The return voyage was given up, for the new colonists were afraid to risk the fate of the others. And so, in the massacre of Zwannendael, ended the first settlement ever made on Delaware soil. Yet still the land had been possessed by the Dutch. It was not, any more, unclaimed land that belonged to any man that came along. When the King of England gave away all the land along that part of the coast to Lord Baltimore, only three years later, he could not give this land of Delaware, because it had already been settled by DeVries for Holland. Our state began when the Dutch colonists first stepped ashore on Paradise Point. [Illustration: Monument at Lewes to first Dutch Colony under DeVries—1631] NOTES [1] Bancroft says, “The voyage of DeVries was the cradling of a state, and that Delaware exists as a separate commonwealth is due to the colony he brought and planted on her shore. Though the colony was swept out of existence soon after, this charter, three years before the Maryland patent was granted Lord Baltimore, preserved Delaware.” [2] Giles Hosset in this position as Director of the Colony may well be called the first Governor of Delaware. [Illustration] How Once Upon A Time The Swedes Built A Fort. [Illustration: Old Swedes’ Church · Wilmington 1698] SPRING had come again. The sun shone as bright and clear as when, seven years before, DeVries and his Dutch settlers had sailed up the Delaware and landed on its shores. That was in 1631. Now it was the year 1638, and two other vessels[3] were sailing up the broad river. But these ships were not Dutch; they carried the colors of Sweden, and the men who crowded to the sides of the vessels to gaze at the unknown shores were Swedes. Six months before, these men, fifty in all, had started out from Gottenburg to journey across the sea to this new land. For six months they had been tossed and beaten by many storms upon the ocean, but now at last they had reached the promised land. Slowly they sailed up the river and past the mouth of the Hoornekill.[4] The colonists stared in silence at the spot where the little settlement of Zwannendael had once stood. Nothing marked the place now but a few blackened ruins; and these, wind and storm were slowly eating away. The Swedes did not stop there, but sailed on up the river. Their commander, Peter Minuit, had once been with the West India Company at New Netherlands, and knew something of the country and had a clear idea of where he wished to start his colony. Some miles above the Hoornekill, Minquas Creek (now our Christiana) emptied into the Delaware. Two and a half miles from its mouth, a point of rocks[5] jutted out into the stream and made a sort of natural wharf. It was upon this point that the Swedes made their landing. Stores and implements were carried to the shore, and soon the silence of the new land was broken by the sound of the ax and the voices of the settlers talking and calling to one another.