High and Mighty Lords. One Andries ^Hchielsen, having been placed by Captain Binckes, the Commander of a squadron of four ships and one sloop-of-war, on board a prize of about fifty tons burthen, taken by the aforesaid Commander near Guadeloupe, in the Caribbean Islands, to bring her here, was forced, by leakage and insecurity of the ship, to run through the Channel, where he had the misfortune to be captured by the English of Bevesier. He presented himself to-day before our Board, and verbally reported that, after the abovenamed Captain Binckes, reinforced by Captain Cornelius Evertsen's squadron had, together, burnt in the River of Virginia five English ships laden with tobacco, and

24 The Hudson River

captured six others, without having been able to effect anything further there, they had sailed for New Xetherland, and became masters of the principal fortress situate on the Island Manhates, on the 9th of August ultimo; that also, before his departure on the nineteenth ditto, when he was dispatched with letters hither, he had heard that they had reduced another fort, situate some thirty leagues inland. The English had, some days before his departure, been removed elsewhere in four ships, viz., three belonging to this Board and one of Zealand, the remainder staid at anchor before the Island Manates.

Only by a resolute exercise of the imagination can we expunge from our vision the artificial canons and mesas that have arisen at the bidding of the architect, and restore again even the modest town that the historian vSmith pictured in 1757. What a century and a half have wrought of change and growth may best be appreciated by reading the description he wrote when Domine Ritzemer dispensed unadulterated Calvinism to his flock, when the Dutch farmers " in the small village of Harlem, pleasanth^ situated" on the north-western part of New York Island, cultivated ]iroduce for the cit}^ markets, and the oyster beds within view of the Battery afforded one of the principal sources of food for the poorer people.