Past the Cormorant we sail, Past the rippling Beaver Tail, Green with summer, red with flowers, Green with summer, fresh with showers, Sweet with song and red with flowers, Is this new-found land of ours! Roses close above the sand, Roses on the trees on land, I shall take this land for my land, Rosy beach and rosy highland, And I name it Roses Island. EDWARD EVERETT HALE. But troubles at home prevented any extensive effort at colonization until 1621, when the States-General chartered the Dutch West India Company, which in 1623 sent Captain Cornelius Jacobsen Mey, with thirty families, to start the colony. THE PRAISE OF NEW NETHERLAND With sharpened pen and wit, one tunes his lays, To sing the vanity of fame and praise; His moping thoughts, bewildered in a maze, In darkness wander. What brings disgrace, what constitutes a wrong, These form the burden of the tuneful song: And honor saved, his senses then among The dark holes ponder. For me, it is a nobler thing I sing. New Netherland springs forth my heroine; Where Amstel's folk did erst their people bring, And still they flourish. New Netherland, thou noblest spot of earth, Where Bounteous Heaven ever poureth forth The fulness of His gifts, of greatest worth, Mankind to nourish. Whoe'er to you a judgment fair applies, And knowing, comprehends your qualities, Will justify the man who, to the skies, Extols your glories. Who studies well your natural elements, And with the plumb of science, gains a sense Of all the four: fails not in their defence, Before free juries. Your _Air_, so clear, so sharp to penetrate, The western breezes softly moderate; And, tempering the heat, they separate It from all moisture. From damp, and mist, and fog, they set it free; From smells of pools, they give it liberty: The struggling stenches made to mount on high, And be at peace there. No deadly pest its purity assails, To spread infection o'er your hills and vales, Save when a guilty race, great sins bewails In expiating. Your Sun, th' original of _Fire_ and heat, The common nutriment of both to eat, Is warm and pure; in plants most delicate, Much sap creating. Nor turf, nor dried manure,--within your doors, Nor coal, extracted from earth's secret stores, Nor sods, uplifted from the barren moors, For fuel given; Which, with foul stench the brain intoxicate, And thus, by the foul gas which they create. The intellects of many, wise and great, Men are out-driven. The forests do, with better means, supply The hearth and house; the stately hickory, Not planted, does the winter fell defy,-- A valiant warden; So closely grained, so rich with fragrant oil, Before its blaze both wet and cold recoil;