Your Honors can easily conceive how wretchedly it fares with us, distressed people, and the whole country, for the growth and prosperity thereof consists chiefly in men, cattle and houses, in which we, jointly and severally, have exhausted all the means we have been able to realize. The population is composed mainly of women and children; the freemen (exclusive of the English) are about 200 strong, who must protect by force their families now skulking in straw huts outside the Fort; the cattle are partly burnt and killed, what remains has been conveyed to the Fort on the Manahates, where for want of food they must starve this coming winter, if

' A lasl is equal to SO English bushels. Holtrop's Dutch Dictionary/. -- Ed.

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not immediately slaughtered. The most of the houses have been fired and destroyed, those still standing are in danger of being also burnt. It is likewise to be apprehended that this will be but the beginning of our troubles, for, as these Indians with their weapons kill our people, one after another [it is to be feared] that they will next with guns destroy us, our wives and children, while the men are ruined, the grain and other produce burnt, very little saved, not even a plough can be put in the ground this fall, so that not 100 skepels will be sown in this

neighborhood, and consequently much less in the spring, and were any provisions to be obtained from the English, in the East, we know not wherewith we, poor people, will pay for them, whilst the private traders have by their unnatural extortions for the last three or four years, utterly drained us, and impoverished this country ; for such must be the result so long as industry is obliged to stand still in the land.