board to ascertain from whence the yachts or ships come.
It is not much better than exercising the right of search.
It will, to all appearance, come to this in the end. What
authority these people can have to do this, we know not;
nor can we comprehend how officers of other potentates,
(at least as they say they are, yet what commission they
have we do not yet know,) can make themselves master of,
and assume authority over, lands and goods belonging to
and possessed by other people, and sealed with their
blood, even without considering the Charter. The Minquas-
kil<3> is the first upon the river, and there the Swedes
have built Fort Christina. This place is well situated,
as large ships can lie close against the shore to load
and unload. There is, among others, a place on the river,
(called Schuylkil, a convenient and navigable stream,)
heretofore possessed by the Netherlanders, but how is it
now? The Swedes have it almost entirely under their
dominion. Then there are in the river several beautiful
large islands, and other places which were formerly possessed
by the Netherlanders, and which still bear the names given
by them. Various other facts also constitute sufficient
and abundant proof that the river belongs to the
Netherlanders, and not to the Swedes. Their very beginnings
are convincing, for eleven years ago, in the year 1638, one
Minne-wits,<4> who before that time had had the direction
at the Manathans, on behalf of the West India Company,
arrived in the river with the ship Kalmer-Sleutel [Key of
Calmar], and the yacht Vogel-Gryp [Griffin], giving out to
the Netherlanders who lived up the river, under the Company
and Heer vander Nederhorst, that he was on a voyage to the