grounded, and Hudson turned about. Running along the Jersey coast, he
entered New York Bay, and sailed up the river which the Dutch called
the North River, but which we know as the Hudson. Hudson's voyage gave
the Dutch a claim to all the country drained by the Delaware or South
River and the Hudson River, and some Dutch traders at once sent out
vessels, and were soon trading actively with the Indians. By 1614 a rude
fort had been erected near the site of Albany, and some trading huts had
been put up on Manhattan Island. These ventures proved so profitable
that numbers of merchants began to engage in the trade, whereupon those
already in it, in order to shut out others, organized a company, and in
1615 obtained a trading charter for three years from the States General
of Holland, and carried on their operations from Albany to the
Delaware River.

[Illustration: View of New Amsterdam in 1656]

%28. Dutch West India Company.%--On the expiration of the charter (in
1618) it was not renewed, but a new corporation, the Dutch West India
Company (1621), was created with almost absolute political and
commercial power over all the Dutch domains in North America, which were
called New Netherland. In 1623 the company began to send out settlers.
Some went to Albany, or, as they called it, Fort Orange. Others were
sent to the South or Delaware River, where a trading post, Fort Nassau,
was built on the site of Gloucester in New Jersey. A few went to the
Connecticut River; some settled on Long Island; and others on Manhattan
Island, where they founded New Amsterdam, now called New York city.

All these little settlements were merely fur-trading posts. Nobody was
engaged as yet in farming. To encourage this, the company (in 1629) took
another step, and offered a great tract of land, on any navigable river