From the Dutch and also the English point of view, the English skipper of the Dutch ship had discovered the river. It appears however that in 1524 Verrazzano put a French keel, _La Dauphine_, far up the same stream, to which he gave the name La Grande, and, some time after, French fur traders built a rude _château_, or, as we would say, fortified trading-post, on Castle Island, just off the hills of Albany. But the France of Francis I. had no colonizing grip, and La Nouvelle France was simply a name which stretched along the Atlantic seaboard on the French charts of the sixteenth century. On the return of Henry Hudson, his discovery was claimed by his patrons, the Dutch East India Company. They named the river the Mauritius[13] (Prince Maurice’s River), and the outlying country, known as Nieu Nederlandt, had good report in Holland for its furs and friendly savages. The Amsterdam merchants were alert, and other Dutch vessels, following in the wake of the _Half-Moon_, pushed up the river to the head of navigation. There they found on the west bank the Maquaas, or Mohawks, and on the east bank the Mahicans, or Mohegans, with whom they had profitable transactions. To consolidate and protect their ventures, a group of merchants petitioned the States-General of Holland for the exclusive privilege of traffic with the aborigines on the river. The elaborate map of Nieu Nederlandt which they presented with their petition was discovered in 1841 in the royal archives at the Hague, and a facsimile is now in the State Library at Albany.[14] A license for three years was granted. Thereupon, in 1615, the ruined _château_ on Castle Island was rebuilt, equipped with two cannon and garrisoned with a dozen Dutch soldiers. In compliment to the Stadtholder, it received the name of Fort Nassau. This occupancy in force of Castle Island (now called Van Rensselaer Island) was brief, for the spring freshets proved too much for even the amphibious Dutch musketeers and traders, and it hardly can be called a settlement. It is an interesting fact, that the valley of the Hudson narrowly missed the honor of being settled by the passengers of the _Mayflower_. Under the November skies of 1620, that historic vessel, with its valuable cargo of religious and political seed-corn, for several days had been beating about the point of Cape Cod. Old Governor Bradford, with quaint spelling and phrasing, tells the story of the mishap: