Reverend,
Pious, and Learned Brethren in Christ, be commend to God for the
perfecting of the saints and the edification of the body of Christ.
Vale.

Your Reverences' humble servant in Christ Jesus,

HENRICUS SELYNS.

Breuckelen, in New Netherland, June 9, 1664.

(1) The boundaries between New England and New Netherland
had always been in dispute. The English population on Long
Island grew, an encroached upon the Dutch towns at the west
end; and the towns in that region which were partly English,
partly Dutch in population were of doubtful allegiance. The
graceless Major John Scott, coming to the island with some
royal authority, formed a combination of Hempstead,
Gravesend, Flushing, Newtown, Jamaica and Oyster Bay, with
himself as president, and then proceeded (January, 1664), at
the head of 170 men, to reduce the neighboring Dutch
villages. Some account of the affair, in the shape in which
it reached the Dutch public, may be seen in the extract
printed at the end of this letter.

[The following account of the English encroachments upon Long Island has
not been previously translated. It may serve as a summary of the events,
or at least of the version of them which came before the Dutch public
soon after. It is derived from the _Hollantze Mercurius_ of 1664
(Haerlem, 1665), being part 15 of the _Mercurius_, which was an
annual of the type of the modern _Annual Register_ or of Wassenaer's
_Historisch Verhael_, which preceded it. The passage is at page 10.

In New Netherland the English made bold to come out of New England upon
various villages and places belonging under the protection of Their High
Mightinesses and the Dutch West India Company even upon Long Island,
setting up the banner of Britain and proclaiming that they knew of no
New Netherland but that that land belonged solely to the English nation.
Finally their wisest conceded, since thus many troubles had arisen about
the boundary, that representatives of both nations should come together
upon that subject. This was carried out in November last. The Dutch
commissioners went to Boston, where they were received by four companies
of citizens and a hundred cavalrymen. There they were told that the
commissioners on the English side could not arrive to treat of the
matter for eight days.(1) Meanwhile the English incited three or four
villages to revolt against their government. But all thos