ipal towns, and almost the whole of
its territory, come north of latitude 38 deg. and within the middle zone.

[Sidenote: 3. The middle zone.]
Between the years 1614 and 1621 the Dutch founded their colony of New
Netherland upon the territory included between the Hudson and Delaware
rivers, or, as they quite naturally called them, the North and South
rivers. They pushed their outposts up the Hudson as far as the site
of Albany, thus intruding far into the northern zone. In 1638 Sweden
planted a small colony upon the west side of Delaware Bay, but in 1655
it was surrendered to the Dutch. Then in 1664 the English took New
Netherland from the Dutch, and Charles II. granted the province to his
brother, the Duke of York. The duke proceeded to grant part of it to
his friends, Berkeley and Carteret, and thus marked off the new colony
of New Jersey. In 1681 the region west of New Jersey was granted to
William Penn, and in the following year Penn bought from the Duke of
York the small piece of territory upon which the Swedes had planted
their colony. Delaware thus became an appendage to Penn's greater
colony, but was never merged in it. Thus five of the original
thirteen states--Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and
Delaware--were constituted in the middle zone.

As we have already observed, the westward movement of population in
the United States has largely followed the parallels of latitude, and
thus the characteristics of these three original strips or zones have,
with more or less modification, extended westward. The men of New
England, with their Portland and Salem reproduced more than 3000 miles
distant in the state of Oregon, and within 100 miles of the Pacific
Ocean, may be said in a certain sense to have realized literally the
substance of King James's grant to the Plymouth Company. It will be
noticed that the kinds of local government described in our earlier
chapters are characteristic respectively of the three original zones:
the township system being exemplified chiefly in the northern zone,
the county system in the southern zone, and the mixed township-county
system in the central zone.

[Sidenote: House of Burgesses in Virginia.]
The London and Plymouth companies did not perish until after state
governments had been organized in the colonies already founded upon
their territories. In 1619 the colonists of Virginia, with the aid of
the more liberal spirits in the London Company, secured for themselv