opportunities for knowing everything relating to Dutch enterprise. It is perfectly well known that the Plymouth Colonists of 1620 intended to settle at the Hudson, though circumstances directed them to the spot pointed out by Dermer in 1619, when in the service of Gorges. Thus, about seventeen years before the Committee of 1644 reported, Governor Bradford, an unwilling, but every way competent and candid witness, carried back the Dutch occupancy, under the Greenland Company, to the year 1600. Besides, on the English map of the voyage of Linschoten, 1598, there is a dotted trail from the latitude of the Hudson, 40° N. to the St. Lawrence, showing that the route was one known and traveled at that time. It is evident, from a variety of considerations, that both the Dutch and French resorted to the Hudson at this period to engage in the trade. Linschoten was one of the best informed of Dutch writers, and probably understood the significance of the representation upon his map. The probability is that this route was known a long time before, and that it may be indicated by Cartier, who, when in Canada, 1534, was told of a route by the way of the river Richelieu, to a country a month’s distance southward, supposed to produce cinnamon and cloves, which Cartier thought the route to Florida. Champlain, writing in Canada, says that, in the year previous, certain French who lived on the Hudson were taken prisoners when out on an expedition against the northern Indians, and were liberated, on the ground that they were friends of the French in Canada. This agrees with the report of the Labadists, who taught that a French child, Jean Vigné, was born here in 1614. Evidently the French had been on the ground in force for some years, and were able to make expeditions against the savages. Very likely the French were here quite as early as the Hollanders. There seems to be, however, another curious piece of confirmation, which comes from the writings of the celebrated Father Isaac Jogues, who was in New Amsterdam during the year 1646. In a letter written on August 3d of that year, he says that the Dutch were here, “about fifty years” before, while they began to settle permanently only about “twenty years” since. The latter statement is sufficiently correct, as 1623 was the year when a permanent colony was established by the Dutch. The former statement carries us back to the date of the “Greenland Company.”