hoped, in the preceding pages. That there were baser instincts tending to the same end has also appeared. Institutions. The institutions of the English were favorable to their purposes as settlers. The subjects of a limited monarchy, they brought with them the habits and the laws of comparative freemen. That they might have been freer in their political principles, needs not to be suggested anew. But in their varying charters, in their varying magistrates and tribunals, even in the least liberal, the English colonists possessed privileges to which neither the Frenchman nor the Spaniard in their neighborhood had ever actually aspired. Circum- Of an equally encouraging description were the stances. circumstances of the English. The seaboard was theirs, all at least that they could immediately occupy. The portion which they possessed was partly in the north and partly in the south, provided, therefore, with the resources of both regions, at the same time that it was not exposed either to the indulgence of the extreme south or to the privation of the extreme north. Within opened an interior region rich in its streams, its fields, its forests, its mountains; without lay the broad sea, accessible at a hundred harbors. Whatever mere position could effect was promised to the English settlers. English As yet they had but begun the work before names. them. Their humble towns on the coast, their humbler villages and hamlets in the country, gave small token of their destinies. But the names of their territories were full of strength and of grandeur. There was New Albion on the Pacific, New Albion on the Atlantic. There was the land of Queen Elizabeth -Virginia; there was the land of the nation - New England. CHAPTER V. DUTCH SETTLEMENTS. Group of A LATER group of settlers comes forward. It is traders. composed not so much of settlers, however, as of traders, who, to carry out their commercial operations, lay the foundations of a state, and give it the name of their nation. Spirit in The spirit of the preceding half century in Holland had been that of a people rescuing themselves from a foreign dominion and building up a power of their own. Europe has nothing so brilliant upon its records at the time as the war of independence which the Netherlands waged, and waged successfully, against Spain. It might have been argued that such a nation would have surpassed all others in America. Dwindled ca. But it was not so. The Dutch came late upon in Ameri- the scene. They came, moreover, not with the spirit or the law of their nation so much as with those of the commercial companies by which they were sent out or controlled. The story of their settlements is therefore an anomaly in the history of American colonization. The fire of the mother-land languishes in the colony. It is because the colony is not a national, but a corporate settlement, from its beginning to its end. Hudson's The very year in which Holland became indevoyage. pendent, (1609,) Henry Hudson, an Englishman in Dutch employ, sailed in search of a northern passage to the Pacific. Shut out by the ice from his projected course, he steered westward, and reaching the coast of Maine, cruised southward as far as Virginia, giving to Cape Cod, on the way, the name of New Holland. As he returned towards the north, he discovered Delaware Bay, and entered the River of the Mountains, as he called the stream since known by his own name. These waters, first visited, perhaps, by Cabot in the English, (1498,) then by Verrazzano in the French, (1524,) and then by Gomez in the Spanish (1525) service, were now more thoroughly explored by Hudson. As their discoverer, he returned to Holland, and as their possessors, the Dutch sent out various vessels to trade with the natives and to claim the shores, (1610–13.) Company Netherland. The earliest of the Dutch posts was on the Island of New of Manhattan, (1613.) There the first craft of European construction was built and launched by Adrian Block, whose ship had been destroyed by fire. In his Manhattan vessel, appropriately called the Restless, Block went through Long Island Sound as far as Cape Cod, then, leaving his name for Block Island, he returned home, (1614.) The prospects of the new country looking well, the association of Amsterdam and Hoorn merchants, by whom Block and other explorers had been employed, gave it the name of New Netherland, and applied to the States General for protection in their enterprise. This was obtained, in the shape of an exclusive right for three years "to visit and penetrate the said lands lying in America between New France and Virginia, whereof the coasts extend from the fortieth to the forty-fifth degrees of latitude;" that is, from Delaware to Passamaquoddy Bay. The association, taking the name of the United New Netherland Company, set themselves to work, (1614.) A fort was built at Manhattan; a fortified trading post was established up the river, near the present Albany, (1615.) Meanwhile the little Restless, commanded by Cornelius Hendricksen, was exploring the coast to the southward, and ascending the Delaware, then called the South River, to distinguish it from the North, or Prince Maurice's River, as the Hudson was variously styled. Proposals of the Puritans. The monopoly of the New Netherland Company expiring without their being able to obPlymouth tain its renewal, other parties entered into the trading operations of which the colony was the centre. But the old company, or rather a portion of its members, retained a sort of vantage ground. To them, accordingly, the Puritan exiles in Holland the same who settled Plymouth-addressed their proposals of emigrating to New Netherland. The party to whom the application was made petitioned the States General that the Puritans might be taken under the national protection, in which case the petition asserts "upwards of four hundred families" "from this country and from England" would settle in the Dutch colony, (February, 1620.) The prayer of the petitioners was refused. West In pany. The New Netherland Company had ceased to dia Com- be a body in which the nation confided. An old project of a West India Company was revived, and a corporation of that name established, with power, not only over New Netherland, but the entire American coast, (1621.) It was some time before the company began its operations; but when it did begin, it was evidently in earnest, (1623.) Walloon Ten years had elapsed since the trading post on colony. Manhattan had been occupied, and there were still none but trading posts in all New Netherland. Not a colony worthy of the name as yet existed. The only plan that had ever been formed of establishing one came from the Plymouth Puritans. It is a singular coincidence that. the first colony to be actually established was one of refugees, like the Puritans, from persecution. These were a band of Protestant Walloons, from the Spanish Netherlands, who, after applying unsuccessfully to the London Company of England, enlisted as colonists under the West. India Company of Holland. Sent out in the first expedition of the company, they settled at Waal-bogt, or Walloons' Bay, on the western shore of Long Island, (1623– 24.) Their settlement stands out amidst the surrounding trading posts as the one spot of home life in New Netherland. But it was a feeble settlement, and feeble it continued, although recruited by fresh fugitives from beyond the sea. New Am- The company was by no means absorbed in its terdam. Walloons. On the contrary, it was erecting forts, one on the North River, another on the South, and presently, the chief of all on Manhattan Island, (1626.) Purchasing the entire island from the natives for no less than twenty-four of our dollars, Peter Minuit, the company's director, commenced the erection of a fort, with some surrounding dwellings, to which the name of New Amsterdam was subsequently applied. This settlement was to New Netherland the same principal place that it has since become as New York to the United States. Other forts were gradually raised; that of Good Hope upon the Connecticut, and that of Beversrede upon the Schuylkill, (1633.) The dominion of the company was in force upon the soil not only of New York, but of Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, and all within ten years of its first operations. Patroons. But upon this vast surface the company's settlements were as dots. Several of them, indeed, had been obliterated, and of those that remained, hardly one besides New Amsterdam was any thing more than a sta |