curred after this event, until the celebrated Henry Hudson undertook to penetrate our northern seas, in search of a passage through them to China and Japan. For this purpose he was fitted out by some London merchants, and set sail in a small vessel, on the first day of May, 1607. With a crew of ten men and a boy, he boldly pushed into the North sea, and sailed as high as lat. 80°; but being stopped by the ice, he retured to England in the following autumn. Pursuing the same object, he sailed again in 1608, but could get no further than Nova Zembla, and returned the same year.

Hudson having twice failed to attain his end, it is supposed his employers became discouraged and abandoned the scheme. The hopes and the ardour of this great navigator were not, however, crushed by this failure, for we find him the next year in Holland, then one of the most commercial countries in the world, contracting with the Dutch East India Company to seek for them a nearer route to China by the northern seas. The arrangements being completed, on the 4th day of April, 1609, in a ship called the Crescent, but more commonly the Half-Moon, he sailed toward the north. Not succeeding in his object, his crew became dissatisfied; upon which he determined to examine the more southern coasts of America. Pursuing this object, he sailed southerly as far as Cape Cod, and supposing it an original discovery, he called it New Holland ;* thence steering a southwesterly course, he kept along our coast till he came to a point south of the capes of the Chesapeake. Knowing that a colony had been settled on some of the shores within those capes, he turned his course towards the north-east, and on the 28th day of August, he entered the Delaware.† After passing into the bay above Cape Henlopen, they found the "land to trend away toward the north-west, with a great bay and rivers, but the bay was shoal," and seeing it dangerous by reason of sand bars, they did not attempt to explore it, but very soon stood out to sea,

* De Vries, 274.

†The Delaware took its name from Lord Delaware, who discovered it in 1610, one year after Hudson had been in the bay.

and on the 3d of the following month passed Sandy-Hook. On the 11th they anchored the ship off Manhattan Island, describing their position as "a very good harbour for all winds." On the 14th they began to ascend the noble river which still bears the name of Hudson. On the 15th they passed through the splendid scenery of the Highlands, and continued their course several miles beyond the present city of Hudson. Some of the ship's crew proceeded in the boat eight or nine leagues higher up the river, probably to Castle Island just below Albany, and some writers suppose they advanced as far as Troy.

On the 4th of October, 1609, Hudson left New York bay, and returned to Holland, with a chart of his discoveries, and an interesting report of his adventures.

In this report he gave to the merchants of Amsterdam such an account of the aborigines and of the products of the country, as induced them to believe that a profitable trade might be prosecuted with the natives. In consequence of these impressions, some of them, as partners in the concern, freighted a ship in 1610,† and sent her to Manhattan. Finding the adventure profitable and the prospect flattering, they obtained from the States-General exclusive authority for four years to trade with the natives, on the North river and in its vicinity. Here they carried on a profitable commerce, leaving agents during the winter to attend to their concerns.

So early as the year 1613, on the hostile visit of Sir Samuel Argall, afterwards Governor of Virginia, returning from an expedition against the French settlement at Port Royal, he found a number of houses, at least four, built on Manhattan island, for the acommodation of the traders. This little group of buildings was in fact the beginning of New York, the nucleus round which has grown up the largest city in the United States, and the great emporium of their extensive commerce.

Soon after the departure of Argall, the Dutch, to provide a better defence for their trading establishment, built a fort on the

* Juet's Journal, p. 325.

† De Laet's New World, 305.

southern point of the island, and called it Fort Amsterdam. This was in 1614, or, as some writers suppose, 1615. It stood near a spot in Broadway now called the Bowling Green. Its successor, a much stronger fortification, bearing the names successively of Fort Amsterdam, Fort James, Fort William and Mary, Fort Ann, and Fort George, was finally demolished by order of the Legislature of New York in 1790. The public promenade called the Battery, affording one of the most interesting and delightful prospects in our country, includes part of the land appertaining to the old Fort Amsterdam.

About the same period the Dutch erected another fort on an island near Albany, which they named Aurania or Fort Orange. It was surrounded by a moat, garrisoned by ten or twelve men under the command of Hendrich Christianse. It was armed with two cannons and twelve swivel guns, and intended as a depot for merchandise and place of trade. To it, for many years, the Indians from the interior, along the Hudson and Mohawk, and even from the shores of the St. Lawrence and from Canada, resorted in great numbers to exchange their furs and peltry for the splendid toys, the useful merchandise, and the destructive products of European industry.

