adventurers had received their huge reward abroad the little home-built Restless, without reward, continued her busy career of exploration. To her bold commander, Captain Cornelius Hendrickson, honor was due alike for his humane release of the Indian captives on the Christiana and for the invaluable information he contributed respecting the character and resources of the country. While little of such information has been preserved it is known to have materially facilitated the organization of that great Dutch West India Company, which was so large a factor in the early colonial history of America.

Deserving to rank with Usselinx, Minuit and other earnest leaders of American colonization, Hendrickson was thus an effective co-adjutor in their cherished scheme; and at last their patient and persevering labors were rewarded by the formal incorporation on the 3d of June, 1621, of the great Dutch organization whose autocratic and comprehensive powers perhaps the world never saw paralleled in the history of granted franchises.

But with the usual abuse of irresponsible power members of this Dutch West India Company soon launched upon a career wholly foreign to the peaceful purposes for which it was constituted. The war with Spain affording a fair pretext they pursued a course of privateering that became little short of colossal piracy against the commerce of Spain and Portugal. This yielded such enormous spoils that they unblushingly protested against a proposed peace or truce upon the naive and quaint plea candidly expressed in their memorial that their company, formed wholly for a peaceful object could not exist without war!

Nevertheless there were some shrewd and conservative,

yet energetic, members who did not forget the original purpose of the company, but honestly believed in the profit and prosperity to result from its legitimate pursuit of colonization and commercial projects. Among these men of substance were John De Laet, the historian; Killiaen Van Rensselaer, Samuel Godyn and Samuel Blommaert. These men, with others of prudent and prophetic views, secured from the so-called assembly or "College of Nineteen" a charter of Exemptions and Privileges," which was confirmed by the States General on the 7th of June, 1629, under which enormous tracts of land and extraordinary powers, privileges and franchises were accorded to all such as should plant colonies or settlements in New Netherlands.

This was the original basis of that patroon system of vast land tenure that specially characterized the early settlement of New York State. It was provided that on certain conditions members could send, on the company's ships, three or four persons as agents to select lands, and that after first satisfying the Indian's right to the same and defining the desired boundaries such members should become the feudal lords or patroons over tracts of fixed size, on condition that on each of them a colony of not less than 50 adults should be planted within four years. These tracts for colonial settlement might be 64 miles in length or half that extent if on two sides of a navigable river, and they were acquired in absolute fee simple by the patroons who were sole magistrates, and, within their own bounds "had chief command and dower jurisdiction," with the exclusive privilege of fishing, fowling and milling, and of founding cities and appointing officers. They prohibited all manufacturing, retained complete monopoly of the fur trade, and in all other

respects the patroons were to be sovereign in their lordship. Thus in the virgin soil of the New World where equality in human conditions it was fondly hoped might take root, were sown the seeds of privilege-in the heart of that primal domain where the free air bred jealous individuality and the chance of a fair and equal start for all, there was planted a complete feudal system; and a landed aristocracy of pretentious and alien purpose strutted its brief hour on the broad theatre destined for freest democracy.

Among the earliest tracts secured under this bountiful charter were two on either shore of lower Delaware Bay, the one on the East taken by Samuel Godyn and the other on the West by Samuel Blommaert. The tract taken by Godyn, after whom the bay was then named, included Cape May and a large surrounding area, while the land selected by Blommaert comprised a tract in the southeast corner of what is now Delaware, 32 miles long north and south, and two miles wide east and west. Two persons had been sent from Holland in 1629 to examine the land and make the requisite preliminary purchase from the Indians, and the patent for the tract was registered and confirmed on the 1st of June, 1630. While it is impossible at this day to identify the exact inland boundaries of this domain it is certain to have embraced the entire water frontage of what is now Sussex county upon ocean and bay and to have included the present sites of Rehoboth and Lewes. And thus our little State had a colonial connection with New York in its scheme of settlement and at least a corner of its territory was involved in the operations of the huge patroon landed interests of that State. For, the early example of Godyn and Blommaert on the South or Delaware Bay was speedily followed by others.