the Delaware. A few leading officials of the Dutch Company, disgusted at
the way its affairs were managed, formed a new company under the lead of
William Usselinx. As they could not get a charter from Holland, for she
would not create a rival to the Dutch Company, they sought and obtained
one from Sweden as the South Company, and (1638) sent out a colony to
settle on the Delaware River.[1] The spot chosen was on the site of
Wilmington. The country was named New Sweden, though it belonged to
Maryland. The Dutch West India Company protested and rebuilt Fort
Nassau. The Swedes, in retaliation, went farther up the river and
fortified an island near the mouth of the Schuylkill. Had they stopped
here, all would have gone well. But, made bold by the inaction of the
Dutch, they began to annoy the New Netherlanders, till (1655) Peter
Stuyvesant, the governor of New Netherland, unable to stand it any
longer, came over from New Amsterdam with a few hundred men, overawed
the Swedes, and annexed their territory west of the Delaware. New Sweden
then became part of New Netherland.[2]

[Footnote 1: Sweden had no right to make such a settlement. She had no
claim to any territory in North America.]

[Footnote 2: Lodge's _English Colonies_, pp. 205-210; Bancroft's
_History of the United States_, Vol. I., pp. 509, 510; Hildreth's
_History of the United States_, Vol. I., pp. 413-442.]


SUMMARY

1. After the discovery of the North American coast by the Cabots,
England made no attempt to settle it for nearly eighty years; and even
then the colonies planted by Gilbert and Ralegh were failures.