Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/379

 and the lower, has been our property for many years, occupied by our forts, and sealed by our blood."

When Kieft's protest reached the newly arrived Swedes, they were already in snug quarters on the edge of the River Minquas, as the Indians called it, or Christina, as the newcomers named it (set down on modern maps as Christiana, but in the mouths of those that navigate its waters, called Christeen); for they had sailed up the Delaware in the Bird Grip, or Griffin, and the Key of Calmar, and entering the Minquas, had come to anchor in deep water close against a natural wharf of rock, well within the present limits of Wilmington. Thus was made the true beginning of the city, though no part of the region it now occupies bore the name of Wilmington until a full century later.

The newcomers built close to their original place of anchorage a little fort, and behind it a little village. Hudde, the Dutch commander at Fort Nassau, thirty miles up the Delaware, describing the Swedish fortification seven years later, says that it was "nearly encircled by a marsh, except on the northwest side, where it can be approached by land."