Brodhead's researches in Holland are sixteen volumes of transcripts in the Dutch language, an analysis of which is contained in his printed calendar. It will be observed that these documents comprise a great variety of details relative to the original discovery and settlement of our State ; commencing with notices of the first navigators who explored the North and East rivers, and embracing copies of the decrees of the States-General, granting the privileges of trade and further discovery to companies of merchants, which led to the subsequent colonization by patroons or patentees of lands. One of these grants, bearing date October 11th, 1614, is accompanied by a descriptive map of the North river and the adjacent country, executed within five years after the discovery by Hudson. It only remains that the seal of a foreign language should be taken off from these valuable and curious records, to render them accessible to all and to this end the committee would ;

recommend that a suitable person be employed to translate them at the public expense. " Among these documents the committee would particularly notice one that possesses peculiar interest in its relation to the Dutch Colony on the Island of Manhattan. The precise year in which that Colony was planted is not known the oldest records in possession of the ;

State, before the receipt of these documents, commence with the administration of Governor Kieft, in the year 1G38, with the single exception of some grants of land which go back to 1630. But there was found a few years ago among the papers of Governor Bradford, of the Plymouth Colony, a correspondence between that functionary and the Dutch authorities of New Netherland, on the Island of Manhattan, bearing date in the year 1627 ; and Bradford, in a letter written at that time, says of the Dutch, ' that for strength of men and fortifications they far exceed them and all others in the country.' Until the reception of these fruits of the Agency, we were thus indebted to another Colony for the first notice of the colonization of our own State.