Adrianus Smoutius, dated August 11, 1628, which was discovered and first printed, only in 1858, in a periodical of Amsterdam by Mr. J. J. Bodel Nijenhuis of that city, and subsequently translated and sent to the late Dr. Edmund B. O'Callaghan then of Albany, the author of the " History of New Netherland," by the late Henry C. Murphy, then United States Minister at the Hague. The second volume of the "Holland Documents" translated and edited for the State by Dr. O'Callaghan, was, when the letter arrived, j ust printed, but not bound nor published, and in it, as an appendix, that learned editor inserted Mr. Murphy's translation of this letter. Michaelius sailed from Holland, January 24th, 1628, and arrived at the "Island of Manhatas," as he calls it, on the 7th of the succeeding April, and wrote the letter the following August- In it he says, " In my opinion, it is very expedient that the Lords Managers of this place [the Amsterdam Chamber of the West Indian Company) should furnish plain and precise instructions to their Governors that they may distinctly know how to regulate themselves in all difficult occurrences and events in public matter ; and at the same time that I should have all such Acta Synodalia, as are adopted in the Synods of Holland, both the special ones relating to this region' and those which are provincial and national, in relation to ecclesiastical points of difficulty, or at least such of them as in the judgment of the Reverend brothers at Amsterdam would be most likely to present themselves to us here." . . . The promise which the Lords Masters of the Company had made me of some acres or surveyed lands for me to make myself a home, instead of a free table which otherwise belonged to me is wholly of no avail.