This the States-General refused, having in contemplation to charter a great military and commercial company for the West Indies similar to the great organization of that nature then existing for the East Indies. The object in view in both was the same, namely, to establish a power, which could, at the same time, maintain profitable foreign trade, and carry on military and naval enterprises against Spain, thus in both ways crippling their hereditary enemy. In the summer of 1618, Hendrick Eelkens and his partners, by special permission of the States-General, sent their ship, the " Scheldt " to the Manhattans for a single trading voyage. In 1619 Captain Cornelis Jacobsen May, who had made the voyage, a few years before in command of the "Fortune," sailed again in the ship " Glad Tidings." and explored the Bays of the Delaware, and the Chesapeake. Returning in 1620, he and his owners applied to the States-General for a special charter in their favor, and Eelkens and his partners put in an opposing petition claiming such special charter for themselves on the ground of prior discovery. The States-General tried to compel these parties to settle their differences, and unite their interests, and appointed a committee upon the subject. This committee sat for several months endeavoring, after hearing both sides, to effect this object ; but finding it impossible, they so reported, and the States General refused to give either party the wished for prize. In less than seven months after this rejection, " the long pending question of a grand armed commercial organization was finally settled; and an ample charter, (bearing date the third day of June 1621) gave the AVest India Company almost