occurred two events of note. One was the arrival of Captain De Vries, on April 16th. He was now an active partner in the Patroonship of Swanendael on the Delaware, and thus in close alliance with a number of the Directors of the West India Company; but the beginning of his relations with that Company had been neither pleasant nor profitable. As far back as 1624 there was lodged a complaint before the StatesGeneral against the West India Company on the part of a sea-captain and part owner of a vessel lying in the port of Hoorn and bound for New France. The West India Company had then newly entered upon its career of enterprise, and it imagined that here was an infringement of its charter privileges. Accordingly the captain was arrested at the instance of the Company by the Magistrates of Hoorn. But this resolute person was not to be so summarily disposed of. He at once served an attachment on the agents of the Company, who were thereby compelled to send for instructions to the Assembly of the XIX. The captain went beyond this body to a still higher authority, and sent a petition for redress to the States-General, the result being that the States-General sent a communication to the West India people, clearly showing that the vessel in question was not interfering with their rights, inasmuch as the fisheries of Canada were distinctly under the jurisdiction of France, and that it was owned or chartered by French merchants; and at the same time their High Mightinesses took occasion to rebuke the Company for risking at the very commencement of its operations a quarrel with a friendly power. This formidable sea-captain was David Pieters, or David Pietersen De Vries. He had gained a victory over the great West India Company, but the inevitable delay in sailing was fatal to the projected enterprise, and it was necessarily abandoned, De Vries losing a large sum of money. When the Patroons consented to receive partners in the management and profits of colonies in America, the captain, instead of contributing capital, placed at the disposal of the patentees of Swanendael his skill and experience as a mariner and explorer. In February, 1632, he sailed with two ships to plant a colony on the Delaware, to succeed the one which the copartners had sent in 1630, but which had been massacred the preceding year. He succeeded in conciliating the Indians, but no one ventured to settle in the vicinity of the doomed plantation, and the whale-fishery also furnishing but an unsatisfactory return, De Vries sailed down the coast, paid a brief visit to Sir John Harvey, Governor of Virginia, at Jamestown, and on April 16, 1633, arrived in New-York Bay, to make the acquaintance of the new Director-General.

Two days later, as De Vries was at dinner with Van Twiller, an English ship passed in between the Narrows and came to anchor be

1 Doc. rel. Col. Hist. N. Y., 1: 31, 32; De Vries, "Voyages," pp. 11-13.

WEST VRIESLANT EN NOORDER QVARTIER ETA. 60. ANNO M.D.CL III

fore the fort. A boat put off for the shore, and the vessel's errand was soon told. Her name was the William, sent out by a company of London merchants to carry on a trade in furs upon the "Hudson's River." There was significance, and indeed defiance, in that very name; therein lay hid a claim, which was also unsparingly asserted in so many words, that Hudson's nationality gave to England all the rights

VOL. I.-12.

derived from his discovery. The person sent to communicate this mission and to assert these rights, in the present instance, was none other than Jacob Eelkens. Honorably identified as he had been with the beginning of the history of New Netherland, he appears now in a less favorable light. Shortly before the arrival of the ship New Netherland, in 1623, with the first Walloon families, Eelkens had seized the person of Seguin, or Sequin, an Indian chief, on one of his trading expeditions, in the course of which he had penetrated to the vicinity of the Connecticut. He demanded an exorbitant ransom of over a hundred fathoms of wampum for the release of Seguin. As a consequence, the Indians of that region became suspicious of the Dutch, a long time intervened before confidence was restored, and the fur trade suffered greatly. Hence Eelkens, who had so long commanded at Fort Nassau, was dismissed from the service of the West India Company before Fort Orange was substituted for the former. The English, coveting a foothold in the territories about the Hudson, were not slow to avail themselves of the undoubted capacity and experience possessed by the disgraced Indian trader, while they rightly counted on his disaffection towards his previous employers as an important element in securing their ends. He stoutly main

SHORT HISTORICAL

AND

Journal notes

Of several Voyages made in the four tained the right of the William to pro

parts of the World, namely, EUROPE,

AFRICA, ASIA, and AMERICA,

By D

ceed up the river, and quoted the ideas

DAVID PIETERSZ. of his new masters in regard to the

de VRIES, Ordnance-Master of the Most
Noble Lords, the Committed Council of the

States of West Friesland and the
North Quarter

English title and proprietorship based on Hudson's exploration. Van Twiller

Wherein are described what Battles with as much determination repudiated

he has had by Water: Each Country its Animals, Birds, kind of Fishes and Savage Men,-counterfeited to

the Life, and the Woods and Rivers

with their Products.

