and lasting enemies of the French. On the 6th of September, 1609, Henry Hudson, an Englishman, sailing under the orders of the Dutch East India Company, entered the Bay of New York, discovered the great river which bears his name, and ascended it to within a few miles of the present city of Albany. He took possession of the country for the Government of Holland, by which it was named New Netherlands. A few years later trading posts and forts were established on Manhattan Island (New York City), at the mouth of the Hudson, and at Fort Orange (Albany). In 1623, thirty families settled on Manhattan Island, and called their settlement New Amsterdam, and in the same year eighteen families came over to Fort Orange. From this time the Dutch settlements grew rapidly. They extended along the Hudson, as far eastward as Connecticut, and as far southward as the Delaware. The Swedes, who had settled the latter river, and had villages along both banks of the Delaware, almost as far up as the present city of Philadelphia, resisted the Dutch encroachments, but were finally driven away in 1655 by a military expedition of the latter. The English, who claimed the whole country by right of Cabot's discovery, finding that all diplomatic efforts to induce the Dutch to abandon their American settlements were vain, terminated the controversy by taking forcible possession of the province of New Netherlands in 1664. They changed the names of the province and the principal settlement, New Amsterdam, to New York, and that of Fort Orange to Albany, in honor of the Duke of York and Albany (afterwards James II., of England), to whom Charles II. had granted the territory.

That portion of New Jersey lying along the Hudson was settled by the Dutch about the same time that the colony of New Amsterdam. began to attract emigrants from Holland. The Swedes settled the southwest portion along the Delaware, in 1627. It fell into the hands of the English when New York was seized by them, and at the same time acquired the name which it bears at present. Sir George Carteret and Lord Berkeley purchased the territory from the Duke of York, and made it a distinct colony, naming it New Jersey, after the island of Jersey, of which Sir George had been governor.

Delaware was settled by the Dutch in 1630. They established their settlement near Lewes. In 1633, it was entirely destroyed by the Indians. In 1637, a company of Swedes and Finns made a settlement on the island of Tinicum, a few miles below Philadelphia. Several other settlements were formed, and the country was called New Sweden. The Dutch, after protesting against this occupation of

the territory by the Swedes, made war upon them, and in 1655 reduced the Swedish forts, and sent back to Europe all the colonists who refused to swear allegiance to Holland. The Delaware settlements were held by the Dutch until the final conquest of New Netherlands by the English. The title to the Delaware lands was disputed by Lord Baltimore, but was held by the Duke of York, who sold it to William Penn. Penn's rights were sustained by the English authorities, and the three counties of Delaware remained a part of Pennsylvania until 1703, when they were allowed the liberty

of forming a separate establishment. Until 1776, however, the same governor administered the affairs of Pennsylvania and Delaware.

In 1681, William Penn procured a grant of the lands west of the Delaware, and in 1682 he brought over a colony of Friends, or Quakers, and founded the city of Philadelphia. His colony flourished from the beginning, and by treating the Indians with kindness and justice in his dealings with them, he secured their warm friendship, and a consequent immunity from the savage warfare to which the other colonies were subjected. There was peace between the Indians and the whites for nearly one hundred years. About the year 1710, there was a large emigration of Germans to Pennsylvania. They settled in the southern counties of the colony, which are to this day strongly marked by German characteristics.

Maryland, so called in honor of Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I., was originally settled by a band of adventurers, under Captain William Clayborne, who went from Virginia, and established themselves on Kent Island, near the head of Chesapeake Bay. The province was granted by Charles I. to Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore, in 1632. The next year the first colony, consisting of 201 persons, mostly Roman Catholics, sailed for America in two vessels, called the Ark and the Dove. They landed on St. Clement's Island, on the 25th of March, 1634, and on the 27th began the settlement of St. Mary's, in what is now St. Mary's County in that State. Their first legislative assembly met in 1639, and in 1649 passed the first law ever enacted in America granting religious freedom to all persons. This memorable Act will be found in the historical sketch of the State of Maryland farther on.

