But as soon as the trade was opened, many servants who had prospered under the Company applied for their discharge, built houses and formed plantations, spread themselves far and wide, each seeking the best land, and to be nearest to the Indians, in order thus to trade with them advantageously ; others bought sloops with which to sell goods at the north and at the south, and as the Directors gave free passage from Holland thither, that also caused many to come. On the other hand, the English came both from Virginia and N. England, on account of the good opportunity to plant tobacco here; first, divers servants, whose time had expired; afterwards, families, and finally, entire colonies, having been forced to quit that place, in order to enjoy freedom of conscience, and to escape from the insupportable government of New England, and because many more commodities were to be obtained here than there, so that in place of seven boiiweries and two @ three

were here, thirty bouweries were to be seen as well cultivated and stocked as in plantations which Europe, [and] one hundred plantations which, in two or three [years] would become regular bouweries, for after the tobacco was out of the ground, corn was planted there without ploughing, and the winter was employed preparing new lands. The English colonies had settled under us by patent on equal terms with the others. Each of these was in appearance not less than one hundred families strong, exclusive of the Colonie of Rensselaerswyck, which is prospering, with that of Myndert Meyndertsz and Cornells Melyn, who began first. Also the Village of N. Amsterdam around the fort, one hundred families, so that there was appearance of producing supplies in a year for fourteen thousand souls, without straightening the country, and had there not been a want of laborers or farm servants, twice as much could be raised, considering that fifty lasts of rye and fifty lasts of peas were still remaining around the fort, after a large quantity had been burnt and destroyed by the Indians, who in a short time quickly brought this country to nought and had well nigh destroyed this bright hope, in the manner following.