themselves "The United Colonies of New England." The object of the confederation was common action in defence against the Indians and the Dutch on the Hudson. It was the beginning of the cementing of New England. Before this time, small settlements had been planted here and there in northern New England, within territory covered by grants made to Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Captain John Mason. The province claimed by Gorges was subsequently called Maine, and that of Mason, New Hampshire; but Maine never rose to an independent colonial existence. After years of dispute and litigation, between 1651, and 1677, the jurisdiction of Massachusetts was extended over the province, and it remained the "District of Maine" until 1820, when Massachusetts yielded the separation which made it a sovereign state in the American Union. The New Hampshire settlements were also annexed to Massachusetts, in 1641, after Captain Mason's death; were separated in 1679, to be organized as a royal province; were temporarily reclaimed without royal authority in 1685; but finally parted from Massachusetts in 1692, from which time until the Revolution they remained a distinct colony. See NEW ENGLAND; also MASSACHUSETTS, CONNECTICUT, RHODE ISLAND, NEW HAMPSHIRE, and MAINE. While the English were thus colonizing New England at the north and Virginia at the south, the Dutch, not recognizing their claims to the country between, had taken possession of the important valley of the Hudson River and the region around its mouth, and had named the country "New Netherland." The river had been discovered in 1609 by Henry Hudson, an English sailor, but exploring in the service of the Dutch. Trading with the Indians for furs was begun the next year; the coast and the rivers of the region were actively explored; a New Netherland Company was chartered; a trading-house, called Fort Nassau, was built on the Hudson as far to the north, or nearly so, as Albany; but no real colonization was undertaken until 1623. The New Netherland Company had then been superseded by the Dutch West India Company, with rights and powers extending to Africa as well as the West Indies and the North American coasts. It bought Manhattan Island and large tracts of land from the Indians, but had little success for several years in settling them. In 1629 it introduced a strange experiment, creating a kind of feudal system in the New World, by conveying great estates to individuals, called Patroons, or Patrons, who would undertake to colonize them, and who received with their territorial grant much of the powers and many of the characteristics of a feudal lord. {3167} Several Patroon colonies were established on a baronial scale; but, generally, the system did not produce satisfactory results, and in 1640 the Company tried the better experiment