In the year 1665, Surinam was successfully cultivated, mostly by planting tobacco. They had also raised above forty fine sugar plantations, and erected a strong fortress of hewn stone for their defence. It is proper however to remark, that some suppose these improvements were effected by the Portuguese, though at what period is uncertain; while the French strenuously dispute the point, and insist that they were the work of Monsieur Ponsert de Bretigny, when France had possession of that country. However this may be, the fortress is situated about sixteen or eighteen miles from the mouth of the river Surinam, and these industrious settlers found themselves perfectly happy in a small town which they had built under the walls. Their felicity was not of long duration; for in the wars between Charles the Second and the United Provinces, the Dutch having been driven in 1661 from the Brazils by the Portuguese, took the colony of Surinam from the English in 1667, under the command of a Captain Abraham Criuvon, who was dispatched for that purpose by the province of Zealand, with three ships of war and 300 marines. The English commander, William Biam, lost the settlement of Surinam by surprize, when above 600 of the best men in the colony were at work on the sugar plantations. This neglect appears from the trifling loss of the Dutch, who in storming the citadel had but one man killed. They immediately planted the Prince of Orange’s flag on the ramparts, and gave now to this fortress the name of Zealandia, and that of New Middleburge to the town of Paramaribo, after making the inhabitants, amongst other contributions, pay one hundred thousand pounds weight of sugar, and sending a number of them to the island of Tobago. This event took place in February, and in July following the peace was concluded at Breda. But, most unluckily for the new possessors of Surinam, it was concluded unknown to the English commodore, Sir John Harman, who in October that same year, having first taken Cayenne from the French, entered the river with a strong fleet of seven ships of war, two bomb-ketches, &c. and retook the colony from the Dutch, killing on this occasion above fifty of their men, and destroying nine pieces of cannon in Fort Zealandia. The new inhabitants were now in their turn laid under contribution, and the Dutch garrison were transported as prisoners to the island of Barbadoes.