Show The Dutch Colony in New York Hudsons Dutch employers were not slow to avail themselves of the unrivalled commercial advantages offered by the situation of Manhattan Manhat-tan Island In 1614the year in which Smith was surveying the coast of New England the company com-pany of the New Netherlands received re-ceived its charter authorizing it to control and colonize all the territory between Virginia and Canada Whether from a commercial or I a military point of view this noble region occupied the most commanding command-ing position in North America It is that part of the continent which sends streams flowing in divergent courses into the Gulf of St Lawrence Law-rence the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico Through deep chasms in the Alleghenies which run irregularly across it those superb su-perb rivers the Hudson Delaware and Susquehanna flow into the Atlantic while the Mohawk coming com-ing from the west serves to join the valley of the Hudson with the great lakes and in like manner the lovely Juniata rushing down to join the Susquehanna has its headwaters head-waters not far from the spot where the currents of the Alleghany and Monongahela unite to form the Ohio With such pathways in every direction whether for peace or fur war the New Netherlands curious misnomer for a region so mountainous commanded the continent con-tinent and could the Dutch settlement settle-ment there have been adequately supported it would have threatened or prevented the ascendency of England in the NewWorld It was no doubt largely owing to this advantage ad-vantage of position that the League of the Iroquois had been enabled to domineer over the greater part of the country between the Atlantic and the Mississippi and through the divergent river valleys and across the chain of mightylakes these ferocious but longheaded barbarians in their bark canoes established those lines of trade which modern civilization civili-zation with its steamboats and railway has simply adopted and improved im-proved For a century after its conquest by the English New York with Western Pensylvania served as a great military bulwark toN to-N w England and to the southern colonies The hardest fighting done in the war of Independence was the struggle for the possession of this vantageground and in the second war with England the glorious glori-ous victories of Perry and Macdon ough maintained on the Lakes Erie and Champlain the sanctity of the citadal of America The colony thus founded by the Dutch in such an imperiai position remained in their hands just fifty years and at the end of this period the population had reached about eight thousand The city Man hatten Island lying entirely to the south of the site of Canal street girt with an earthen wall some ten feet in heighth and numbering at that time some fifteen hundred inhabitants had already acquired the cosmopolitan cosmo-politan character which has ever since distinguished it In the New Netherlands the Dutch maintained their national policy of unlimited toleration and consequently in that cruel age of religious turmoil they drew settlers from all parts of Europe There were Hugenots from Rochelle Waldensea from Piedmont Catholic Walloons from i French Flanders Scotch Presbyterians Presby-terians English Independents Moravians Quakers Anabaptists and Jews It is said that in 1650 eighteen different languages were spoken in New Amsterdam and its environs Though the settlers were grievously annoyed by the Algonquins in the neighborhood they found it for this reason all the easier to conciliate the Mohawks and so they soon began to compete with the French of Canada for the fur trade Haryefs Magazine |