he country along the Mohawk river
had been explored for a considerable distance, there were no
settlements there, though one or two huts had been reared in the
vicinity of the Cohoes Falls. This whole region had abounded with
beavers and wild deer. But the fur trade had been pushed with so much
vigor that the country was now almost entirely destitute of peltries.
The colonists wished to purchase the fertile lands in the valley of
the Mohawk, and the Indians manifested a willingness to sell them.

CHAPTER XI.

THE DISASTROUS YEAR.

Purchase of Staten Island.--The Restoration cf Charles
Second.--Emigration Invited.--Settlement of Bushwick.--The
Peculiar People.--Persecution of John Brown.--The Governor
Rebuked.--Cumulation of Disasters.--The Outbreak at
Esopus.--The Panic.--Measures of the Governor.--The Indian
Fort.--The expedition to Mamaket.--Capture of the
Fort.--Annihilation of the Esopus Indians.

In the year 1661, the Company purchased of Melyn, the patroon, for
about five hundred dollars, all his rights to lands on Staten Island.
Thus the whole island became the property of the Company. Grants of
lands were immediately issued to individuals. The Waldenses, and the
Huguenots from Rochelle in France, were invited to settle upon the
island. A block-house was built which was armed with two cannon and
garrisoned by ten soldiers. Fourteen families were soon gathered in a
little settlement south of the Narrows.

Upon the restoration of Charles the Second, in England, the Royalists
and churchmen insisted upon the restoration of the hierarchy. The
Restoration was far from being the unanimous act of the nation. The
republicans and dissenters, disappointed and persecuted, were disposed
in ever increasing numbers, to take refuge in the New World. The West
India Company of Holland being in possession of a vast territory,
between the Hudson and the Delaware, which was quite uninhabited, save
by a few tribes of Indians, availed themselves of this opportunity to
endeavor to draw emigrants from all parts of Europe, and especially
from England, to form settlements upon their lands.

They issued proclamations inviting settlers and offering them large
inducements. The country, which embraced mainly what is now New
Jersey, was described in glowing terms as if it were a second Eden.
And yet there was no gross exaggeration in the narrative.

"This land," they wrote,

"