and slept upon a parcel of deer skins. We drank very good beer here,
brewed by the Swedes, who, although they have come to America, have
not left behind them their old customs.

[Footnote 197: Jean Baptiste van Helmont (1577-1644), an eminent
Belgian chemist, physiologist, and physician. Of his collected
writings, _Ortus Medicinae_, there were many editions and
translations, and one of the English versions may have been edited
with sympathy by a Quaker, for with much scientific acuteness Van
Helmont combined much mystical philosophy.]

[Footnote 198: Chester, Pennsylvania.]

[Footnote 199: Tacony, Philadelphia County.]

_21st, Tuesday._ The tide falling, we set out with the day, and rowed
during the whole ebb and part of the flood, until two or three
o'clock, when we arrived at the island of Tynakonk,[200] the fifth we
had passed. Matinakonk and this Tinakonk are the principal islands,
and the best and the largest. The others are of little importance, and
some of them, whose names we do not know, are all meadow and marsh,
others are only small bushes. The pleasantest thing about them is,
they afford an agreeable view and a variety to the traveller, and a
little _divertissement_ to those who go up and down the river; also
some conveniences for fishing in the river, and other accommodations
for the planters.

[Footnote 200: Tinicum Island, a few miles below the present site of
Philadelphia (which, it should be remembered, was not founded till
1682). On this island the Swedish governor Johan Printz had in 1643
built his stronghold of Nya Goeteborg, or New Gothenburg, and his
mansion; and here, after his return to Sweden, his daughter Armegot
Printz, wife of his lieutenant and temporary successor Johan Papegoia,
lived from 1654 to 1662, and from 1673 to 1675.]

This Tinakonk is the island of which M. Arnout de La Grange[201] had
said so much; but we were much disappointed in comparing it with what
he had represented, and what M. La Motte has written about it. The
first mistake is in the name, which is not Matinakonk--the name rather
of the island of which we have spoken before--but Tinakonk. It lies on
the west side of the river, and is separated from the west shore, not
as he said, by a wide running branch of the river, as wide as the
Eemster, near Amsterdam, but by a small creek, as wide as a large
ditch, running through a meadow. It is long and covered with bushes,
and inside somewhat marshy. It is about two mile