In 1613 Adrian Block came with a few comrades and
remained the winter. In 1614 the merchants of North Holland organized
a company and obtained from the States General a charter to trade in
the New Netherlands, and soon after a colony built a few houses and
a fort near the Battery. The entire island was purchased from the
Indians in 1624 for the sum of sixty guilders or about twenty-four
dollars. A fort was built at Albany in 1623 and known as Fort Aurania
or Fort Orange. From Wassenaer's "Historie van Europa," 1621-1632, as
translated in the 3d volume of the Documentary History of New York, a
castle--Fort Nassau--was built in 1624, on an island on the north side
of the River Montagne, now called Mauritius. "But as the natives there
were somewhat discontented, and not easily managed, the projectors
abandoned it, intending now to plant a colony among the Maikans
(Mahicans), a nation lying twenty-five miles (American measure
seventy-five miles) on both sides of the river, upwards." In another
document we learn that "The West India Company being chartered, a
vessel of 130 lasts, called the 'New Netherland' (whereof Cornelius
Jacobs, of Hoorn, was skipper), with thirty families, mostly Walloons,
was equipped in the spring of 1623."

* * *

Where Manhattan reigned of old
Long before the age of gold
In the fair encircled isle
Formed for beauty's warmest smile.

_William Crow_

* * *

In the beginning of May they entered the Hudson, found a "Frenchman"
lying in the mouth of the river, who would erect the arms of the King
of France there, but the Hollanders would not permit him, opposing it
by commission from the Lord's States General and the Directors of the
West India Company, and "in order not to be frustrated therein, they
convoyed the Frenchman out of the rivers." This having been done, they
sailed up the Maikans, 140 miles, near which they built and completed
a fort, named "Orange," with four bastions, on an island, by them
called "Castle Island." This was probably the island below Castleton,
now known as Baern Island, where the first white child was born on the
Hudson.

In another volume we read that "a colony was planted in 1625 on
the Manhetes Island, where a fort was staked out by Master Kryn
Fredericke, an engineer. The counting-house is kept in a stone
building thatched with reed; the other houses are of the bark of
trees. There are thirty ordinary houses on the east side of the rive