were about three thousand old settlers--Swedes,
Dutch, Huguenots, Germans and English--enough to form the material for
the solid foundation of a State.

There Penn received from the agent of the Duke of York, and in the
presence of all the people, a formal surrender of all that fine domain.
The Dutch had long before conquered and absorbed the Swedes on the
Delaware, and the English in turn had conquered the Dutch, and it was by
virtue of his charter, giving him a title to all New Netherland, that
the duke claimed the territory as his own. The transfer inherited for
Penn and his descendants a dispute with the proprietors of Maryland,
which might seem incompatible with the views of Quakers. William Penn,
in honor of the duke, attempted to change the name of Cape Henlopen to
Cape James; but geography is sometimes arbitrary and refuses to change
at will of rulers, and Henlopen and May preserve their original names
given them by the Dutch.

It was the earliest days in November when William Penn, with a few
friends, set out in an open boat and journeyed up the river to the
beautiful bank, fringed with pine trees, on which the city of
Philadelphia was soon to rise.

On this occasion was made that famous treaty with the Indians, with
which every school-boy is acquainted. Beneath a huge elm at Shakamaxon,
on the northern edge of Philadelphia, William Penn, surrounded by a few
friends, in the habiliments of peace, met the numerous delegations of
the Lenni-Lenape tribes. The great treaty was not for the purchase of
lands; but, confirming what Penn had written and Markham covenanted, its
sublime purpose was the recognition of the equal rights of humanity,
under the shelter of the forest trees, barren of leaves from the effects
of the early frosts. Penn proclaimed to the men of the Algonkin race,
from both banks of the Delaware, from the borders of the Schuylkill,
and, it may have been, even from the Susquehannah, the same simple
message of peace and love which George Fox had professed before
Cromwell, and which Mary Fisher had borne to the Grand Turk. He argued
that the English and the Indian should respect the same moral law,
should be alike secure in their pursuits and their possessions, and
should adjust every difference by a peaceful tribunal, to be composed of
an equal number of wise and discreet men from each race. Penn said:

"We meet on the broad pathway of good faith and good-will. No advantage
will be taken on either