"

time, on the corner of Peck Slip, was so near the river that a stone could easily be thrown into it. Pearl, it is thought, was the first street occupied, the first houses being built there, in 1633. Bridge street came next; and a deed is still in existence for a lot on it, thirty-four by one hundred and ten feet, for the sum of twenty-four guilders, or nine dollars and sixty cents. This is the earliest conveyance of city property on record. Whitehall, Stone, Broad, Beaver, and Marketfield streets were opened soon after. In the year 1642, the first grant of a 1642. city lot, east of the fort at the Battery, was made to Hendricksen Kip. During the next year, several lots were granted on the lower end of "Heere Straat," as Broadway was then named. Martin Krigier was the first grantee of a lot in this section, opposite the Bowling Green, which contained eighty-six rods. There he built the well-known Krigier's Tavern," which soon became a fashionable resort.*

Nor during all this time did the fur trade fail to keep pace with the growing local prosperity of the place. During the year 1635, the Directors in Holland received returns from the province to the amount of nearly 185,000 guilders But the monopoly of the traffic in furs was not the only source of gain. A profitable commerce was also carried on with New England. Dutch vessels brought tobacco, salt, horses, oxen, and sheep from Holland to Boston. An old account says they came from the Texel in five weeks and three days, "and lost not one beast or sheep." Potatoes from Bermuda were worth two pence the pound; a good cow, twenty-five or thirty pounds; and

*Upon the demolishment of this building its site was occupied by the King's Arms' Tavern," which, in after years, was the head-quarters of the British General Gage. Subsequently, it became the " Atlantic Garden," No. 9 Broadway, where it long remained one of the striking mementoes of the olden

a pair of oxen readily brought forty pounds. In Virginia, corn rose to twenty shillings the bushel during the year 1637; a shepel, or three pecks of rye, brought two guilders, or eighty cents; and a laborer readily earned, during harvest, two guilders per diem. These were high prices for those times, and were probably caused, in a measure, by the sanguinary war which the New England Puritans* were carrying on with their Indian neighbors. The Pequods. failing to deliver the murderers of Stone, according to treaty, had tendered an atonement of wampum, but Massachusetts demanded "blood for blood;" and she obtained it in the wars that followed. Winthrop says, "Scarcely a sannup, a woman, a squaw, or a child of the Pequod name survived." It is the fashion to indulge in much panegyric about these ancestral doings, but here can be calmly traced the first attempt of the white race to extirpate the red men from their ancestral birthright to the northern regions of America.

1638.

Notwithstanding, however, the large prices obtained for its wares, the year 1638 found the condition of New Netherland very unpromising. Although its affairs had now been administered for fifteen years by that powerful body, the West India Company, still, the country was scarcely removed from its primitive wilderness state, and, excepting the Indians, it was inhabited by only a few traders and clerks of a distant corporation. Its rich virgin soil remained almost entirely uncultivated, and the farms did not amount to more than half a dozen. Doubtless, the Directors of the West India Company governed New Netherland chiefly to promote their own special interests to advance which, large sums had been expended;

* Puritans, not Pilgrims. These terms, though generally used synony mously, refer to two entirely different classes of men. The Pilgrims never practiced religious persecution; the Puritans did. The Pilgrims came over to the New World some fifteen years earlier than the Puritans.

and, as a natural consequence, no efforts had as yet been made to introduce, on a large scale, a sound and industrious emigration. The patroon system, also, to which reference has already been made, greatly retarded the settlement of the colony. A monopoly, its patroons neglected their most important duties as planters, and used their energies and means to compete with the Company in the Indian trade; consequently, misunderstandings and disputes followed, which became almost fatal to the prosperity of the new settlement.

