memory, chartered the Virginia Companies upon condition
that they should remain an hundred miles from each other,
according to our reckoning.<1> They are willing to avail
themselves of this grant, but by no means to comply with
the terms stipulated in it.

<1> The hundred miles of the Virginia patent of 1606 were
English miles.

All the islands, bays, havens, rivers, kills and places,
even to a great distance on the other side of New Holland
or Cape Cod, have Dutch names, which our Dutch ship-masters
and traders gave to them.<1> These were the first to
discover and to trade to them, even before they had names,
as the English themselves well know; but as long as they
can manage it and matters go as they please, they are
willing not to know it. And those of them who are at the
Fresh River have desired to enter into an agreement and to
make a yearly acknowledgement or an absolute purchase,
which indeed is proof positive that our right was well
known to them, and that they themselves had nothing against
it in conscience, although they now, from time to time,
have invented and pretended many things in order to screen
themselves, or thereby to cause at least delay.

<1> An exaggeration, yet the number of such names is
considerable, as may be seen by consulting the appendix to
Asher's _Bibliography of New Netherland_.

Moreover the people of Rhode Island, when they were at