As to the time of sailing, the sooner we start the better; for, although trade does not begin till spring, by being on the spot in season, we can get on friendly terms with the savages, and induce them to collect as many furs as possible during the winter, and may hope to buy 4,500 or 6,000 beaver skins, thus acquiring a large capital from so small a commencement, and the ability to undertake more hereafter.
The Crown of Sweden might favor the beginners of this new enterprise with a charter, prohibiting all other persons from sailing from Sweden within the limits of Terra Nova and Florida for the space of twenty years, on pain of confiscation of ship and cargo. And as it often happens that French or Portuguese vessels are met with on the ocean, authority should likewise be granted to capture such ships, and bring them as lawful prizes to Sweden. Also, it should be conceded that all goods of the Company for the first ten years be free of duty both coming in and going out.
And, as the said land is suited for growing tobacco and various kinds of grain, it would be well to take along proper persons to cultivate these, who might at the same time be employed as garrison.
In addition, the advantages to be derived from the enterprise in course of time by the Crown of Sweden could be indicated orally by me, if I were called to Sweden to give a more detailed account of everything. However, that shall be as the gentlemen of the Government see fit.
This is designed briefly to serve your Excellency as a memorandum. I trust your Excellency will write an early answer from Sweden to my known friend [Blommaert?], whether the work will be undertaken, so that no time be lost, and others anticipate an enterprise which should bring so great profit to the Crown of Sweden.
Herewith wishing your Excellency bon voyage,
I remain
Your Excellency’s faithful servant,
Pieter Minuit.
Amsterdam, June 15, 1636.
[913] Compare documents printed by Sprinchorn with an examination of Mr. Lamberton by Governor Printz, at Fort Christina, July 10, 1643, in the Royal Archives at Stockholm. Acrelius, misinterpreting a statement in Lewis Evans’s Analysis of a General Map of the Middle British Colonies in America (Philadelphia, 1755), bounds New Sweden on the west by the Susquehanna River.
[914] A portrait of Queen Christina is owned by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
[915] Either this expedition or the preceding one under Minuit was accompanied by the Rev. Reorus Torkillus, a Swedish Lutheran clergyman, of Öster-Götland. Ten other companions of Minuit or Hollender are mentioned in a foot-note to the writer’s translation of Professor Odhner’s “Kolonien Nya Sveriges Grundläggning,” in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History, iii. 402, among whom Anders Svenson Bonde, Anders Larsson Daalbo, Peter Gunnarson Rambo, and Sven Gunnarson are the best known in the subsequent history of the colony.