In the year 1661 the West India Company bought Staten Island from its patroon owner, a man named Cornelius Melyn. A block-house was built which was armed with two cannon and defended by ten soldiers, and invited the people of Europe who were called Waldenses and the Huguenots of France to settle on the island. Fourteen families soon came and took up farms there south of the Narrows. The West India Company, however, had broader views on religion than their governor, Peter Stuyvesant, had. John Brown, an Englishman, moved from Boston to Flushing, on Long Island, and, having by chance attended a Quaker meeting, invited the Quakers to meet at his new house. Neighbors told the governor that John Brown was using his farm as a meeting-place for Quakers, and Stuyvesant had him arrested. The quiet, unoffending farmer was fined twenty-five pounds and threatened with banishment, and when he failed to pay, was imprisoned in New Amsterdam for three months. Then Governor Stuyvesant issued an order banishing Farmer Brown. "John Brown," so ran the order, "is to be transported from this province in the first ship ready to sail, as an example to others." Soon afterward he was sent to Holland in the _Gilded Fox_, but the officers of the West India Company received him kindly, rebuked the haughty governor for his severity, and persuaded John Brown to return to Flushing. When he did go back Stuyvesant showed by his acts that he was ashamed of what he had done. For the governor, in spite of his headstrong acts, had sense enough to know that his little colony needed all the settlers it could find, no matter what their religion, and that Quakers made as trustworthy settlers as any other kind. Early in 1663 an earthquake shook New Netherland and the country round it. Soon afterward the melting snows and very heavy rains caused a tremendous freshet, which covered the meadow lands along the rivers, and ruined all the crops. Then came an outbreak of smallpox, which spread among the Dutchmen and the Indians like fire in a field of wheat. Over a thousand of the Iroquois tribe died of the plague. Then, as if these troubles were not sufficient for the colony, Peter Stuyvesant soon heard that there was new danger of an Indian uprising against his people.