A third nation now appeared upon the scene as a competitor for the Delaware country. The South Company of Sweden--which purposed trading in Asia, Africa, and America, but especially in the last--had been chartered in 1624, under the auspices of the enterprising and ambitious Gustavus Adolphus, by Willem Usselinx, an Amsterdam merchant, founder of the Dutch West India Company. Usselinx had become embittered against the Dutch company, which pursued a narrow and exclusive policy; and with him in this new enterprise were associated several who had been formerly connected with the Dutch corporation. Among these were Samuel Blommaert, one of the chief patroons in the Delaware region, and Peter Minuit, a Walloon, once governor at New Amsterdam. Minuit led the first Swedish trading colony to the Delaware River (1638), and erected Fort Christina on the future site of Wilmington, Del. Sidenote: The rivals on the Delaware. The governor at New Amsterdam, Kieft, protested loudly against this invasion of soil claimed by the Dutch, although it was clearly within the grant already made to Lord Baltimore by the English, who probably had as good right in the district as the Dutch. The latter had indeed for a time allowed it to revert to the Indians, after their first colonizing attempt. Kieft rebuilt Fort Nassau, a menace to which the Swedes replied by fortifying the island of Tinicum, six miles below the mouth of the Schuylkill, thus planting the first colony in Pennsylvania as well as in Delaware. In 1643 this island became the seat of Swedish government. Sidenote: Prosperity of New Sweden. New Sweden prospered. The settlers were industrious, thrifty, intelligent, and contented. Along the shores of Delaware River and Bay were scattered neat hamlets, and the company's fur-trade was extended far into the interior. Sidenote: Swedish aggressiveness ends in the fall of New Sweden. In 1641 two English settlements were made on the river by New Haven men; but there was good reason to distrust the new-comers, who belonged to a land-hungry race, and Dutch and Swedes united to drive them out. Possibly the Swedes might have finally settled down into friendly neighborhood relations with the Dutch, had not the Swedish governor, John Printz, adopted an aggressive attitude towards the New Netherlanders. This led to reprisals. Stuyvesant, who succeeded Kieft at New Amsterdam, built Fort Casimir, near the present city of Newcastle, Del., below the Swedish forts (1651), and thus endeavored to cut them off from ocean communication. In 1654 a Swedish war-vessel anchored before Casimir, which was quietly surrendered. The next year (1655) Stuyvesant raised an army of six or seven hundred men, which suddenly appeared on the Delaware, overawed the Swedes, and compelled them to abandon control of the region. Thus New Sweden fell, amid a storm of protest, but without bloodshed. Sidenote: The Dutch domination.