[
2]
love of country.
Danger from
England also was
diminished, for Charles the First, soon after his accession, entered into a most intimate alliance with the
Dutch.
Just then
Jean de Laet, a member of the chamber of
Amsterdam, in an elaborate work on the
West Indies, opportunely drew the attention of his countrymen to their rising colony, and published
Hudson's own glowing description of the land.
Under such auspices
Peter Minuit, of
Wesel, in
Jan-
uary, 1626, sailed for New Netherland as its director general.
He arrived there on the fourth of May.
Hitherto the
Dutch had no title to ownership of the land;
Minuit succeeded at once in purchasing the island of
Manhattan from its native proprietors.
The
price paid was sixty guilders, about twenty-four dollars for more than twenty thousand acres. The southern point was selected for ‘a battery,’ and lines were drawn for a fort, which took the name of New Amsterdam.
The town had already thirty houses, and the emigrants' wives had borne them children.
In the want of a regular minister, two ‘consolers of the sick’ read to the people on Sundays ‘texts out of the scriptures, together with the creeds.’
No danger appeared in the distance except from the pretensions of
England.
The government of
Manhattan wisely sought an interchange of ‘friendly kindness and neighborhood’ with the nearest
English at New Plymouth, and by a public letter in March, 1627, it formally claimed mutual ‘good — will and ser-
vice,’ pleading ‘the nearness of their native countries, the friendship of their forefathers, and the new covenant between the States-General and
England against the Spaniards.’
Bradford, in reply, gladly accepted the ‘testimony of love.’
‘Our children after us,’ he added, “shall never forget the good and courteous ”
