of New Amsterdam, however, in 1655.

[Sidenote: European possessions in America.]

Thus, in a period of a little less than half a century, the whole of the
American coast had been acquired by, and was to a large degree under
the dominion of, five European nations. In 1655 the Spaniards held the
peninsula of Florida; the French were in possession of, or at least
claimed the right to, what are now the two Carolinas; the Dutch held
Manhattan Island, New Jersey, a narrow strip running along the west bank
of the Hudson, and a portion of Long Island; the Swedes were established
(soon to be deprived of it) in what is now Delaware, and a part of
what is now Pennsylvania, along the Delaware River; while the English
possessions far exceeded those of all the others put together, including
as they did nearly the whole of Virginia, a large share of Maryland, all
of New England, and the greater part of Long Island.

[Sidenote: William Penn.]

In the year 1681 all the Dutch possessions had been added to the
dominion of the English in America; and it was in this year that William
Penn, having received a grant of a large tract of land in what is now
Pennsylvania, sent out a colony, which settled on his grant. The next
year he came in person, assumed the governorship of the colony, founded
Philadelphia, and made his famous treaties with the Indians. At the
close of the seventeenth century the English dominion comprised the
whole coast, from Canada to the Carolinas; and it may be fairly said
that when the eighteenth century opened, the era of colonization
had reached its culmination, English civilization was indelibly stamped
on, and firmly planted in, the new continent. The crystallizing process