There were strings of beads such as young Dutch girls wear around their necks; short lengths of bright red, or blue, or yellow cloth of wool; ornaments for the ears, made of Dutch brass, and fashioned so rudely that none save the poorest in the land would covet them; belts of gaudily colored leather, and small axes and knives formed of iron so badly worked that but little rough usage would serve to turn the edges.
I cannot well name all the useless trinkets which I handled that day, working as deftly as I might, to the end that my new master should lay no blame upon me for clumsiness; but all the goods were of so little value that, poor though I was, there came into my heart no desire to possess them.
As I worked, and while the other two servants were busily engaged making into packages the belongings of my master, that they might the more readily be carried on shore, I could not fail of hearing, even though making no effort to play the part of eavesdropper, the conversation which was going on between Master Minuit and those Dutch gentlemen who had come out with him to build up this new land.
CLAIM OF THE WEST INDIA COMPANY
And what I thus heard, without being minded to play the listener, was that among the orders given by the West India Company, was one to the effect that before Master Minuit should do anything toward taking upon himself the governing of the country, the land of Manhattan Island was to be bought of the brown men, and these useless trinkets were to serve in the stead of purchase money.
To the better understanding of this order, let me go back in the tale to where I have said that the West India Company claimed to own the land which was called New Netherland. Their reasons for making such claim were that the Dutch government had, many years before, sent out the ship _Half Moon_, commanded by an Englishman named Henry Hudson, who believed himself to be the first white man that ever saw these rivers; and afterward that famous Dutch seaman, Adrian Block, had followed Master Hudson, stopping at this same island of Manhattan. Therefore it was, because of their vessels being supposed to have come to this place first, that the people of Holland claimed the land as their own.
As I came to know later, however, a certain sailor from Florence had been sent to America by the French king, near ninety years before Master Hudson's coming, and, on landing nearabout where we then were, claimed all the country in the name of France.