To this persecution aud vindictiveness of his opponents, however, we are indebted for the most valuable account of New Netherland written by any one who had then been a resident there. He seems to have begun this work immediately upon his return to the Hague and it was probably finished in the course of the ensuing winter. In May he applied for a copyright, which after an examination of the book both by the Chamber of Amsterdam, and a Committee of the States-General, was granted by the latter body on the 24th of May, 1753. The correspondence on this subject between these bodies, shows that a copy of this little book was sent by the former to the latter on the 2d of May, and referred to a committee " to inspect, examine, and report thereon."^ It must therefore have been printed at that time, though no copy of that date is now known to exist. This is the more probable from the fact, that van der Donck was at length permitted to depart, and returned to New Netherland in the summer of 1753.^ As we know that he intended to write an addition to this work in order to make it complete as a history, aud obtained an order from the West India Company, in the shape of a letter from it to Stuyvesant, to permit him to examine the papers and records in the Secretary's office of the Province, for that purpose, it may be, that though printed, it was not published in 1(553. Stuyvesant on his return refused him access to the records, and thus defeated his plan, and he then, in all probability, consented to the publication of what had already been printed in Holland. He died in 1G55, about two years after his return to America," and in the same year the first edition of his work that we now have, was issued in Amsterdam, with a view of New Amsterdam inserted.* A second edition was issued in 1G56, also in Amsterdam, without the view, but containing a map of New Netherland.