he leader of this Swedish expedition, always stands first
on the published lists of their governors.

On their arrival in the river in the spring of 1638, the Swedes found no
evidences of permanent Dutch colonization. Neither Fort Oplandt nor
Fort Nassau was then occupied. They always maintained that the Dutch had
abandoned the river, and that it was therefore open to the Swedes for
occupation, especially after they had purchased the Indian title. It was
certainly true that the Dutch efforts to plant colonies in that region
had failed; and since the last attempt by De Vries, six years had
elapsed. On the other hand, the Dutch contended that they had in that
time put Fort Nassau in repair, although they had not occupied it, and
that they kept a few persons living along the Jersey shore of the river,
possibly the remains of the Nassau colony, to watch all who visited it.
These people had immediately notified the Dutch governor Kieft at New
Amsterdam of the arrival of the Swedes, and he promptly issued a protest
against the intrusion. But his protest was neither very strenuous nor
was it followed up by hostile action, for Sweden and Holland were on
friendly terms. Sweden, the great champion of Protestant Europe, had
intervened in the Thirty Years' War to save the Protestants of Germany.
The Dutch had just finished a similar desperate war of eighty years
for freedom from the papal despotism of Spain. Dutch and Swedes had,
therefore, every reason to be in sympathy with each other. The Swedes,
a plain, strong, industrious people, as William Penn aptly called them,
were soon, however, seriously interfering with the Dutch fur trade and
in the first year, it is said, collected thirty thousand skins. If
this is true, it is an indication of the immense supply of furbearing
animals, especially beaver, available at that time. For the next
twenty-five years Dutch and Swedes quarreled and sometimes fought over
their respective claims. But it is significant of the difficulty of
retaining a hold on the Delaware region that the Swedish colonists on
the Christina after a year or two regarded themselves as a failure
and were on the point of abandoning their enterprise, when a vessel,
fortunately for them, arrived with cattle, agricultural tools, and
immigrants. It is significant also that the immigrants, though in a
Swedish vessel and under the Swedish government, were Dutchmen. They
formed a sort of separate Dutch colony under Swedish rule