eginning to face the
gates and bastions with stone. Within the fort there was a pretty large
stone church,(1) the house of the Governor, whom they called Director
General, quite neatly built of brick, the storehouses and barracks.

(1) See De Vries, p. 212, supra, and the _Representation of
New Netherland_.

On the island of Manhate, and in its environs, there may well be four
or five hundred men of different sects and nations: the Director General
told me that there were men of eighteen different languages; they are
scattered here and there on the river, above and below, as the beauty
and convenience of the spot invited each to settle: some mechanics
however, who ply their trade, are ranged under the fort; all the others
were exposed to the incursions of the natives, who in the year 1643,
while I was there, actually killed some two score Hollanders, and burnt
many houses and barns full of wheat.

The river, which is very straight, and runs due north and south, is at
least a league broad before the fort. Ships lie at anchor in a bay which
forms the other side of the island, and can be defended by the fort.

Shortly before I arrived there, three large ships of 300 tons each had
come to load wheat; two found cargoes, the third could not be loaded,
because the savages had burnt a part of the grain. These ships had come
from the West Indies, where the West India Company usually keeps up
seventeen ships of war.

No religion is publicly exercised but the Calvinist, and orders are to
admit none but Calvinists, but this is not observed; for besides
the Calvinists there are in the colony Catholics, English Puritans,
Lutherans, Anabaptists, here called Mnistes,(1) etc.

(1) Mennonistes, Mennonites.

When any one comes to settle in the country, they lend him horses, cows,
etc.; they give him provisions, all which he returns as soon as he is at
ease; and as to the land, after ten years he pays in to the West India
Company the tenth of the produce which he reaps.

This country is bounded on the New England side by a river they call
the Fresche River,(1) which serves as a boundary between them and the
English. The English, however, come very near to them, choosing to hold
lands under the Hollanders, who ask nothing, rather than depend on the
English Milords, who exact rents, and would fain be absolute. On the
other side, southward, towards Virginia, its limits are the river which
they call the South River, on