ship in the East India trade; but the offer was put aside from fear of the superior" art and industry of the Dutch."

In 1613, or in one of the two previous years, the experienced Hendrik Christiaensen, of Cleve, "and the worthy Adriaen Block, chartered a ship with the skipper Ryser," and made a voyage into the waters of New York, bringing back rich furs, and two sons of native sachems.

The states general, on the twenty-seventh of March, 1614, ordained that private adventurers might enjoy an exclusive privilege for four successive voyages to any passage, haven, or country they should thereafter find. With such encouragement, a company of merchants, in the same year, sent five small vessels, of which the Fortune, of Amsterdam, had Christiaensen for its commander; the Tiger, of the same port, Adriaen Block; the Fortune, of Hoorn, Cornelis Jacobsen May, to extend the discoveries of Hudson, as well as to trade with the natives.

The Tiger was accidentally burnt near the island of Manhattan; but Adriaen Block, building a yacht of sixteen tons' burden, which he named the Unrest, plied forth to explore the vicinity. First of European navigators, he steered through Hellgate, passed the archipelago near Norwalk, and discovered the river of Red Hills, which we know as the Housatonic. From the bay of New Haven he turned to the east, and ascended the beautiful river which he called the Freshwater, but which, to this hour, keeps its Indian name of Connecticut. Near the site of Wethersfield he came upon one Indian tribe; just above Hartford, upon another; and he heard tales of the Horicans, who dwelt in the west, and moved over lakes in bark canoes. The Pequods he found on the banks of their river. At Montauk Point, then occupied by a savage nation, he reached the ocean, proving the land east of the sound to be an island. After discovering the island which bears his name, and exploring both channels of that which owes to him the name of Roode Eiland, now Rhode Island, the mariner from Holland imposed the names of places in his native land on groups in the Atlantic, which, years before, Gosnold and other English navigators had visited. The Unrest sailed beyond Cape Cod; and, while John Smith was

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making maps of the bays and coasts of Maine and Massachusetts, Adriaen Block traced the shore as far, at least, as Nahant. Then leaving the American-built yacht at Cape Cod, to be used by Cornelis Hendricksen in the fur trade, Block sailed in Christiaensen's ship for Holland.

The states general, in an assembly where Olden Barneveldt was present, readily granted to the united company of merchants interested in these discoveries a three years' monopoly of trade with the territory between Virginia and New France, from forty to forty-five degrees of latitude. Their charter, given on the eleventh of October, 1614, names the extensive region NEW NETHERLAND. Its northern part John Smith had that same year called NEW ENGLAND.

To prosecute their commerce with the natives, Christiaensen built for the company, on Castle island, south of the present city of Albany, a truck-house and military post. The building was thirty-six feet by twenty-six, the stockade fiftyeight feet square, the moat eighteen feet wide. The garrison was composed of ten or twelve men. The fort, which may have been begun in 1614, which was certainly finished in 1615, was called Nassau; the river for a time was known as the Maurice. With the Five Nations a friendship grew up, which was soon ratified according to the usages of the Iroquois, and during the power of the Dutch was never broken. Such is the beginning of Albany: it was the outpost of the Netherland fur trade.

The United Provinces, now recognised even by Spain as free countries, provinces, and states, set no bounds to their enterprise. The world seemed not too large for their commerce under the genial influence of liberty, achieved after a struggle longer and more desperate than that of Greece with Persia. This is the golden age of their trade with Japan, and the epoch of their alliance with the emperor of Ceylon. In 1611, their ships once again braved the frosts of the arctic circle in search of a new way to China; and it was a Dutch discoverer, Schouten, from Hoorn, who, in 1616, left the name of his own beloved sea-port on the southernmost point of South America. In the same year a report was made of further explorations in North America. Three Netherlanders-who went

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 capa-city 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 gov ernment 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.