matter, it is and determined that copy of the aforesaid petition, as well as of resolved the papers thereunto annexed, be transmitted to the Assembly of the XIX. of the West India Company, at present convened in Amsterdam, in order to understand from it, without delay, whether it have any valid objections against the aforesaid investiture, and to communicate the same to them in the speediest manner. And the petitioners are, meanwhile, esteemed diligent.

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HOLLAND DOCUMENTS : IIL 255

Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company to the S'ates General.

[ From the Original, in Ihe Koyal ArchiTes at the Hagae ; File, West Indit,']

To the High and Mighty Lords States General of the United Netherlands.

High and Mighty Lords. The Directors of the Incorporated West India Company at the Amsterdam Chamber having received your High Mightinesses' letter of the SO"" October last with the copy of the petition presented on the same day to your High Mightinesses, by or on behalf of Jacob Tafyn, they state for information thereupon, that they have received advices by letter from Director Petrus Stuvesant, written in Fort Amsterdam in New Netherland, on the 5"" of August last, that a Spanish bark, burthen about 70 to 80 lasts, had been sent in there, laden with hides, and captured by the yacht the Cat conveying some horses from the Island of Cura9ao to the Caribbean Islands, a portion of which aforesaid hides the said Director had sold there, and would send the remainder, amounting to about 2000, to this country, as was subsequently done. And as the aforesaid prize, according to the law of Nations and the treaty of peace concluded between this State and the King of Spain, is without any gainsay, well and duly sent in without the Company being able, or bound, to know whose property any of the ;