In April, 1583, Captain Carline wrote out propositions for a voyage “to the latitude of fortie degrees or thereabouts, of that hithermost part of America,” and, in 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert had this region under consideration, Hakluyt observing on the margin of his “Divers Voyages” that this was “the Countrey of Sir H. G. Uoyage.” Hays says in his account of the region, that “God hath reserved the same to be reduced unto Christian civility by the English nation” and, also that “God would raise him up an instrument to effect the same.” All this is very interesting in connection with English claims and enterprise. In the same year the French were active on the coast, and one Stephen Bellinger, of Rouen, sailed to Cape Breton, and thence coasted southwesterly six hundred miles “and had trafique with the people in tenne or twelve places.” Thus the French were moving from both the north and the south towards this central region; but we cannot say how far south Bellinger actually came, as there is nothing to indicate his mode of computation. It is not improbable that he knew and profited by the rich fur-trade of the Hudson. In 1598 and there about, we find it asserted that the Dutch were upon the ground, for, in the year 1644, the Committee of the Dutch West India Company, known as the General Board of Accounts, to whom numerous documents and papers have been intrusted, made a lengthy report, which they begin as follows: “New Netherland, situated in America, between English Virginia and New England, extending from the South [Delaware] river, lying in 34½ degrees to Cape Malabat, in the latitude of 41½ degrees, was first frequented by the inhabitants of this country in the year 1598, and especially by those of the Greenland Company, but without making any fixed settlements, only as a shelter in winter. For which they built on the North [Hudson] and the South [Delaware] rivers there two little forts against the attacks of the Indians.” Mr. Brodhead says that the statement “needs confirmation.” Still it is somewhat easy to understand why a statement of this kind coming from such a body should require confirmation; but the Committee had no reason for misstating the facts, and ought to have been accurately informed. Yet if confirmation is insisted upon, we are prepared to give it, such as it is, from an English and, in fact, an unexpected source. Our authority is no less a personage than Governor Bradford, of Plymouth Colony, whose office and inclinations led him to challenge all unfounded claims that might be put forth by the Dutch. Nevertheless, writing to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the father of New England colonization, who likewise was hostile to the pretensions of the Dutch, Bradford says, under date of June 15, 1627, that the Dutch on the Hudson “have used trading there this six-or-seven-and-twenty years, but have begun to plant of later time, and now have reduced their trade to some order.” Bradford lived in Holland in 1608, and had abundant