The conduct of Director Kieft in entering upon his course of violent aggression against the Indians, which resulted in great devastation in our county, was given the color of popular favor iu this manner. In the early months of Minuit's administration the Island of Manhattan was purchased from the Indians " for the value of sixty guilders," or $24. The same ship which carried to Holland the news of this transaction bore a cargo of valuable peltries (including 7,246 beaver skins) and oak and hickory timber. The first year of Minuit's directorship was also signalized by the dispatching of an embassy to New England, partly with the object of cultivating trade relations with the Puritan settlers, but mainly in connection with the rival English and Dutch territorial claims. Thus at the very outset of systematic government by the Dutch iu their new possessions the controversy with England, destined to be settled thirty-seven years later by the stern law of the stronger, came forward as a subject requiring special attention. It should not be supposed that the settlement on Manhattan Island at this early period enjoyed any pretensions as a community. Indeed, it had scarcely vet risen to true communal dignity. According to Wassanaer, the white population in 1628 was 270. But this number did not represent any particularly solid organization of people composed of energetic and effective elements. The settlers up to this time were almost exclusively refugees from religious persecution, who came for the emergent reason that they were without homes in ful. Europe-- mostly honest, sturdy people, but poor and unresource The inducements so far offered by the AVest India Company were not tic sufficiently attractive to draw other classes to their transatlan lands, and the natural colonists of the New Netherland, the yeomen adand burghers of the United Provinces, finding no appearance ofvery vantage to offset the plain risks involved in emigration, were were reluctant to leave their native country, where conditions of life Ihis comfortable and profitable much beyond the average degree. rea ^ language strong following the in to alluded was reluctance J: lbm XIX. the of Assembly port made to the States-General by the more " The colonizing such wild and uncultivated countries demands of inhabitants than we can well supply; not so much through lack all that fact the population, in which our provinces abound, as from