It is certain that the separate voyages undertaken hither by various adventurous men between 1610 and 1623 resulted in no settlement of the country worthy of the name. We find no record of any transportation ofyeomen or families to this locality for the announced object of making it their abode and developing its resources. Although there is no doubt respecting the utilization of Manhattan Island in more or less serious trading connections at an early period, the history of the first years of European occupation is involved in a haze of tradition and myth. From the vague reports given by different voyagers, ingenious and not over-scrupulous writers constructed fanciful accounts of pretended undertakings and exploits in this quarter, which, however, being presented in sober guise, have had to be subjected to methodical investigation. All historical scholars are familiar with the famous Plantagenet or Argall myth. In 1648 a pamphlet was published in England, with the title, " A Description of New Albion," by one Beauchamp Plantagenet, Esq., which assumed to narrate that in the year 1613 the English Captain Samuel Argall, returning from Acadia to Virginia, "landed at Manhattan Isle, in Hudson's River, where they found four houses built, and a pretended Dutch governor under the West India Company of Amsterdam," and that this Dutch population and this Dutch ruler were forced to submit to the tremendous power of Great Britain. The whole story is a sheer fabrication, and so crude as to be almost vulgar. Yet such is the continuing strength of old pseudo-historical statement that we still find in compendious historical reference works of generally authentic character mention of Argall's apocryphal feat of arms -- the " first conquest of New Netherland by the English," -- usually accompanied, albeit, by the discreet "(?)" conscientiously employed by such faithful compilers in cases of incertitude.