considered as exclusively belonging to them. Mr. Winslow failed to
meet the Dutch before their vessel had sailed on its return to
Manhattan.

Soon after this the Dutch Governor, Peter Minuit, sent secretary De
Rassieres to Governor Bradford, with a very friendly letter,
congratulating the Plymouth colony upon its prosperity, inviting to
commercial relations, and offering to supply their English neighbors
with any commodities which they might want.

Governor Bradford, in his reply, very cordially reciprocated these
friendly greetings. Gracefully he alluded to the hospitality with
which the exiled Pilgrims had been received in Holland. "Many of us,"
he wrote,

"are tied by the good and courteous entreaty which we have
found in your country, having lived there many years with
freedom and good content, as many of our friends do this
day; for which we are bound to be thankful, and our children
after us, and shall never forget the same."

At the same time he claimed that the territory, north of forty degrees
of latitude, which included a large part of New Netherland, and all
their Hudson river possessions, belonged to the English. Still he
promised that, for the sake of good neighborhood, the English would
not molest the Dutch at the mouth of the Hudson, if they would
"forbear to trade with the natives in this bay and river of
Narragansett and Sowames, which is, as it were, at our doors."

The authorities at Fort Amsterdam could not, for a moment, admit this