But the monopoly of trade, which had been granted as aforesaid, was calculated to discourage individual enterprise, and from this period until the year 1621, little was done to improve the country, or to promote its colonization. Before that year, excepting at a few settlements about Bergen in East Jersey, and up the North river, not many European families were to be found cultivating the soil. The sole object of the Dutch appears to have been trade. The extension of empire by colonization, the advantages to be gained by covering the fertile regions in their possession with an industrious, thriving population, seem not to have entered into their plans, in the acquisition of foreign territory. Even on Long Island, in the near vicinity of their principal settlement, and seat of their government, so late as the year 1625, fifteen years after the institution of the trading company at Manhattan, there was but one European family residing.

The States of Holland in the year 1621 granted a charter to certain merchants and others, incorporating them as a company, with extensive powers and privileges, and extending its duration to the term of twenty-four years. The States subscribed to the stock of the company half a million of guilders, and made a present to them of half a million more. No specific territory was granted, nor were any of its possessions guarantied to them. They were not permitted to declare war; and if involved in hostilities, they were to defend themselves at their own expense. It was known by the name of the "The West India Company."

Although the object of the corporation was exclusively commercial, yet it was perceived that colonization was necessary to carry it into effect, and from this period efforts began to be made to settle the country, not only on the Hudson and in its vicinity, but on the Delaware or South River, as it was then called. In the year 1623 a number of emigrants from Holland, under the guidance of Cornelius May, arrived in the Delaware. Having brought with them a stock of merchandise, as well as the means of defence, they sailed up the river as far as Gloucester Point, about four miles south of the spot where the city of Philadelphia now stands. At a short distance south east of this point, on a very commanding position, near the mouth of little Timber Creek, May landed his forces and built Fort Nas

sau.

So far as our information extends, May was the first European who sailed up the river Delaware, and the first adventurer who made a settlement on its shores. Its object was trade with the natives. In the erection of this fort and the establishment of a trading house, May acted as an agent of the company.* It appears that the concern for many years was not sufficiently profitable to induce the company to support it. In ten years after its establishment, De Vries found it in the possession of the Indians t. Acrelius affirms that when the Swedes first arrived [in

* Lambrechtsen, p 91.

In 1633, Jan. 5th, De Vries was at Fort Nassau. Found it in the possession of the Indians. In 1643 there were some of the Company's people in the fort. See De Vries, pp. 252, 253, 273.

1638,]"the Dutch had no establishment on the Delaware." Proud says, that "the commodious situation of New York for the sea and trade, induced most of them [the Dutch] who were settled on the Delaware, soon afterwards to quit it, and fix their settlements on both sides of the North river, before any of the Swedes came to America." Campanius says: "The Dutch also claimed a right to it [the country] because they had visited it before the Swedes, and had erected three forts there, which had, however, been utterly destroyed by the Indians, and all who were therein murdered or driven away, so that they had abandoned it entirely when the Swedes came."

From all the testimony in the case, it is probable that the settlement at Fort Nassau languished during the administration of Governor Minuit, which continued from 1624, when the West India Company was first organized under its new charter, until 1633. He was succeeded by Wouter Van Twiller, who came to New Amsterdam in the ship De Zoutberg, in the spring of the year last mentioned. But although the establishment was not a prosperous one, and the fort had not been garrisoned without interruption, there is abundant evidence to prove that the Dutch had not "entirely abandoned it,"-nor is it true that it had been "destroyed by the Indians ;" the only fortification they had destroyed, was the one built by De Vries, near Cape Henlopen, in 1631. By a statement yet extant among the Albany Records, it appears that during the administration of Van Twiller, which terminated about the time when the first Swedish colonists arrived, there had been erected in Fort Nassau one large house, and that the fort had been put into a state of repair;* which satisfactorily proves that Acrelius was mistaken where he says that, "when the Swedes arrived, the Dutch had no establishment on the Delaware."

* Commissary Hudde, an officer under the Dutch West India Company, in his report, yet extant, says, that at the time that Minuit built the fort at Christina, "in the year 1638, the company had then a sufficient garrison on the river, and sufficient fortifications, men, and ammunitions of war, and had been in possession of this country more than 14 years." See New York Hist. Soc. Collections, p. 429.