HOORN

those claims, and refused permission to the William to proceed. The river was not the "Hudson's River," but the "Mauritius"; all the surrounding regions owed allegiance to no other potentate than their High Mightinesses and the Prince of Orange as their Stadholder. In practical support of that declaration the Commander-in-chief of Fort Amsterdam ordered the Orange colors, or the Orange, White, and Blue of the West India Company, to be unfurled from the flagstaff of the fort and three shots to be fired in honor of the prince. Eelkens was not at all overawed by this display of authority; returning to his ship, the English ensign was run to the masthead, and three shots in defiance of Van Twiller and in honor of King Charles boomed over the water; while at the same time the William weighed her anchor and sailed rapidly up the river.

For David Pietersa, de Vries, Ordnance-Master of the North Quarter
At Alckmaer, by Symon Cornelias. Brokegeest Anno 1655

Were it not that the truthful De Vries has recorded the incident that follows, and of which he was himself a witness, it would be impossible to give it credence. Visions of Walter the Doubter enveloped in clouds of tobacco-smoke, and weighing in either hand the books containing disputed accounts in order to properly balance them, seem to rise up before us, and Irving's ludicrous caricature almost commends itself as the sober truth. Van Twiller's rage at seeing Eelkens and the William so insolently defying his authority was unbounded. He therefore called upon all loyal denizens of Fort Amsterdam to assemble before the walls of the fort on the river bank. Then ordering a cask of wine to be brought, he exhorted all those who loved the Prince and the Fatherland to drain a bumper to their glory. An appeal of this character to patriotism was not easily lost upon the large assemblage, and with their eyes upon the distant ship they enthusiastically drank to its confusion and to the success of the Prince of Orange. But this having no appreciable effect upon the William, De Vries' suggested to the Director-General a more practical measure of restraint. The man-of-war which had conveyed Van Twiller to his seat of government was as yet in port, and a force of one hundred soldiers was at his command. Why not despatch the Salt-Mountain upon the errand of arrest? This obvious expedient dawned but slowly upon the dull mind of the Commander-in-chief, for it was not till several days afterwards that an expedition was organized to carry out the project. This, however, did not include the manof-war; "a pinnace, a caravel, and a hoy," conveying a part of the troops, were sent up the river to arrest Eelkens and bring back the English ship. The former commissary had already established himself upon an island in the river near Fort Orange, and was trading successfully with the Indians. His previous intercourse with them was remembered, and his facility in dealing with them was now of great service to his English employers. The settlers at Fort Orange sought to interfere with his transactions, but they did so by beating the Indians who came to trade, instead of attacking Eelkens and his party. A large quantity of furs had already been collected when the soldiers arrived from Fort Amsterdam. They soon compelled Eelkens to desist, forced the English sailors to carry the peltries on board the William, and convoyed the latter to Manhattan Island. Here Eelkens was made to give up her cargo, and, with his crew, was sent back empty-handed to England."

1 De Vries told Van Twiller that he would have made Eelkens obey "by the persuasion of some iron beans sent him from our guns, and would not have allowed him to go up the river. I told him," he adds, "that we did not put up with these things in the East Indies. There we taught them how to behave!" De Vries had made several voyages

to the Dutch East Indian Islands, and the encroachments of the English there had caused them serious trouble.

2 De Vries, Voyages, pp. 57-59.

3 O'Callahan, New Netherland, 1: 143-146; Brodhead, New-York, 1: 229-231. Doc. rel. Col. Hist. N. Y., 1: 72-81.

This incident only served to open afresh the dispute as to the title to New Netherland. The owners of the William complained to the English Government of the treatment she had received, and a claim for damages was transmitted to Holland by the Dutch ambassadors, and referred by the States-General to the West India Company. The latter defended the title of the Republic and refuted by careful argu

Charles&

ment that of the English, the question of damages depending upon this alone. Yet the Company had ably performed this same fruitless task scarcely more than a year before, when the English had, on the strength of their claim to New Netherland, ventured upon a much more serious violation of international comity than that of which they now complained against the Dutch. The ship Union, conveying Director Minuit to Holland, was driven by stress of weather to seek refuge in the harbor of Plymouth. She was at once seized upon by the English authorities as coming from a region covered by grants of the crown to English subjects. Minuit hastened to London to inform the Dutch ambassadors of the outrage, and these appealed for redress directly to the King. Little sympathy was to be expected in such a quarter; insisting upon royal prerogative to his own ruin in England, Charles I. was not inclined to yield any part of his sovereignty over America. The matter was referred for decision to the Privy Council, with the result that the ministers but reiterated and emphasized a claim so frequently advanced before. But in anticipation of this the Dutch ambassadors had urged upon the States-General the necessity of a clear statement of the Dutch title, which was accordingly prepared by the West India Company. This paper showed that there was no settlement by the English, nor any kind of occupation near the territories claimed, till 1620; while the Dutch had been trading without interruption from 1610 to the present year, and had built forts there. Again, coming to the question of grants, there had always been an extensive region between 38° and 41° north latitude, which had been distinctly left open, and New Netherland lay within these