At this critical moment, William Kieft, the third Director-General and Governor, arrived March, 1638, as the successor of the weak Van Twiller. His first step was to organize a Council, retaining, however, its entire control. Dr. Johannes La Montagne, a learned Huguenot, was appointed by him a member of this new board; Cornelis Van Tienhoven, from Utrecht, one of the oldest settlers, was made Colonial Secretary, with a salary of two hundred and fifty dollars per annum; while Ulrich Leopold continued as Schout-Fiscal, or Sheriff and Attorney-General. Adrian Dircksen was made Assistant-Commissary, "because he spoke correctly the language of the Mohawks, and was well versed in the art of trading with them." The Rev. Mr. Bogardus continued the Dominie, and Adam Roelandsen the School-master.*

The new Governor found the town in an extremely dilapidated condition. The fort had fallen completely into decay; all the guns were off their carriages; and the public buildings, as well as the church, were all out of repair; only one of the three wind-mills was in opera

* La Montagne, as Member of the Council, received fourteen dollars a month; the book-keeper, fourteen dollars and forty cents, with eighty dollars for his yearly board; the mason, eight dollars; a joiner, six dollars and forty cents; a carpenter, seven dollars and fifty cents, and forty dollars a year for board

tion; and the Company's fine farms had no tenants-not even a goat remaining upon them. But the new Governor came charged with more onerous duties than simply the repair of houses; he was the bearer of a decree that no person in the Dutch Company's employ should trade in peltry, or import any furs, under penalty of losing his wages, and a confiscation of his goods. Abuses also existed in all the departments of the public service, which Kieft vainly attempted to remedy by proclamations. Death was threatened against all who should sell guns or powder to the Indians; after nightfall, all sailors were to remain on board their vessels; no persons could retail any liquors, "except those who sold wine at a decent price, and in moderate quantities," under penalty of twenty-five guilders (ten dollars), and the loss of their stock. Tobacco, then as now, was greatly in demand, the rich virgin soil about New Amsterdam suiting the plant well; consequently, plantations for its cultivation increased so fast, that the plant was now also subjected to excise, and regulations were published by the Directory to regulate its mode of culture, and check certain abuses which were injuring "the high name" it had "gained in foreign countries." But the new Governor did not confine himself to correcting official abuses solely; he issued proclamations to improve the moral condition of the settlement; and all persons were seriously enjoined to abstain from "fighting, calumny, and all other immoralities," as the guilty would be punished, and made a terror to evil-doers. Rightly judging, also, that public worship would be a peaceful auxiliary to his labors, and the old wooden church built by Van Twiller having fallen to pieces, he determined to erect a new one inside the fort. Jochem Pietersen Kuyter, Jan Jansen Damen, with Kieft and Captain De Vries, as

"Kirke Meesters," superintended the new work, and John and Richard Ogden were the masons. The building was of stone, seventy-two by fifty-two feet, and sixteen high, and cost 2,500 guilders. Its legend, translated from the Dutch, read: "Anno Domini 1642, William Kieft, Director-General, hath the Commonalty caused to build this temple." New Amsterdam had a town-bell; this was now removed to the belfry of the new church, whence it regulated the city moven:ents, the time for laborers and the courts. It also pealed the weddings, tolled the funerals, and called the people to the Lord's House.*

Hardly, however, had Kieft got his plans for the moral reformation of his people fairly under way, when, as before hinted, the patroons began to give fresh trouble; that class now (1638) demanded "new privileges"—"that they might monopolize more territory, be invested with the largest feudal powers, and enjoy free trade throughout New Netherland." Nor was this all. In their arrogance, they also demanded that all "private persons" and "poor emigrants" should be forbidden to purchase lands from the Indians, and should settle within the colonies under the jurisdiction of the manorial lords—i. e., themselves.

These grasping demands of the patroons were reserved for future consideration by the States-General; and it was

*At this period the settlers of New Amsterdam obtained their supplies from the Company's store at fifty per cent. advance on prime cost, a list of prices being placed in a conspicuous position in some place of public resort. Here are some of the rates: Indian corn, sixty cents per schepel of three pecks; barley, two dollars; peas, three dollars and twenty-five cents; flour, one dollar; pork, five stivers; fresh meat, five; butter, eight; tobacco, seven; dried fish, twelve (two York shillings) per pound; hard-bread, fifteen; rye, five; wheaten, seven; cabbage, twelve dollars per hundred; staves, thirty-two dollars per thousand; a hog, eight dollars; ordinary wine, thirty-one dollars per hogshead; Spanish wine, four stivers; French wine, ten per quart; sugar, seventeen and twenty-four per pound; flannel, one dollar and twenty cents per ell; cloth, two dollars; white linen, eighteen to twenty stivers; red flannels, one dollar and twenty cents; children's shoes, thirty-six stivers, or six York shillings a pair of brass kettles, forty cents each.