Bradford of Plymouth, for a friendly trade, visited that celebrated place, as a New Netherland envoy in 1627, and has left us an account of it in this letter, discovered at the Hague in 1846, and first printed in II. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 2 Series, 339.

On the 23d of September, 1626. this shij), the " Arms of Amsterdam," sailed again on her return voyage to Holland, with a very vakiable cargo of furs.

s I. O'Call., 101 ; X. Xetliorlnuil Register, 2.

3 Wiisseiiner, III. Poc. Hist. N. Y., 47 ; Hrcxlhead's Early Colonization of N. Xetherlui.d, II. K. Y. Hist. Coll., 2d Scries, [i]). 3C3-3G5.

HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

She also carried out the official account of the most important event that had yet happened in New Netherland, the result of a treaty held by Director Minuit and his Council with the natives of Manhattan, the first ever held by the Dutch with the Indians in America. This event was the purchase of the Island of Manhattan by the West India Company, which is the foundation of title to all the real estate on the Island of New York, and by which the city holds all the land that it still possesses at this day, south of the Harlem River. She had a comparatively rapid passage, reaching Amsterdam on the fourth of November following, a little over six weeks. The very next day, the delegate of the States- General in the "Assembly of the XIX.," then in session, advised that august body of the arrival, and the news, by letter. Unfortunately Minuit's official despatch has not been preserved, but tlje letter of Pieter Schagen, the States-General's representative, is still in the Royal Archives at the Hague, and proves the fact. It is, in full, as follows; --