Hill with the Elyas on Sunday last. * * * * our stay here being only for a little water and our other shipps, which if they come not in time, we must go to our appointed port in Long Island." Three days later, on the 23d of July, the Guinea and Elias arrived at Boston. Nicolls wrote at once to Thomas Willet at Plymouth, and Gov. Winthrop at Hartford, and applied for assistance. On the 29th of July the vessels from "Pascathway" arrived at Boston. Further letters from Nicolls were sent to Winthrop asking for aid, and to Thomas Willets at Plymouth, and directing them to meet the expedition at the west, instead of the east, end of Long Island. A few days later the ships sailed, and i)iloted by New Englanders, came direct to New Utrecht, or Nayack, Bay, now called Gravesend Bay, between the west end of Coney Island and the main, the Guinea arriving on the 25th of August, and the other three vessels three days later, on the 28th.

Winthrop with other Connecticut officials, and armed men, from that colony and the east end of Long Island, met them there, as well as Thomas Clarke and John Pynchon, of Boston, with offers of military aid from Massachusetts. On the 8th of the preceding July Thomas Willett had heard, from a young man of the name ofLord, a rumor from Boston, that an expedition had sailed from England to attack New Netherland, and immediately informed Governor Stuyvesant, but subsequently, for some reason, alleged that the troops had disembarked, that Commissioners to settle the boundaries were appointed, and that there was no danger. This put an end to Stuyvesant's anxiety, and he went to Albany to settle a quarrel among the Indians in that neighborhood. He was also lulled into security by the receipt of a despatch from the Directors at Amsterdam tfhat no danger from England need be entertained as the King only wanted to reduce his own colonies to uniformity in church and State.' The truth was, that the Directors of the Company, intently engaged in the public affairs of Holland (it was the period of John de Witt's ascendancy and the efforts of the Prince of Orange's party to destroy it) really neglected New Netherland, and their own interests there, giving both such slight attention, as not only, disappointed its people, and their own officials, but facilitated, the treacherous action of the English King, and inclined its inhabitants to yield with less resistance and feeling to his military power, than they otherwise would.