In 1670, the settlement of South Carolina was begun by English colonists, who first located themselves at Port Royal, but soon removed to Charleston. The country south of Virginia was given the general name of Carolina, and was governed by the proprietors under an absurd constitution prepared by John Locke. In 1727, the King of England bought out the proprietors, and divided the territory into two provinces, called respectively North and South Carolina. Settlements in North Carolina were formed by emigrants from Virginia as early as 1653. From that time this part of the province continued to increase in population as rapidly as the southern part. A very large number of French Calvinists, about the year 1690, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, settled in South Carolina. Some years later they were followed by a number of Swiss, Irish, and Germans.

Georgia, originally a part of Carolina, was settled in 1733, by a band of English emigrants, under General James Oglethorpe. The first settlement was made at Yamacraw Bluff, the site of the present city of Savannah. The province was named in honor of George II. of England.

Georgia was the last settled of all the English colonies, having been founded 127 years after the landing at Jamestown. During the interval which elapsed between these two events, the French had firmly planted themselves in Canada, and had established settlements along some of the great lakes and the upper Ohio, and in portions of Indiana, Illinois, and Louisiana, and the Spanish had settled Florida and New Mexico. The English, after the settlement of Georgia, possessed thirteen vigorous and flourishing colonies in America, which were rapidly growing in importance, wealth, and power. They had an aggregate population of about 2,000,000, and were actively engaged in agriculture, manufactures, and commerce. The majority of the inhabitants were from England, or of English parentage, but there was also a liberal admixture of Scotch, Irish, French, and German elements. The prevailing religious sentiment of the New England colonies was Calvinistic. Quakerism predominated in Pennsylvania, and Roman Catholicism in Maryland; while the Church of England claimed as her children the majority of the people of New York and of the southern colonies. African slavery had become firmly established in the South, and the industry of that section had been based upon it. The institution of slavery, and the presence of considerable wealth in all the colonies of the South, had rendered it. useless for the better classes of the people to labor for their own support, and had engendered habits of aristocratic luxury, while the climate had cast over all ranks that fatal spell of indolence and lack of energy which has always been the bane of that section. In the Northern colonies labor was a necessity with all classes. They had been originally poorer in wealth than their Southern neighbors, and had also a less generous climate, and a soil which required to be worked with the utmost energy and fidelity. Nature did but little for them, and they were forced to make up the deficiency by their own efforts, a necessity which, though hard at first, eventually proved their greatest blessing. They were thus trained in habits of patient and intelligent industry, which they have left to their children. By the period of which we are writing (1732) they had made their bleak country to blossom as a rose, had established thriving cities and

towns, and, besides laying the sure foundations of an enormous system of manufactures and trade, had already acquired considerable wealth. Learning and the refining arts were common amongst them. England, it is true, did much to hamper and destroy the industry of all the colonies, hoping by this short-sighted policy to ensure their dependence upon her, but American energy flourished in spite of the mother country.

Nor were the material interests of the country the only ones consulted. One of the very first cares of the settlers was to establish a system of common school education. This system was simple enough at first, but it steadily improved, as the colonies continued to prosper. Schools were established in Virginia in 1621, in the Plymouth Colony soon after, and in New Amsterdam shortly after its settlement. In 1637, Harvard College was founded in Massachusetts; in 1692, William and Mary College was established in Virginia; in 1701, Yale College was founded in Connecticut; in 1738, the College of New Jersey was established; and in 1754, King's (now Columbia) College was founded in New York. With the exception of William and Mary College, which was destroyed by fire during the late civil war, all of these institutions are in operation to-day.

It does not belong to this portion of our work to present a detailed statement of the difficulties which lay in the path of the colonies during the first century after the settlement of the country. A more minute account will be presented in the historical sketches of the States, and we must confine ourselves here to a mere general outline of the progress of events.

The first settlers found the Indians very friendly, and for some time maintained kindly relations with them; but as the number of the whites increased, decided encroachments were made upon the hunting grounds of the savages, and this, with various other causes of quarrel, brought about a series of long and bloody wars with the Indians, which continued with but slight intermission from the death of King Powhatan, the great Virginian chief and the friend of the whites, in 1622, until the red men were driven west of the Mississippi, after the close of the second war with England. They were expelled from the greater number of the Atlantic States, or forced to submit to the authority of the whites, by the close of the Revolution. Their power was broken in Virginia by the death of Opecancanough, in 1644; in New England by the death of King Philip, in 1676; and in the Carolinas by the destruction of the Yemassees, in 1715. West