Part 2 (2/2)

=The First Settlement of the Hudson.=--In 1610 a Dutch s.h.i.+p visited Manhattan to trade with the Indians and was soon followed by others on like enterprise. In 1613 Adrian Block came with a few comrades and remained the winter. In 1614 the merchants of North Holland organized a company and obtained from the States General a charter to trade in the New Netherlands, and soon after a colony built a few houses and a fort near the Battery. The entire island was purchased from the Indians in 1624 for the sum of sixty guilders or about twenty-four dollars. A fort was built at Albany in 1623 and known as Fort Aurania or Fort Orange. From Wa.s.senaer's ”Historie van Europa,” 1621-1632, as translated in the 3d volume of the Doc.u.mentary History of New York, a castle--Fort Na.s.sau--was built in 1624, on an island on the north side of the River Montagne, now called Mauritius. ”But as the natives there were somewhat discontented, and not easily managed, the projectors abandoned it, intending now to plant a colony among the Maikans (Mahicans), a nation lying twenty-five miles (American measure seventy-five miles) on both sides of the river, upwards.” In another doc.u.ment we learn that ”The West India Company being chartered, a vessel of 130 lasts, called the 'New Netherland' (whereof Cornelius Jacobs, of Hoorn, was skipper), with thirty families, mostly Walloons, was equipped in the spring of 1623.”

Where Manhattan reigned of old Long before the age of gold In the fair encircled isle Formed for beauty's warmest smile.

_William Crow_

In the beginning of May they entered the Hudson, found a ”Frenchman”

lying in the mouth of the river, who would erect the arms of the King of France there, but the Hollanders would not permit him, opposing it by commission from the Lord's States General and the Directors of the West India Company, and ”in order not to be frustrated therein, they convoyed the Frenchman out of the rivers.” This having been done, they sailed up the Maikans, 140 miles, near which they built and completed a fort, named ”Orange,” with four bastions, on an island, by them called ”Castle Island.” This was probably the island below Castleton, now known as Baern Island, where the first white child was born on the Hudson.

In another volume we read that ”a colony was planted in 1625 on the Manhetes Island, where a fort was staked out by Master Kryn Fredericke, an engineer. The counting-house is kept in a stone building thatched with reed; the other houses are of the bark of trees. There are thirty ordinary houses on the east side of the river, which runs nearly north and south.” This is the description of New York City when Charles the First was King.

Behold the natural advantages of our State; the situation of our princ.i.p.al seaport; the facility that the Sound affords for an intercourse with the East, and the n.o.ble Hudson which bears upon its bosom the wealth of the remotest part of the State.

_Robert R. Livingston._

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLOFFE VAN KORTLANDT'S DREAM.]

Moreover, we should not forget that Communipaw outranks New York in antiquity, and, according to Knickerbocker, whose quiet humor is always read and re-read with pleasure, might justly be considered the Mother Colony. For lo! the sage Oloffe Van Kortlandt dreamed a dream, and the good St. Nicholas came riding over the tops of the trees, and descended upon the island of Manhattan and sat himself down and smoked, ”and the smoke ascended in the sky, and formed a cloud overhead; and Oloffe bethought him, and he hastened and climbed up to the top of one of the tallest trees, and saw that the smoke spread over a great extent of country; and, as he considered it more attentively, he fancied that the great volume a.s.sumed a variety of marvelous forms, where, in dim obscurity, he saw shadowed out palaces and domes and lofty spires, all of which lasted but a moment, and then pa.s.sed away.” So New York, like Alba Longa and Rome, and other cities of antiquity, was under the immediate care of its tutelar saint. Its destiny was foreshadowed, for now the palaces and domes and lofty spires are real and genuine, and something more than dreams are made of.

Below the cliffs Manhattan's spires Glint back the sunset's latest beam; The bay is flecked with twinkling fires; Or is it but ”Van Kortlandt's dream?”

_Wallace Bruce_

=The Original Manors and Patents.=--According to a map of the Province of New York, published in 1779, the Phillipsburg Patent embraced a large part of Westchester County. North of this was the Manor of Cortland, reaching from Tarrytown to Anthony's Nose. Above this was the Phillipse Patent, reaching to the mouth of Fishkill Creek, embracing Putnam County. Between Fishkill Creek and the Wappingers Creek was the Rombout Patent. The Schuyler Patent embraced a few square miles in the vicinity of Poughkeepsie. Above this was the purchase of Falconer & Company, and east of this tract what was known as the Great Nine Partners. Above the Falconer Purchase was the Henry Beekman Patent, reaching to Esopus Island, and east of this the Little Nine Partners. Above the Beekman Patent was the Schuyler Patent. Then the Manor of Livingston, reaching from Rhinebeck to Catskill Station, opposite Catskill. Above this Rensselaerwick, reaching north to a point opposite Coeymans. The Manor of Rensselaer extended on both sides of the river to a line running nearly east and west, just above Troy. North and west of this Manor was the County of Albany, since divided into Rensselaer, Saratoga, Was.h.i.+ngton, Schoharie, Greene and Albany. The Rensselaer Manor was the only one that reached across the river. The west bank of the Hudson, below the Rensselaer Manor, is simply indicated on this map of 1779 as Ulster and Orange Counties.

=New Amsterdam.=--For about fifty years after the Dutch Settlement the island of Manhattan was known as New Amsterdam. Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, in his Knickerbocker History, has surrounded it with a loving halo and thereby given to the early records of New York the most picturesque background of any State in the Union.

The city bright below, and far away Sparkling in golden light his own romantic Bay.

_Fitz-Greene Halleck._

Among other playful allusions to the Indian names he takes the word Manna-hatta of Robert Juet to mean ”the island of manna,” or in other words a land flowing with milk and honey. He refers humorously to the Yankees as ”an ingenious people who out-bargain them in the market, out-speculate them on the exchange, out-top them in fortune, and run up mushroom palaces so high that the tallest Dutch family mansion has not wind enough left for its weather-c.o.c.k.”

What would the old burgomaster think now of the mounting palaces of trade, stately apartments, and the piled up stories of commercial buildings? In fact the highest structure Was.h.i.+ngton Irving ever saw in New York was a nine-story sugar refinery. With elevators running two hundred feet a minute, there seems no limit to these modern mammoths.

=The Dutch and the English.=--From the very beginning there was a quiet jealousy between the Dutch Settlement on the Hudson and the English Settlers in Ma.s.sachusetts. To quote from an old English history, ”it was the original purpose of the Pilgrims to locate near Nova Scotia, but, upon better consideration, they decided to seat themselves more to the southward on the bank of Hudson's River which falls into the sea at New York.”

To this end ”they contracted with some merchants who were willing to be adventurers with them in their intended settlement and were proprietors of the country, but the contract bore too heavy upon them, and made them the more easy in their disappointment. Their agents in England hired the Mayflower, and, after a stormy voyage, 'fell in with Cape Cod on the 9th of November. Here they refreshed themselves about half a day and then tacked about to the southward for Hudson's River.'

”Encountering a storm they became entangled in dangerous shoals and breakers and were driven back again to the Cape.” Thus Plymouth became the first English settlement of New England. Another historian says that it was their purpose ”to settle on the Connecticut Coast near Fairfield County, lying between the Connecticut and Hudson's River.”

Before his sight Flowed the fair river free and bright, The rising mist and Isles of Bay, Before him in their glory lay.

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