Dutch traders annually visited the region of Hudson River during the next few years. There was at first no attempt at colonization, for Holland just at that time was not prepared to give offence to her old enemy, Spain, which claimed most of North America by the right of discovery and Pope Alexander's bull of partition. Nevertheless, the country was styled New Netherland, and Holland recognized it as a legal dependency. A Dutch navigator, Adrian Block, as the result of an accident, spent a winter on either Manhattan or Long Island, and built a coasting-vessel (1614) for trafficking in furs. A small trading-house, called Fort Nassau, was also erected this year on the site of Albany; a similar establishment, without defences, and surrounded by a few huts for traders, was built on Manhattan Island, at the mouth of the river, the following season (1615); a new Fort Nassau was afterwards (1623) set up on the Delaware River, four miles below the site of Philadelphia, but was soon abandoned. Sidenote: The New Netherlands Company. In 1615 the New Netherland Company obtained a trading charter from the States-General of Holland. The corporation was granted a monopoly of the Dutch fur-traffic in New Netherland for three years, and conducted extensive operations between Albany and the Delaware, coastwise and in the interior. The Dutch thus far had not ventured to exercise political control over the New Netherland. The country was still claimed by the English Virginia Company. The land originally granted to the Pilgrims from Leyden by the latter company was described as being "about the Hudson's River." We have seen how the party on the "Mayflower" were prevented by storms--or possibly by the design of the captain--from reaching their destination and planting an English colony in the neighborhood of the Dutch trading posts. Sidenote: The Dutch West India Company.