No religion is publicly exercised but the Calvinist, and orders are to admit none but Calvinists, but this is not observed; for besides the Calvinists there are in the colony Catholics, English Puritans, Lutherans, Anabaptists, here called Mnistes,(1) etc.
(1) Mennonistes, Mennonites.
When any one comes to settle in the country, they lend him horses, cows, etc.; they give him provisions, all which he returns as soon as he is at ease; and as to the land, after ten years he pays in to the West India Company the tenth of the produce which he reaps.
This country is bounded on the New England side by a river they call the Fresche River,(1) which serves as a boundary between them and the English. The English, however, come very near to them, choosing to hold lands under the Hollanders, who ask nothing, rather than depend on the English Milords, who exact rents, and would fain be absolute. On the other side, southward, towards Virginia, its limits are the river which they call the South River, on which there is also a Dutch settlement,(2) but the Swedes have one at its mouth extremely well supplied with cannons and men.(3) It is believed that these Swedes are maintained by some Amsterdam merchants, who are not satisfied that the West India Company should alone enjoy all the commerce of these parts.(4) It is near this river that a gold mine is reported to have been found.
(1) Connecticut.
(2) Fort Nassau, at the mouth of Timber Creek.
(3) He probably means Fort Nya Elfsborg, on the Jersey side
of Delaware Bay, below Salem.
(4) The reference is to aid rendered by Samuel Blommaert, an
Amsterdam merchant, formerly a director of the Dutch West
India Company, in fitting out the first Swedish expedition
in 1637, and in engaging Peter Minuit to command it.
Blommaert's letters to the Swedish chancellor, Count Axel
Oxenstjerna, thirty-eight in number, 1635-1641, letters of
great importance to the history of New Sweden, have just
been published in the Bijdragen en Mededeelingen of the
Utrecht Historical Society, vol. XXIX.
See in the work of the Sieur de Laet of Antwerp, the table and chapter on New Belgium, as he sometimes calls it, or the map "Nova Anglia, Novu Belgium et Virginia."(1)
(1) De Laet, Histoire du Nouveau Monde, table of contents,
bk. III. ch. XII., and map.
It is about fifty years since the Hollanders came to these parts.(1) The fort was begun in the year 1615; they began to settle about twenty years ago, and there is already some little commerce with Virginia and New England.
(1) An exaggeration. There is no evidence of Dutch visits
before Hudson's.
The first comers found lands fit for use, deserted by the savages, who formerly had fields here. Those who came later have cleared the woods, which are mostly oak. The soil is good. Deer hunting is abundant in the fall. There are some houses built of stone; lime they make of oyster shells, great heaps of which are found here, made formerly by the savages, who subsist in part by that fishery.