Executive Government of New Netherland: South Bay and Holland

Compared with other sources of wealth, the profits derived from New Netherland now seemed insignificant to the Company, and they devised new schemes for increasing the value of the province. Nothing seemed wiser than an increase in the population; so they adopted the plan of making separate and independent colonies on the Hudson and Delaware rivers, in the form of manorial estates not more than sixteen miles in length if lying on one side of a river, or eight miles if on both sides, as we have observed on page 267. They were to be fashioned after then existing manors in Holland and England. In order to enlist private capital in this undertaking, the College of XIX proposed to give a charter which should confer those "patroon" privileges and exemptions mentioned on the page above referred to. This proposition was approved by the States-General in 1630; and so the feudal system displayed by the manorial estates in Holland and England was transferred to America.

Governor Minuit returned o Amsterdam in 1632, leaving the province in a state of increasing prosperity. The fur trade was enlarging. Comfortable homes and commodious warehouses were seen clustered around Fort Amsterdam, and gardens were blooming around many dwellings. He was succeeded the following year by Walter Van Twiller, a narrow-minded and inexperienced clerk in the Company's warehouse at Amsterdam, who had married the niece of the rich pearl-merchant Killian Van Rensselaer, one of the directors. Van Twiller seems to have had very little fitness for the position of governor of the colony, excepting the alacrity with which he would be likely to serve the interests of his wife's rich kinsman, who has become a "patroon" and whose estate lay on each side of the upper Hudson, at the site of Albany and its surroundings. He had been employed by the "patroon" in shipping cattle to his colony, and was pretty well versed in the mysteries of traffic. But he was entirely ignorant of public affairs, and had not a single quality of a statesman. He was one of those sleek, rotund, bullet-headed Dutchmen who had ease of mind and body; dull of intellect, yet shrewd and cunning; courageous when there was no danger; always undecided and wavering, and was a capital butt for the jokes of the wiser men of New Amsterdam. Irving has left us a spirited caricature of his person, as a "model of majesty and lordly grandeur." The chronicler says"

"He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere, and of such stupendous dimensions that dame Nature, with al her sex's ingenuity, would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and settled it firmly on the top of his backbone just between his shoulders. his legs were very short, but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain; so that, when erect, he had not a little the appearance of a beer-barrel on skids. his face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse unfurrowed by any of those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small grey eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament; and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were variously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like a Spitzenberg apple. His habits were as regular as his person. He daily took his four stated meals, appropriating exactly an hour to each; he smoked and doubted eight hours, and he slept the remaining twelve of the four-and-twenty."

Van Twiller's administration lasted about four years, and the colony flourished in spite of him. Just before his advent, a pleasant intercourse was opened with Virginia by Captain de Vries, one of the "patroons," who had an estate on the South or Delaware River, where he had others attempted to establish a whale fishery. It did not succeed; but De Vries made valuable explorations up the river and formed salutary relations with the natives. He finally sailed for Virginia for supplies, rightfully supposing that he would find corn more abundant there than at New Amsterdam. He was anxious, too, to be the first Hollander from New Netherland to enter the James River. As his vessel neared the shore at Jamestown, and displayed the flag of Holland, Sir John Harvey, then Governor of Virginia, came down to the beach with some halberdiers, and in a friendly tone demanded where he was from. "From the South Bay in New Netherlands," said Captain De Vries. The governor invited him to his house, presented him with a glass of "Venice sack," and then taking an English chart, pointed out South Bay as named Delaware in honor of Lord De La Ware (a former governor of Virginia), who, some years before, had been driven into that bay. Finding it full of shoals and supposing it to be unnavigable, the English, Harvey said, had" not looked after it since. Yet it is our king's land," he continued, "and not New Netherland."