made according to our limited means, and which are found
good. We have attempted several times to send specimens
of them to the Netherlands, once with Arent van Corenben
by way of New Haven and of England, but the ship was
wrecked and no tidings of it have ever been received.<1>
After that Director William Kieft also had many different
specimens with him in the ship the Princess, but they were
lost in her with him.<2> The mountains and mines
nevertheless remain, and are easily to be found again
whenever it may be thought proper to go to the labor and
expense. In New England they have already progressed so
far as to make castings of iron pots, tankards, balls and
the like out of their minerals, and we firmly believe all
that is wanting here is to have a beginning made; for there
are in New Netherland two kinds of marcasite, and mines of
white and yellow quicksilver, of gold, silver, copper,
iron, black lead and hard coal. It is supposed that tin
and lead will also be found; but who will seek after them
or who will make use of them as long as there are not
more people?

<1> Arent Corssen. Van der Donck says that he and Kieft
saw an Indian painting his face with a shining mineral.
They had it assayed, and it proved to contain gold. Arent
Corssen, sent to Holland with a bag of it, embarked early
in 1646 in the "great ship" of New Haven, Captain George
Lamberton, for whose return into the harbor as a phantom
ship, months afterward, see Cotton Mather's _Magnalia_,
I. 84 (ed. of 1853), and Longfellow's poem, "The Phantom
Ship."