In this yacht, in the summer of 1614, Block sailed through Hellgate and explored Long Island Sound and the adjacent coast as far east as Cape Cod, discovering the Housatonic, and Connecticut rivers Narraganset Bay, and the island that still bears his name. He then first ascertained that Long Island was an island. The Connecticut river he ascended to a little above the present city of Hartford. He was the first European who sailed through the Sound, and the first white man who beheld the southern and eastern shores of Westchester County.

Corstiaensen finally determined to remain at Manhattan to extend the Indian trade. Turning over his own ship to Block, who left him the Onrust, the latter returned to Holland. Corstiaensen built two fortified trading-stations, one on an island below Albany, the other at the south end of ]\Ianhattan Island, and visited and traded with the Indians of all the neighboring tribes. Three other vessels, the Little Fox, the Nightingale and the Fortune, under Captains John de Witt, Rhys Volkertssen and Cornelis Jacobsen May, respectively, visited the "River of the Mountains," exploring and trading with the natives, and those of the regions adjacent.

This trade, thus begun, was so profitable that it induced these navigators, and the owners of their ships, to apply to the States-General of the United Provinces for a grant of the sole privilege of trading with the new and pleasant land beyond the ocean. They presented a memorial to this effect, accompanied by the first map ever made of the region of New Netherland -- a "Carte Figuratif," as they styled it -- to the States-General in the autumn of 1614. The application met their approval, and on the 11th of October, in the same year, that sovereign body made a grant to the petitioners of the privilege sought, to run for the term of three years, from the 1st of January, 1615.