and they also hereby notify all of what state or condition they may be, that they are hereby warned and expressly forbid from this time forth, not to make bare or strip any gardens, sowed, or planted places, of posts, rails, clapboards, or other fencing, on pain when found doing the same in part or in

whole, for the first offence of being whipped and branded, and for the second offence of being hung

with a cord till death follows, without favour to any person

:

and whoever after the date hereof shall

give information of any person guilty of robbing the land of posts, rails, or clapboards, shall be

rewarded therefor and his name concealed

:

every one is hereby warned.

All done in the Assembly at Fort Amsterdam in New Netherlands on the 9 th of October 1655.

The inhabitants of the Town being diligent in the observance of the foregoing order or command, the Fiscal thereupon drew out of the Company's book the following copy concerning the meadow land, not knowing in whom it was lodged Petrus Stuyvesant Representative of the Noble High and Mighty the Lords States General of the United Netherlands, and the Lord Administrator of the Priviledged West India Company, Director :

General of New Netherland, Curacoa, Bonayre, Aruba, and the appendages thereunto belonging,

hath with the consent of the Council, on the petition and supplication made to us on the date underneath written, showing the need of the inhabitants of the new begun Town of Utrecht and of those