Among the things which were shown to the Dutch explorers by the friendly Mohawks to confirm what they had said concerning the French, were the conspicuous ruins of the unfinished castle. The sagacious Hollanders, not unlikely thinking that the dilapidated building might be repaired with little expense, and made useful to them as a trading house, should they be licensed by the government of the Netherlands to return there to trade for furs with the Indians, took measurements of its walls and outworks. These _memoranda_ they also inscribed on the map of New Netherland. The castle, as described on the chart, was fifty-eight feet wide between the walls, and built in the form of a square, surrounded by a moat eighteen feet wide. The interior building was thirty-six feet long and twenty-six wide.[470] Although the Dutch explorers never left any definite information that they were personally the builders of the fortification on Castle Island, yet by naming it Fort Nassau, in honor of the stadtholder, Maurice, prince of Orange and of Nassau, they permitted historians to infer that they had constructed it, even before they had been privileged by the government of the Netherlands to occupy the country. As late as the year 1680, the Dutch residents of Albany were unenlightened respecting the nationality of the builders of the fort, some supposing that the Spaniards had erected it. This assumption was not generally credited, as there were no facts known that would verify the presence of the Spaniards in this part of the country. The two Labadist missionaries, Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter, who visited Albany in 1680, thus speak of the fort on Castle Island, and of the conjecture concerning the people who had built it: “In the afternoon [Sunday, April 28th] we took a walk to an island upon the end of which there is a fort built, they say, by the Spaniards. That a fort had been there is evident enough from the earth thrown up, but it is not to be supposed that the Spaniards came so far inland to build forts when there are no monuments of them to be seen on the sea-coasts, where, however, they have been according to the tradition of the Indians.”[471] FOOTNOTES [1] The Hebrew for man is derived from the verb (‏‎אדם‏‎), _to be red_. [2] Solon, one of the seven sages of Greece, was born about the year B. C. 639, and died about the year B. C. 558.