ommand all the rivers, naming it Kyk-over-al.
To-day the name and a strong archway of flat Holland bricks survive.

In this wilderness, so wild and so quiet to-day, it was amazing to
think of Dutch soldiers doing sentry duty and practising with their
little bell-mouthed cannon on the islet, and of scores of negro and
Indian slaves working in cassava fields all about where I sat. And
this not fifty or a hundred or two hundred years ago, but about the
year 1613, before John Smith had named New England, while the Hudson
was still known as the Maurice, before the Mayflower landed with all
our ancestors on board. For many years the story of this settlement
and of the handful of neighboring sugar-plantations is one of
privateer raids, capture, torture, slave-revolts, disease, bad
government, and small profits, until we marvel at the perseverance of
these sturdy Hollanders. From the records still extant, we glean here
and there amusing details of the life which was so soon to falter and
perish before the onpressing jungle. Exactly two hundred and fifty
years ago one Hendrik Rol was appointed commander of Kyk-over-al. He
was governor, captain, store-keeper and Indian trader, and his salary
was thirty guilders, or about twelve dollars, a month--about what I
paid my cook-boy.

The high tide of development at Kartabo came two hundred and three
years ago, when, as we read in the old records, a Colony House was
erected here. It went by the name of Huis Naby (the house nearby),
from its situation near the fort. Kyk-over-al was now left to the
garrison, while the commander and the civil servants lived in the new
building. One of its rooms was used as a council chamber and church,
while the lower floor was occupied by the company's store. The land in
the neighborhood was laid out in building lots, with a view to
establishing a town; it even went by the name of Stad Cartabo and had
a tavern and two or three small houses, but never contained enough
dwellings to entitle it to the name of town, or even village.

The ebb-tide soon began, and in 1739 Kartabo was deserted, and thirty
years before the United States became a nation, the old fort on
Kyk-over-al was demolished. The rivers and rolling jungle were
attractive, but the soil was poor, while the noisome mud-swamps of the
coast proved to be fertile and profitable.

Some fatality seemed to attach to all future attempts in this region.
Gold was discovered, and diamonds, and to-day the