“After some deliberation had amongst them selves and with yᵉ mʳ of yᵉ ship, they tacked aboute and resolved to stande for yᵉ southward (yᵉ wind and weather being faire) to finde some place aboute Hudsons river for their habitation. But after they had sailed yᵗ course aboute halfe yᵉ day, they fell amongst dangerous shoulds and roring breakers, and they were so farr intangled ther with as they conceived them selves in great danger; & yᵉ wind shrinking upon them withall they resolved to bear up again for the Cape.”[15] [Illustration: OLD CHART OF NIEU NEDERLANDT.] Thus Plymouth Rock became the intellectual door-stone of the New World, and the banks of the Hudson inherited one of the sad “might-have-beens” of history. However, Douglas Campbell, in his trenchant and disturbing book, _The Puritan in Holland, England and America_, has told us that the distinctive principles of our American social and political life show, on critical inspection, the Dutch hall-mark. The America of 1621 was much more of a “dark continent” than the Africa of fifty years ago. The adjective applies both to the skin of the autochthons and the mind of the explorers. In the commercial circles of Amsterdam, Nieu Nederlandt was supposed to be a part of the West Indies. Therefore it was that the new company which was devised for its exploitation and chartered in the year mentioned, took the name of The Dutch West India Company. Under its auspices, in March, 1624, the ship _Nieu Nederlandt_ sailed from Amsterdam by the accustomed route of the Canary Islands for the Mauritius River. She carried thirty families, chiefly Walloons, refugees from Belgium who had settled in Holland, and a few Dutch freemen. Some of the families were landed on Manhattan Island, but the majority proceeded up the river and selected for their settlement the fat meadow on the west shore above Castle Island. Under the shadow of the clay hill on which the Capitol now lifts its masses of sculptured granite, they built rude huts sheathed in bark, and a little log fort which they named Fort Orange. The Indians were friendly and eager to barter, and enthusiastic reports were at once sent over to Holland, with corroborative otter and beaver skins.