matter has been treated upon by various ingenious minds
in its length and breadth, and as those claims are so
absurd as to require only a few reasons in answer to
them, we will be as brief as in any wise practicable.

After Their High Mightinesses, the Lords States General,
were pleased, in the year of our Lord 1622,<1> to include
this province in their grant to the Honorable West India
Company, their Honors deemed it necessary to take into
possession so naturally beautiful and noble a province,
which was immediately done, as opportunity offered, the
same as in all similar beginnings. Since the year of our
Lord 1623, four forts have been built there by order of
the Lords Directors,<2> one on the south point of the
Manhatans Island, where the East and North Rivers unite,
called New Amsterdam, where the staple-right<3> of New
Netherland was designed to be; another upon the same
River, six-and-thirty Dutch miles [leagues] higher up,
and three leagues below the great Kochoos<4> fall of the
Mohawk River, on the west side of the river, in the colony
of Renselaerswyck, and is called Orange; but about this
river there a been as yet no dispute with any foreigners.
Upon the South River lies Fort Nassau and upon the Fresh
River, the Good Hope. In these four forts there have
been always from the beginning to the present time some
garrisons, although they are all now in a very bad
condition, not only in themselves but also as regards
garrisons.

<1> 1621.