31. In matters of religion, the fathers of New England were sometimes intolerant and superstitious. Their religious faith was gloomy. Human life was deemed a sad, a miserable journey. To be mistaken was to sin. To fail in trifling ceremonies was reckoned a crime. In the shadow of such belief the people became austere and melancholy. They set up a cold and severe form of worship. Dissenters themselves, they could not tolerate the dissent of others. To punish error seemed to the Pilgrims right and necessary. But Puritanism contained within itself the power to correct its own abuses. The evils of the system may well be forgotten in the glory of its achievements. Without the Puritans, America would have been a delusion and liberty only a name. CHAPTER XIV. NEW YORK.--SETTLEMENT AND ADMINISTRATION OF STUYVESANT. [Illustration: New Amsterdam.] The settlement of New Amsterdam resulted from the voyages of the brave Sir Henry Hudson. For ten years after its founding, the colony was governed by the directors of the Dutch East India Company. In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was organized, and Manhattan Island, with its cluster of huts, passed at once under the control of the new corporation. [Sidenote: =Dutch Settlements.=] 2. In April, 1623, the ship _New Netherland_, with thirty families on board, arrived at New Amsterdam. The colonists, called WALLOONS, were Dutch Protestant refugees. Cornelius May was the leader of the company. Most of the new immigrants settled with their friends on Manhattan; but the captain, with a party of fifty, made explorations as far as Delaware Bay. 3. In May the island, containing more than twenty thousand acres, was purchased from the natives _for twenty-four dollars_. A block-house was built and surrounded with a palisade. New Amsterdam was already a town of thirty houses. The Dutch of New Amsterdam and the Pilgrims of New Plymouth were early and fast friends. [Sidenote: =The Patroons.=] 4. In 1628 the population of Manhattan numbered two hundred and seventy. The settlers engaged in the fur-trade. In 1629 the West India Company framed a CHARTER OF PRIVILEGES, under which a class of proprietors, called patroons, were authorized to colonize the country. The conditions were that each patroon should purchase his lands of the Indians; and that he should establish a colony of not less than fifty persons. Five estates were immediately laid out. Three of them were on the Hudson; the fourth, on Staten Island; and the fifth, in the southern half of Delaware.