Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/127

 Sound, and discovery of the Connecticut river; and the third for his survey of the coast of New Jersey, still commemorated by the name given to New Jersey's southern headland—Cape May.

On the 11th October, 1614, after long and tedious preliminary negotiations, a charter, insuring to them a monopoly of the fur trade for three years, was granted to the Dutch, and the name of New Netherland given to the region between New France and Virginia—i.e., the Atlantic seaboard between 40° and 45° N. lat. These three years, during which no rival European power interfered, were turned to the best account by the sturdy colonists from Holland, and their scouts penetrated far into the interior on the west, one party, it is supposed, having reached the upper waters of the Delaware, and descended it in native canoes to the mouth of its tributary, the Schuylkill, which is now known to rise in the carboniferous highlands of Pennsylvania, and to join the Delaware five miles below the capital of that state.

The story goes, that, on this last named expedition, three traders were taken prisoners by the Indians, and held by them as hostages, until their prolonged absence exciting the anxiety of their comrades, an expedition was sent in quest of them, under the command of Cornelis Hendricksen, who, in a little yacht named the Restless, explored the whole of Delaware Bay, ascended one of the rivers flowing into it, and brought back his fellow-countrymen in triumph.

On Hendricksen's return to the parent settlement, he gave such glowing accounts of the capabilities of the new "havens, lands, and places" visited, that his employers—their original charter being then on the eve of expiration—determined if possible to obtain another, giving them more ample powers. Their petition was refused; but, in 1621, a far more important enterprise than theirs was sanctioned by the States-General of the Netherlands, who granted to the now famous West India Company a monopoly of all the lands known by the Dutch as New Netherland, and which included much of the territory to which the English had given the name of New England.

The first emigrants to take advantage of the extensive privileges of the West India Company were a little band of Walloons, members of that much-persecuted and sturdy race, descended from the old Gallic Belgæ, whose brave struggle against the Germans in the old mountain fastnesses of the Ardennes had saved them from extermination. The same constitutional impulsiveness and perseverance, activity and skill, which kept the Walloons