company was reduced thirty per cent., and the capital contributed by the former shareholders placed fifteen per cent. below the amount actually invested. On this reconstructed but crippled basis the West India Company continued its operations in a feeble manner for a century and a quarter longer. In 1682, Suriname, or Dutch Guyana,

1 Aitzema Staet en Oorlogh, 2: 976; Van Kampen, Nederl. b. Eur., 1: 460.

2 Rich. d. 1. Holl., 2:89. When its financial reverses came upon it the Company (1654) was no longer able to pay the rent of the house on Haarlem Street. It then transferred its offices to the warehouse which had been erected in 1642 on the Rapenburg Quay, its side facing the harbor, and with three gables fronting on the "Oude Schans," a canal-street running past the Montalbans Tower. In the central gable is sculptured in stone the Company's monogram, "G. W. C.," for "Geoctroyeerde Westindische Compagnie," or Chartered West India Company. This building is

represented in the illustration, and, like the other, may be readily identified. The letter before cited (p. 94) speaks of it as follows: "The building with the monogram is also in the original state, the 'G. W. C.' still appearing on the central gable. It is called 'Het Westindische Slachthuis' [West India Meat Market], and part of it is now the 'Koloniaal Etablissement,' or Storehouse of the Government of goods for the colonial army. The Rapenburg Quay is now called Prins Hendriks Kade,' and the house can readily be found, as it stands on the corner of that street and the canal-street on which is to be found the well-known Montalbans Tower."

which had been ceded to the Dutch in the place of New Netherland in 1667, at the peace of Breda, was sold to the Company by the States of Zeeland, under whose auspices it had been conquered, for two hundred and sixty thousand florins ($104,000). But the Company was unable alone to conduct the colony's affairs profitably. It therefore sold a one-third interest to the city of Amsterdam, and another third to Cornelius Van Aerssen, Lord of Sommelsdyk.' This combination of interests was then incorporated as a separate organization, under the name of the "Suriname Company," in 1683.2 In 1700, when the first twenty-five years had expired, the charter of the West India Company was renewed for thirty years, and in 1730 another thirty years were granted to it; but its affairs were ever after characterized by feebleness as compared with those of a century before. A momentary gleam of importance seems once more to be reflected upon it when, in 1747, William IV., Prince of Orange, and Stadholder of all the United Netherlands, was made "Chief-Director and GovernorGeneral of both the Indies," and thereby placed at the head of the East and the West India Companies." At length, in the year 1800, when the waves of the French Revolution had rolled over Holland, banishing the house of Orange, and destroying the old Republic or Confederacy of the United Netherlands, the two historic Companies were also swept out of existence. Their affairs and their possessions were placed under the care of the "Councils for the Asiatic and the American Possessions," and the East and West India Companies were heard of no more. Fifteen years later Holland arose, a Kingdom instead of a Republic, out of the chaos into which the French Revolution and Napoleon's ambition had plunged European politics; and the colonial possessions in the east and west, or so much of them as could be recovered from the English, became the property of the State, and are relegated at this day to the Department of the Colonies under the chief direction of a Cabinet Minister.

The history of the West India Company has thus been traced from

1 This was the grandson of that C. Aerssen, Lord of Sommelsdyk, who was Ambassador to France and Secretary to the States-General in Barneveld's day, and whose signature in the above form appears on the original charter of the West India Company, in 1621.

2 Rich. d. I. Holl., 2: 153, 168.

3 Van Kampen, Nederl. b. Eur., 3: 74. From 1702, when William III. of England died without children, until 1747, the Republic had been without a Stadholder. The direct line of William the Silent being extinct, when the national feeling in favor of the name of Orange demanded again a scion of that family at the head of the government, the States-General invited William, the Stadholder of Friesland, of the line of Count John of Nassau, the brother of William the Silent, and

whose issue had therefore inherited the title of Prince of Orange, to assume the Stadholderate for the entire Republic. The position was at once made hereditary in this line. From William IV. descended the three kings who ruled Holland during the present century. The death of King William III., in November, 1890, left a little daughter to inherit the kingdom and the illustrious heritage of the name of Orange. The return of the house of Orange to the head of affairs after an interval of forty-five years awakened much enthusiasm; honors of various kinds were heaped upon William IV., and this title, which amounted to little more than a title then, was bestowed as an additional compliment.

4 Van Kampen, Nederl. b. Eur., 3:393, 396.

its inception in 1604 to its extinction in 1800. The principal use of this review for our purposes is to be found in the opportunity it affords to appreciate the position of the West India Company at home and abroad, while New Netherland was still a part of the territories over which it bore rule. If its management of New Netherland affairs was not without defect, it will be seen that it was equally defective in management in other quarters. If it is a matter of surprise at times that there was such great lack of vigorous support when it might properly have been expected from the directors at home, it can be seen that vigor was not long characteristic of the Company, or indeed within its ability to manifest anywhere; while its financial situation hampered its activities when scarcely more than half of its first term of twenty-four years had expired. It will be seen, too, that predatory warfare was its favorite pursuit; or, at least, that colonization was never its principal object. In 1626, when, as is claimed by some, the enemies of the Company pressed that almost invisible clause of the charter which only seemed to enjoin some such undertaking,—when, too, encouraging financial returns as the result of prizes-of-war began to come in,-the first regular Colonial Government was provided for New Netherland, and Director-General Minuit was sent out. Before he was recalled, and during a part of Van Twiller's administration, the acme of the Company's prosperity was attained. Yet there are not apparent any notable consequences attending these happy events in the province upon the Hudson River, except some brief activity in the erection of a few modest buildings, and the completion of Fort Amsterdam. In 1637, when the Count of Nassau, allied to the illustrious house of Orange, was sent to govern Brazil, William Kieft, a bankrupt in business, and with a clouded reputation, was sent to govern New Netherland. During his administration misfortunes began to accumulate upon the Company at home and abroad; in the midst of these Stuyvesant was appointed, and they became worse with every year of his incumbency. So in 1664 New Netherland, unsupported by the Company, because it was itself helpless and on the brink of ruin, was suffered to pass into other hands without a blow. And by a curious coincidence, when New Netherland, in the year 1674, finally ceased to be subject to Dutch control, occurred also the dissolution of the original West India Company.

CHAPTER IV

HENRY HUDSON'S VOYAGE AND ITS RESULTS IN TRADE
AND COLONIZATION

E

O the resident of New-York City perhaps the most interesting event in the history of American discovery, next to that of America itself, is the discovery of New-York Bay and the exploration of the Hudson River. Indeed, apart from this local interest, the account of Henry Hudson's voyage in the Half-Moon, from beginning to end, is so full of romantic and striking incident that the reader never wearies of its repetition,

HENRY HUDSON IN THE HIGHLANDS.

but turns to it with ever renewed pleasure. Yet a natural curiosity, as

well as historical exactness, compels us to ask the question, which has already been suggested by the opening chapter: Were Hudson and his companions the first of European navigators to look upon the charming prospect of our bay and river? All can enter with hearty sympathy into Irving's feelings when, expressing his indignation against those writers who industriously seek to deprive Columbus of the glory of his discovery, he says: "There is a certain meddlesome spirit which in the garb of learned research goes prying about the