truth, holds up this record of the curse which boasted civilization carries with it as continually as its own shadow: "Since the Europeans came into these parts, they are grown great lovers of strong liquors, rum especially, and for it exchange the richest of their skins and furs. If they are heated with liquors, they are restless till they have enough to sleep; that is their cry, 'Some more, and I will go to sleep;' but, when drunk, one of the most wretched spectacles in the world."
In 1609, Captain Henry Hudson, then in the service of the Dutch East India Company, touched near Cape May, at the mouth of Delaware Bay, but, finding shoal water, put to sea, and soon afterward sailed through the Narrows into New York Bay. The Dutch established a trading-post on Manhattan Island, now New York. The establishment increased, and in 1621 the Dutch West India Company was formed. In 1623, this company took formal possession of the country discovered by Hudson, including the Delaware, or South River, as they called it, in contradistinction to the North River, now the Hudson. The foundation of New Amsterdam was laid, and Captain Jacobus May was sent to take possession and colonize in the most southern part of New Jersey. He gave Cape May the name it still bears. Near where Gloucester, in New Jersey, now stands, he built Fort Nassau. This was the first white settlement on the shores of the Delaware, but it was not permanent. In 1631, Captain David Pieterson de Vries entered the Delaware River with two ships and about thirty colonists. He was associated with Godyn, Bloemart, and Van Rensselaer, wealthy Dutch patroons, establishing a permanent settlement on the Delaware for the purpose of cultivating tobacco and grain, and prosecuting the whale and seal fishing. He built Fort Oplandt, near Lewiston, Delaware. DeVries returned to Holland, and when he came back, in 1632, his colony was destroyed. The arms of Holland, emblazoned on a piece of tin, had been raised upon a pole. An Indian stole the metal to make a tobacco-box of it. Osset, the commander, quarreled with the Indians, and the latter fell upon the colonists, while at work in the fields, and butchered every one of them. De Vries made peace with the tribe, but, finding Fort Nassau deserted, and the whole settlement a desolation, he left the bay forever; for, before the Dutch could re-establish their power, the patent granted to Lord Baltimore, proprietor of Maryland, gave them an English competitor for the lower portions of the territory on the west side of the Delaware.
The discoveries of the Dutch in the New World soon attracted the attention of the enlightened Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden. He conceived a scheme for planting a Swedish colony in America, an idea suggested and heartily seconded by William Usselinx, a wealthy and enterprising Netherlander. A commercial company was formed; the stock was open to all Europe, and Gustavus pledged four hundred thousand dollars to the enterprise. Slavery was repudiated as a disadvantage to the proposed colony. "Slaves," they said, "cost a great deal, labor with reluctance, and soon perish from hard usage. The Swedish nation is laborious and intelligent, and surely we shall gain more by a free people with wives and children." America seemed to them a paradise, and Gustavus suggested that the proposed colony might prove an advantage to all oppressed and persecuted Christians. At that moment Germany, and indeed Protestant Christendom, was menaced with a total subversion of the principles of the Reformation; and against the increasing power of the pope—a power composed of religious influence and imperial soldiers—Gustavus took the field. All other considerations were, for the moment, absorbed by this one movement; and yet the idea of planting a free colony in the New World held a conspicuous place in the mind of the Swedish monarch. At Nuremberg, only a few days before the battle of Lützen, where he lost his life, he recommended the great scheme, "the jewel of his kingdom," to the Germans. His views were warmly seconded by Oxenstiern, the eminent statesman, who controlled the political affairs of Sweden during the minority of Queen Christina.
In 1638, a colony of Swedes from Gottenburg, under the command of Peter Minuits, a former governor of New Amsterdam, arrived in the Delaware, and landed at Cape Henlo-
* See page 391, vol. i.
Extension of Swedish Settlements.—Opposition of the Dutch.—Stuyvesant's Conquests.
pen. Charmed with the beauty of the place, they called it Paradise. They approached the Indians with kindness, and purchased from them their lands upon the Delaware from Cape Henlopen to the falls at Trenton, and named the region New Sweden. They built a church and fort on the Minquaas, or Mingoes (now Christiana) Creek, where Wilmington now stands, and there laid out a town. The Dutch claimed a title to all this region by virtue of prior discovery and settlement, and Governor Keift protested against this intrusion. Other emigrants came; some from Maryland, who settled near the Schuylkill, and others from New Haven, who established themselves on the Jersey shore. These Keift promptly expelled, but did not disturb the Swedes.
John Printz succeeded Minuits as governor in 1643. With him came John Campanius, from Stockholm, as chaplain for the colony. They came in the ship Fame, accompanied by two war vessels, the Swan and the Chantas. Governor Printz selected Tinicum Island, * at the mouth of Darby Creek, for a residence. There he built a strong fort of hemlock logs, and a church, and beautified the neighborhood with orchards and pleasure-grounds. Quite a village of fine houses, for the times, sprung up, and New Gottenburg, as it was called, was for some years the metropolis of New Sweden. Emigrants continued to arrive in considerable numbers from Old Sweden, and they scattered neat dwellings and cultivated acres all along the Delaware, from the present Wilmington to Philadelphia.
In 1651, the Dutch determined to maintain their power on the Delaware, and erected Fort Kasimer, on the south of Minquaas Creek, now the site of New Castle, in Delaware. Printz protested, and also built Fort Elsinberg on the Jersey shore, near the mouth of Salem Creek. The garrison was soon put to flight by a foe more numerous and annoying than Indians or Dutch, and the place was significantly named Mosquitoesburg.
John Claudius Rising, or Risingh, succeeded Printz in 1652. Risingh was more belligerent than his predecessor, and captured Fort Kasimer, either by storm or stratagem, in 1654, hoisted the Swedish flag over it, and called it Fort Trinity. Sven Schute, a bold Swedish warrior, was appointed to the command of its garrison. This act excited the ire of the Dutch at New Amsterdam, and in 1655 Governor Stuyvesant, with seven ships, and six or seven hundred men, went up the Delaware, took all the Swedish forts, and desolated New Gottenburg, on Tinicum Island. The Swedes obtained honorable terms of capitulation, and the settlers prospered under the Dutch rule. The Indians remained the firm friends of the Swedes; and when the Dutch attempted to prevent a Swedish ship with emigrants from passing up the Delaware in 1656, the natives interfered, and the Mercurius sailed up unmolested. The Dutch and Swedes continued to occupy the Delaware in common for nine years, the former possessing the political authority. In 1664, Charles the Second, of England, having granted a charter to his brother James, the Duke of York, for the whole of the New Netherlands, including the Dutch and Swedish settlements on the Delaware, the English conquered the whole country, and changed the name of New Amsterdam to New York. Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret obtained a grant of the province of New Jersey from the Duke of York in 1665. The latter was appointed governor, and Bergen and other portions of East Jersey began to be settled. That province was divided into East and West Jersey in 1676. 'Lord Berkeley transferred his half of West Jersey, in 1677, to John Fenwick, in trust for Edward Billinge, both of them Quakers. Becoming embarrassed, Billinge transferred his interest to trustees, for the benefit of his creditors. William Penn was one of those trustees, and thus he became interested in the settlements in the New World. Between 1676 and 1680, the eastern shore of the Delaware, from Burlington to Salem, became quite populous with Quakers, who came chiefly from Yorkshire in England.