urchase immediately from the Indians
the tract of land between Cape Henlopen and Bombay Hook. This
contained a frontage on Delaware bay of about seventy miles.

"You will perceive," they wrote,

"that speed is required, if for nothing else, that we may
prevent other nations, and principally our English
neighbors, as we really apprehend that this identical spot
has attracted their notice. When we reflect upon the
insufferable proceedings of that nation not only by
intruding themselves upon our possessions about the North,
to which our title is indisputable, and when we consider the
bold arrogance and faithlessness of those who are residing
within our jurisdiction, we cannot expect any good from that
quarter."

In the autumn of this year a very momentous event occurred. Though it
was but the death of a single individual, that individual was Oliver
Cromwell. Under his powerful sway England had risen to a position of
dignity and power such as the nation had never before attained. A
terrible storm swept earth and sky during the night in which his
tempestuous earthly life came to a close. The roar of the hurricane
appalled all minds, as amid floods of rain trees were torn up by the
roots, and houses were unroofed. The friends of the renowned Protector
said that nature was weeping and mourning in her loudest accents over
the great loss humanity was experiencing in the death of its most
illustrious benefactor. The enemies of Cromwell affirmed that the
Prince of the Power of the Air had come with all his shrieking demons,
to seize the soul of the dying and bear it to its merited doom.

Scarce six months passed away ere the reins of government fell from
the feeble hands of Richard, the eldest son and heir of Oliver
Cromwell, and Monk marched across the Tweed and paved the way for the
restoration of Charles the Second.

To add to the alarm of the Dutch, Massachusetts, taking the ground
that the boundary established by the treaty of Hartford, extended only
"so far as New Haven had jurisdiction," claimed by virtue of royal
grant all of the land north of the forty-second degree of latitude to
the Merrimac river, and extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific
ocean. The forty-second parallel of latitude crossed the Hudson near
Red Hook and Saugerties. This boundary line transferred the whole of
the upper Hudson and at least four-fifths of the State of New York to
Massachusetts.