Page:Augustine Herrman, beginner of the Virginia tobacco trade, merchant of New Amsterdam and first lord of Bohemia manor in Maryland (1941).djvu/80

 tactful and unresourceful in emergencies. Furthermore, neither the home nor the local authorities encouraged the Dutch settlers to scatter and to form new settlements in that vast territory that beyond a doubt legally belonged to them by right of discovery and former occupancy. Not only were the Dutch colonists not encouraged to make new settlements, but in instances virtually forbidden to do so, as in the case of Van der Donck when he wished to form a new settlement near Fort Orange, such numerous obstacles were placed in his way that he gave up the attempt in despair. Stuyvesant was not wholly to blame for this narrow view of colonial expansion; for, as we have pointed out, the directors of the Dutch West India Company subjected him to severe reprimand because he allowed a few new settlements to be made in New Sweden. Yet had he been a man of real ability and vision he would have found a way to have carried out his views. After an interval of three hundred years it is interesting to reflect upon the fate of the Dutch in North America if they would have had such governors as Augustine Herrman, Adriaen Van der Donck or Govert Loockermans.

Such then were the conditions in New Netherland about the year 1660. We can certainly suppose that Herrman was fully cognizant of all the shortcomings that attended Dutch rule there. The three greatest men that New Amsterdam had produced were lost to her, and Stuyvesant had to handle the reins of government of the colony the best way he could.

Thus things dragged on for another four years. Then came the fatal day. Colonel Nichols appeared in the harbor before Fort Amsterdam and demanded an unconditional surrender. The Dutch burgers actually rejoiced when the ultimatum of the Englishman was read to them. The doughty old governor alone wanted to fight; but his subjects prevented even a sem-