& to bring the country to produce more abundantly, resolved to grant
divers privileges, freedoms, and exemptions to all patroons, masters
or individuals who should plant any colonies and cattle in New
Netherland, and they accordingly have constituted and published in
print (certain) exemptions, to afford better encouragement and infuse
greater zeal into whomsoever should be inclined to reside and plant
his colonie in New Netherland.

[1] From Wassenaer's "Description of the first settlement of New
Netherland." Printed in Hart's "American History Told by
Contemporaries." Wassenaer was a Dutchman, and wrote
contemporaneously with the events he describes. After Hudson's
discovery of the Hudson River, Dutch ships were sent over to
Manhattan Island to establish an agency for the collection of furs.
Rude cabins were pitched and lived in at the southern end of the
island but these did not constitute a permanent settlement; they
were a mere trading-post. The trade became so profitable, however,
that something more permanent was desired, and in 1623 the West
India Company dispatched ships with thirty families as the nucleus
of a colony to be established near the present site of Albany. Not
until two years later was it decided that the headquarters of the
colony should be on Manhattan Island. Two ships were then sent out
to establish there a permanent and more extensive settlement.




THE SWEDES AND DUTCH IN NEW JERSEY AND DELAWARE

(1627)