Читать книгу Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664 - Various - Страница 6

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At some time before his death in 1800, Father Jean Joseph Casot, the last of the old race of Jesuits in Canada, seeing his order about to expire under the restrictions then imposed by the British government, and determined that all the materials for its history should not perish by reason of his death, made a selection from among its papers, and placed the portion thus preserved in the custody of the Augustinian nuns of the Hotel Dieu of Quebec. There they remained safe till in 1843 they were restored to the Society, then revived and under the charge of Father Martin, as superior of the Jesuits in Canada. Among these papers was the following, in which Father Jogues, at the time of his last sojourn in New France, described New Netherland as he had seen it three years before.

Father Martin presented a transcript of the document, accompanied with an English translation, to the regents of the University of the State of New York. The translation was then published, in 1851, in volume IV. of O'Callaghan's Documentary History of the State of New York (pp. 21-24 of the octavo edition, pp. 15-17 of the edition in quarto). The French original was printed for the first time in 1852 in an appendix to Father Martin's translation of Bressani's Breve Relatione. In 1857, Dr. John Gilmary Shea printed in the Collections of the New York Historical Society, second series, III. 215-219, a translation which, after revision by the present editor, is printed in the following pages. Dr. Shea made separate publication of the French text in his Cramoisy series in 1862, and in the same year published another edition of original and translation. Both likewise appear in Thwaites's Jesuit Relations, XXVIII. 105-115. Dr. Thwaites also gives a facsimile of the first page of the original manuscript which Father Jogues wrote at Three Rivers, with hands crippled by the cruel usage of the Mohawks.

NOVUM BELGIUM, BY FATHER ISAAC JOGUES, 1646

NEW HOLLAND, which the Dutch call in Latin Novum Belgium,—in their own language, Nieuw Nederland, that is to say, New Low Countries—is situated between Virginia and New England. The mouth of the river, which some people call Nassau, or the Great North River, to distinguish it from another which they call the South River, and which I think is called Maurice River on some maps that I have recently seen, is at 40 deg. 30 min. The channel is deep, fit for the largest ships, which ascend to Manhattes Island, which is seven leagues in circuit, and on which there is a fort to serve as the commencement of a town to be built here, and to be called New Amsterdam.

This fort, which is at the point of the island, about five or six leagues from the [river's] mouth, is called Fort Amsterdam; it has four regular bastions, mounted with several pieces or artillery. All these bastions and the curtains were, in 1643, but mounds, most of which had crumbled away, so that one entered the fort on all sides. There were no ditches. For the garrison of the said fort, and another which they had built still further up against the incursions of the savages, their enemies, there were sixty soldiers. They were beginning to face the gates and bastions with stone. Within the fort there was a pretty large stone church,(1) the house of the Governor, whom they called Director General, quite neatly built of brick, the storehouses and barracks.

(1) See De Vries, p. 212, supra, and the Representation of New Netherland.

On the island of Manhate, and in its environs, there may well be four or five hundred men of different sects and nations: the Director General told me that there were men of eighteen different languages; they are scattered here and there on the river, above and below, as the beauty and convenience of the spot invited each to settle: some mechanics however, who ply their trade, are ranged under the fort; all the others were exposed to the incursions of the natives, who in the year 1643, while I was there, actually killed some two score Hollanders, and burnt many houses and barns full of wheat.

The river, which is very straight, and runs due north and south, is at least a league broad before the fort. Ships lie at anchor in a bay which forms the other side of the island, and can be defended by the fort.

Shortly before I arrived there, three large ships of 300 tons each had come to load wheat; two found cargoes, the third could not be loaded, because the savages had burnt a part of the grain. These ships had come from the West Indies, where the West India Company usually keeps up seventeen ships of war.

No religion is publicly exercised but the Calvinist, and orders are to admit none but Calvinists, but this is not observed; for besides the Calvinists there are in the colony Catholics, English Puritans, Lutherans, Anabaptists, here called Mnistes,(1) etc.

(1) Mennonistes, Mennonites.

When any one comes to settle in the country, they lend him horses, cows, etc.; they give him provisions, all which he returns as soon as he is at ease; and as to the land, after ten years he pays in to the West India Company the tenth of the produce which he reaps.

This country is bounded on the New England side by a river they call the Fresche River,(1) which serves as a boundary between them and the English. The English, however, come very near to them, choosing to hold lands under the Hollanders, who ask nothing, rather than depend on the English Milords, who exact rents, and would fain be absolute. On the other side, southward, towards Virginia, its limits are the river which they call the South River, on which there is also a Dutch settlement,(2) but the Swedes have one at its mouth extremely well supplied with cannons and men.(3) It is believed that these Swedes are maintained by some Amsterdam merchants, who are not satisfied that the West India Company should alone enjoy all the commerce of these parts.(4) It is near this river that a gold mine is reported to have been found.

(1) Connecticut.

(2) Fort Nassau, at the mouth of Timber Creek.

(3) He probably means Fort Nya Elfsborg, on the Jersey side

of Delaware Bay, below Salem.

(4) The reference is to aid rendered by Samuel Blommaert, an

Amsterdam merchant, formerly a director of the Dutch West

India Company, in fitting out the first Swedish expedition

in 1637, and in engaging Peter Minuit to command it.

Blommaert's letters to the Swedish chancellor, Count Axel

Oxenstjerna, thirty-eight in number, 1635-1641, letters of

great importance to the history of New Sweden, have just

been published in the Bijdragen en Mededeelingen of the Utrecht Historical Society, vol. XXIX.

See in the work of the Sieur de Laet of Antwerp, the table and chapter on New Belgium, as he sometimes calls it, or the map "Nova Anglia, Novu Belgium et Virginia."(1)