On this day the 12"" April, of this year Sixteen hundred and fifty, before me Martin Beeckman admitted Public Notary by the Court of Holland and resident here, and the undernamed witnesses, appeared the worthy VVilhelm Noble, of Alckmaer, aged eight and twenty years, late Surgeon of Captain Blaeuwvelt, sailing the yacht La Gurse belonging to New Netherland, who declared and certified, as he hereby doth, on his manly troth, in place of an oath which he offers to take at all times, when required, that there had been no intelligence nor publication of the peace among the Spaniards in the West Indies, as the captain, skipper, surgeon, carpenter, steward, gunner and all the seamen on board the said yacht La Garse, have declared on oath, as appears by further Minute thereof remaining with Director Stuyvesant; and that consequently, they captured on the 22""* April, 1649, up in the river Tabasco a bark laden with grains of paradise. On the fifth of July, after a long fight they took a ship of four guns, laden with logwood ; afterwards, on the 19lh July, of the same year, seeing a ship that they took to be the prize from which they had been separated, they overtook her about eleven o'clock at night and hailed her, crying " Lie to. Pilot," without attempting any thing else. But after they understood she was an enemy's ship, they cried out " Strike to the Prince of Orange!" and thereupon the man fired five charges of canister shot at us, wounding the captain and another, as per the declaration of two impartial passengers, one a Spaniard from Canaria, and the other a Frieslander. From these 'tis palpable and clear to be seen that there is no knowledge of peace there. Coming subsequently, on the 21"' September, 1649, New Netherland with our aforesaid bark, having in a storm lost the after divers rencounters to prize which was driven by wind and weather into New England, we applied to Director Stuyvesant, who took our declaration under oath, as already stated, promising to write to Wilhelm Nobel hath further declared it to be true their High Mightinesses on this subject. that public affairs in New Netherland have come to that point that neither the people nor the Select men chosen on their behalf, have anything to say, and dare not say anything, but must observe silence and hold their peace, as if every thing went on well and to their liking;