FROM CAMPANIUS, 1702.
A water-way which made an island of greater or less extent of the peninsula which lies between the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic, appeared first in 1600 on the Molineaux map, and was repeated by Dudley in 1647; but on other maps the water-sheds were separated by a narrow tract. So much uncertainty attended this feature that the short portage of the prevailing notion was far from constant in its position, and on some maps seems repeated in more than one place,—taking now the appearance of a connection on the line of the St. Croix, or some other river of New Brunswick; now on that of the Kennebec and Chaudière; again as if having some connection with Lake Champlain, when a misconception of its true position placed that expanse of water between the Connecticut and the Saco; and once more on the line of the Hudson and Lake George.
CHAPTER VIII.
NEW NETHERLAND, OR THE DUTCH IN NORTH AMERICA
BY BERTHOLD FERNOW,
Keeper of the Historical Records, State of New York.
SAYS Carlyle: “Those Dutch are a strong people. They raised their land out of a marsh, and went on for a long period of time breeding cows and making cheese, and might have gone on with their cows and cheese till doomsday. But Spain comes over and says, ‘We want you to believe in St. Ignatius.’ ‘Very sorry,’ replied the Dutch, ‘but we can’t.’ ‘God! but you must,’ says Spain; and they went about with guns and swords to make the Dutch believe in St. Ignatius. Never made them believe in him, but did succeed in breaking their own vertebral column forever, and raising the Dutch into a great nation.”
A nation’s struggle for religious liberty comes upon every individual member of that nation as a personal matter, as a battle to be fought with himself and with the world. Hence we see the Dutch, encouraged by the large influx of Belgians whom the same unwillingness to believe in St. Ignatius had driven out of their homes, emerge from the conflict with Spain, individually and as a nation, more self-reliant, sturdy, and independent than ever before.