In the fair encircled isle
Formed for beauty's warmest smile.
William Crow
In the beginning of May they entered the Hudson, found a "Frenchman" lying in the mouth of the river, who would erect the arms of the King of France there, but the Hollanders would not permit him, opposing it by commission from the Lord's States General and the Directors of the West India Company, and "in order not to be frustrated therein, they convoyed the Frenchman out of the rivers." This having been done, they sailed up the Maikans, 140 miles, near which they built and completed a fort, named "Orange," with four bastions, on an island, by them called "Castle Island." This was probably the island below Castleton, now known as Baern Island, where the first white child was born on the Hudson.
In another volume we read that "a colony was planted in 1625 on the Manhetes Island, where a fort was staked out by Master Kryn Fredericke, an engineer. The counting-house is kept in a stone building thatched with reed; the other houses are of the bark of trees. There are thirty ordinary houses on the east side of the river, which runs nearly north and south." This is the description of New York City when Charles the First was King.
Behold the natural advantages of our State; the situation
of our principal seaport; the facility that the
Sound affords for an intercourse with the East, and the