The founders entered into possession. The Indians bade them welcome, and began to move their wigwams up the valley. It was their first step in the many stages of their unreturning journey toward the setting sun. Their own sun thus passed its zenith, but they did not know it. The colonists fixed their home or village lots upon the land above the sweep of the river floods, occupying for this purpose that part of the city west of the present Ferry Street. They assigned to each proprietor a village lot, two hundred feet square; a larger lot for a garden just south of the village, and a farm upon the bottom-lands beyond, with privileges in the outlying woodlands. Other settlers joined them. They sold them village lots and farm and garden lands, until the farm lands of the Van Curler grant were disposed of. Those who came still later bought village lots, but they had to buy farms of the Indians from lands outside of the Van Curler grant. Mechanics, traders and workmen came who did not want land, or lacked the means to buy it. Many of the proprietors were rich enough to own slaves, which—or shall I say whom?—they brought with them. Very soon by dint of industry their houses were built of the lumber sawed at their own mills, their farms were promising abundant crops, their gardens were blossoming, while their cattle were grazing in more distant pastures. In this little republic the freeholders were the source of authority. By them and of them five trustees were elected “for maintaining good order and advancing their settlement.” The “Reformed Nether Dutch Church” was early established with its elders and deacons, and later, with its settled domine, maintained a guardianship over the people and especially the widows, orphans, and the poor. The community was under the titular jurisdiction of the province; the laws of Holland were in force with respect to contracts, property rights, and domestic relations, and were observed as a matter of course. The governor appointed the trustees or their nominees, _schepens_ or justices of the peace, and they appointed a _schout_ or constable, with large executive powers. This official, conscious of his power, and arrayed in a garb denoting it, solemnly pointed his pipe stem and sometimes even shook his sword, at the wayward. If any were so refractory as not to mend their ways after such an admonition, he haled them before the schepen. This magistrate, as his commission was construed, had the right so to supply the defects in the Dutch laws and the ordinances of “Their High Mightinesses, the noble Dutch West India Company,” as to “make the punishment fit the crime.” This meant that he could impose such a fine as the schout thought collectible, or such other punishment as he would undertake to inflict. Causes of great gravity, such as complaints by the traders at Beverwyck that the accused had infringed upon their monopolies, were brought before that jurisdiction, but the records disclose no practical benefits to the