University of Virginia Library

47. How the Englishmen sailed past New Amsterdam
BY DAVID DE VRIES (1612)

WHEN we arrived before Fort Amsterdam, we found a Company's ship there with a prize taken on the way laden with sugar.[175] She had brought over the new governor, Wouter Van Twiller. He had been a clerk in

the West India Department at Amsterdam. I went ashore to the fort, out of which he came to welcome us, and inquired of me how the whale fishing succeeded.

A few days later, on the eighteenth of April, an Englishman arrived here, who came from New England to trade up the Hudson River. This Englishman invited the governor to come and see him. I went with them, in company with a number of officers, who became drunk and got into such high words that the Englishman could not understand how it was that there should be such unruliness among the officers of the company, nor why the governor should have not more control over them; he was not accustomed to such conduct among his countrymen. The Englishman and his crew remained six or seven days, lying before the fort, and then said that he wished to go up the river, and that the land belonged to the English. This we denied, declaring that they had never made any settlement there.

On the twenty-fourth, however, the Englishman weighed anchor and sailed up the river to Fort Orange.[176] Then Governor Wouter Van Twiller assembled all his forces before his door, had a cask of wine brought out, filled a bumper, and cried out for those who loved the Prince of Orange[177] and him to do the same as he did, and protect him from the outrage of the Englishman who was already out of sight, sailing up the river. The people all began to laugh at him; for they understood well how to drink dry the cask of wine, but did not wish to trouble the Englishman, saying that they were friends.

As I sat at the table with him at noon I told him that he had been very foolish, as the Englishman had no permission to navigate in the river, but only a paper of. a custom house, stating that he had paid so much duty and might sail with so many passengers to New England, and not to New Netherlands. I

said, if it were my matter, I would have helped him away from the fort with beans from eight pounders,[178] and not permitted him to sail up the river. I told him that since the English had troubled us in the East Indies, we ought to take hold of them; that I had no good opinion of that nation, for they were so proud that they thought everything belonged to them; were it an affair of mine I should send a ship after him to make him haul down the river. I added that the Englishman was only making sport of the Governor.