MEMOIR. THE subject of this Memoir, if so it may be termed, will be NAMES; chiefly names of places, and farther restricted to places in that portion of our country, once held and claimed by the Dutch by right of discovery, and by them named New Netherland; to be described, generally, as bounded on the east by the Connecticut, and on the west by the Delaware, and a space in breadth, adjacent to the farther bank of each, the extent of it not now to be ascertained, but, doubtless, as far as was judged needful to secure the exclusive use of the rivers. Held by right of discovery-a right gravely questioned by some, and furnishing matter for wit and pleasantry to others; because, with deference to both, not justly apprehended by either. An understood conventional law between the maritime nations of Europe, to prevent interferences otherwise to be apprehended, that the discovery of territory should enure to the benefit of the sovereign by whose subjects made. The benefit, where the territory inhabited, a right, in exclusion of other sovereigns and their subjects, to purchase, from the uncivilized occupants, the soil; their right to which, recognised by the Dutch in the first instance, and afterward by the English on the surrender of the colony to them, 1664, and ever regarded by both with the best faith. No grant to their own people without a previous Indian purchase, as it was termed-no purchase without a previous license for it-the sale under the superintendence of an authorised magistracy, in quality as guardians for the Indians; and hence, complaints from them of injury, either from their own mistakes, or from imposition in the purchasers, rare, notwithstanding we meet with a part of the consideration not more definitely expressed, than as consisting of " some handsful of powder." If asked, whence the inducement in selecting the subject, a mere research, furnishing little to please, perhaps less to instruct? My answer will simply be, that nothing relative to the history of COUNTRY-the soil that gave birth-"the place of our FATHER's sepulchres”—“ the paternal seats, our unceasing desire it may be granted us ourselves to die there,"was never with others, and I trust will never be with us, wholly uninteresting. The English, when speaking of their country, call it England; when speaking of it, with emphasis or emotion, at times, Old England; still only its name on the map-the Dutch, when speaking of their country, always by a name peculiar to themselves, HET VADERLANDT, the Father Land. The order to be observed, will be generally the primitive Indian, and the subsequently successive Spanish, Dutch, and English, names. As authorities,* among others, a reference will be *See Note III. |