What is really important is that some one who constructed a map less than a decade after the discovery of the river should have known the names of Nassau, Kinderhook, Esopus, and Tappan, and should have placed them in their approximate order on the shores of a river making a line of cleavage through the wilderness. Those little settlements were the nuclei from which cultivation spread into the forest lands. Year after year the corn and the wheat followed the receding pine and chestnut; year after year the "herbes" and the simples attended the broader crops; and flowers that bloomed for the delight of the eye and the comfort of the soul lifted their faces within the walls of the home acre.

Industr}^ and thrift were the genii that achieved these things in time, but industry and thrift v^^ere not enough to keep the new plantations from being sometimes reabsorbed by the surrounding wilderness. There were periods of unrest among the forest dwellers, and the pitiful stories of massacre and ruin were mtiltipHed. One Siebout Claessen, house carpenter, burgher, and

Introductory

inhabitant of New Netherland, in a jn-otest or petition, most respectfully represents that he,

having married Susanna Janss, at the time widow of Aert Teunissen, her previous husband, who had entered into a contract with Director Kieft to lease a certain boniverie named Hobog/n'n, situate in Pavonia on the west side of the North River, . . . fenced the lands, cleared the fields, and erected a suitable brew house which is yet standing there, and brought thither eight and twenty head of large cattle, etc. . . . together with many of his own fruit trees. And thus considerable value was added to the bouwerie . . . tmtil the year 1643, when the cruel, unnatural, and very destructive war broke out, and his twentyeight large catile and horses were killed . . . dwelling house, barns, and stacks of seed burnt, the brew house alone remaining.