=29. Hudson and New Amsterdam.=—In the autumn of 1609 Henry Hudson,[25] an English seaman employed by the Dutch East India Company, sailed up the river now called by his name, as far as the site of Albany. He was searching for a northwest passage to India; he found instead a good opportunity to trade with the red men, which the Dutch afterward cultivated. By 1615 houses were built on the site of Albany and of the present New York. The fur trade of New Netherland, as the region was named, was turned over to a corporation organized for that purpose, called the New Netherland Company. Politically no steps were taken at first against the English title to the country. In 1621 the Dutch West India Company took up the rôle of the New Netherland Company, and three years later sent over a number of colonists. These settled mainly near Albany; but there were other centers of population, all of which did a thriving fur trade with the Indians. =30. Organization of the Dutch Colony.=—In 1626 Peter Minuit, director for the Dutch West India Company, purchased the Island of Manhattan from the Indians for a trifling amount (about twenty-five dollars), and made the town of New Amsterdam, afterward New York, the center of government. In 1629 the Company obtained a new charter and proceeded to develop a semi-feudal system of land tenure among the colonists. Individuals, styled “Patroons” (patrons), were allowed to buy tracts of land from the Indians and to settle colonists upon them. For every colony of fifty persons the Patroon was granted a large tract for himself; and as he was given political and judicial power over his colonists, New Netherland was soon in the hands of a powerful landed aristocracy, some families of which have retained a certain prestige down to the present time. [Illustration: NEW AMSTERDAM.] THE PILGRIMS AT PLYMOUTH. =31. The Plymouth Colony.=—The London Company and the Dutch West India Company had now established promising colonies, but the Plymouth Company had done nothing since their unsuccessful attempt in 1607. Seven years later, Captain John Smith had made a voyage along the northern coast and given the region the name of New England. Other voyages added to geographical knowledge and developed the fisheries, but the more southerly colonies for some time attracted all intending settlers, and the reorganized Plymouth Company of 1620 might have fared poorly had not accident favored them. This accident was nothing less than the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock instead of somewhere within the jurisdiction of the London Company, as they at first intended.