The reports sent abroad by Hudson’s men when they found themselves once more in Holland in the late autumn of 1609, were repeated and passed from town to town among merchants who were as eager for trade as they were stolid in manner. Small ships were soon plying westward, bent upon trade with the well disposed Indians whom Hudson found scattered from Manhattan Island to the place where Albany now stands. The possibilities of profit in the fur trade were quickly discovered by these shrewd merchants; the nucleus of a settlement was made on the island, and rude huts hastily put together were the beginnings of one of the greatest of modern cities. The traders bought furs, tobacco, and corn in exchange for trinkets and rum; they hunted, fished, and lived after the manner of their time and kind, but for the most part on good terms with their Indian neighbors; at long intervals tiny ships from the old world crept into the harbor, and went back again laden with the skins of the beaver, the otter, and the sable. In 1621 the West India Company received a charter from the States-General of Holland, with the monopoly of the American trade, and a grant of the vast territory discovered by Hudson, which was called the New Netherlands. The great trading company, one of a small group of commercial organizations of almost sovereign powers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, drew its profits not only from barter with Indians, but from the sacking of cities on the Spanish Main and the capture of Spanish treasure-ships. In 1624 families arrived on the island and community life began in New Amsterdam; two years later the first governor of the Colony arrived with a company who brought their wives, children, cattle, and household goods of all kinds with them and, by giving these hostages to fortune, committed themselves irrevocably to the new world and its destinies. Manhattan Island was bought from the Indians for twenty-four dollars, and the name of New Amsterdam reminded the settlers of their blood and their history. It was not, however, until Peter Stuyvesant took up the reins of government with a firm hand and in a somewhat choleric temper that the little community ceased to be a trading-post and became a Dutch colonial town. The first comers were largely penniless; the later comers were men of position and substance. Many races were soon represented in the new town, but the Dutch remained for many years the ruling class. In 1664 the Colony passed into English hands and New Amsterdam became New York.