Journal of Our Voyage From New Netherland
Until Our Arrival at Wywert, in Friesland
1680, June 19th, Wednesday. We embarked at noon in the yacht of Mr. Padechal, supercargo and captain, residing in Boston. The anchor was weighed at last; but as we had to wait a long time for the governor’s yacht, the tide was nearly all spent. The wind was from the northwest. The crew consisted of three men and a boy, besides the captain; but there was another sailor on board who was a passenger. Many persons came to escort the captain, and also a woman, who was going with us; and as soon as they had gone we hastened to leave. The wind being ahead, we tacked and towed, until we anchored at Hellgate, almost at flood tide, at four o’clock, in the afternoon. The woman who was going over with us was born at Rhode Island, in New England, and was the wife of the captain of the Margaret, one of Frederick Flipsen’s ships. I have never in my whole life witnessed a worse, more foul, profane, or abandoned creature. She is the third individual we have met with from New England, and we remarked to each other, if the rest of the people there are to be judged by them, we might perhaps do them great injustice; for the first one from Boston whom we saw was a sailor, or he passed for one, on board the ship in which we sailed from the Fatherland. They called him the doctor, and if he were not or had not been a charlatan, he resembled one; the second was our skipper, Padechal, who had told us so many lies; and now this infamous woman. They all belong to this people who, it is said, pretend to special devoutness; but we found them, the sailor, and the rest, like all other Englishmen, who, if they are not more detestable than the Hollanders, are at least no better.
20th, Thursday. It was about ten o’clock in the forenoon before the flood began to make. The wind was southwest, but light. We weighed anchor and towed through Hellgate, when the wind and tide served us until we passed Whitestone,400 as far as which the tide, from the direction of New York, usually reaches. We sailed bravely by and obtained the ebb tide in our favor which carried us this evening beyond Milford.
21st, Friday. We had shot ahead very well during the night, with the wind west and south-southwest, on a course due east, so that by morning we reached the end of Long Island. The governor’s yacht, which had to stop at Fisher’s Island, a little to the leeward of us, which is subject to New England, but which the governor is now endeavoring to bring under his authority, and for that purpose had sent his yacht there with letters, left us this morning with a salute. We observed a vessel ahead of us under sail, running before the wind, and we came up to her about nine o’clock. She was a small flute from Milford, laden with horses and bound for Barbados. We hailed her, and as her captain was an acquaintance of our captain and an Independent, our captain went on board of her, where he staid two hours. When he returned we kept our course, and she sailed to the south in order to get to sea. As soon as we reached the end of Long Island, they began to throw their fish lines, and continued to catch mackerel all day long. I think the European mackerel are better and fatter. We came to an island called Maertens Wingaert,401 about four o’clock in the afternoon, having the Elizabeth Islands on the larboard and sailing between the two, with our course easterly and a lighter wind. Our captain had prayers every evening, performed in this way. The people were called together, and then, without anything being spoken previously, he read a chapter, then a psalm or part of one was sung, after that they all turned their backs to each other, half kneeling, when a common formulary of prayer was said which was long enough, but irreverently enough delivered. It was not done mornings. From what I have experienced the Hollanders perform it better, are more strict mornings and evenings, and more devout.
There was no moon, and the weather was cloudy. We continued sailing onward until two o’clock after midnight, when the captain going aloft cried out, “Strike the sails! strike the sails! let them run! let them run! we are on the rocks, let the anchor fall!” This startled me so that I cannot tell how I reached the deck, and ran forward. I saw we were indeed close upon a reef of rocks directly before us, and that we were under considerable headway. We did our best to lower the sails, and throw the anchor over. The headway was checked somewhat, but the anchor would not hold. We found that the spritsail had caught in the anchor-stock in consequence of the hurry in lowering the sail and throwing anchor, but it was some time before we could discover what was the matter and get the anchor loose; it then held fast in three fathoms of water at a musket shot’s distance from the reef and about as far from the shore. We lay there until daylight on a lee shore, but fortunately it did not blow hard.
22d, Saturday. As soon as the day broke, and we saw where we were, we got under sail again with the wind, the same as before. In sailing between the land, namely Maertens Wyngaert, and the reef, the course is to the point of the island, running east-southeast in three and two and a half fathoms till you have this point on the side, and then you have passed the reef. We continued on until we reached the westerly point of the island of Nantoeket, along which we sailed to the easterly point, and thence due north until noon; but the flood tide running in strong, and the vessel not being well steered, we were carried to the west among the shoals. The weather was rather rough and the atmosphere hazy, so that we could not see far. The shoals were ahead of us, and we had only two fathoms, and even less, of water. The captain and helmsman were confused, and hardly knew where they were. This happened two or three times. In order to avoid the shoals, we had to keep to the east. We were fearful we should strike upon them, and it was therefore best to look out and keep free of them. About three o’clock we caught sight of the main land of Cape Cod, to which we sailed northerly. We arrived inside the cape about six o’clock, with a tolerable breeze from the west, and at the same time saw vessels to the leeward of us which had an east wind, from which circumstance we supposed we were in a whirlwind. These two contrary winds striking against each other, the sky became dark, and they whirled by each other, sometimes the one, and sometimes the other being strongest, compelling us to lower the sails several times. I have never seen such a twisting and turning round in the air as at this time, the clouds being driven against each other, and close to the earth. At last it became calm and began to rain very hard, and to thunder and lighten heavily. We drifted along the whole night in a calm, advancing only twelve or sixteen miles.
23d, Sunday. A breeze blew up from the northeast. It was fortunate for us that we arrived inside of Cape Cod yesterday evening, before this unfavorable weather, as we should otherwise have been compelled to put back to Rhode Island. We could now still proceed; and we laid our course northwest to Boston. We arrived at the entrance of the harbor at noon, where we found a considerable rolling sea caused by the ebb tide and wind being against each other. There are about thirty islands here, not large ones, through which we sailed, and reached Boston at four o’clock in the afternoon, our captain running with his yacht quite up to his house in the Milk-ditch.402
The Lord be praised, who has continued in such a fatherly manner to conduct us, and given us so many proofs of His care over us; words are wanting to express ourselves properly, more than occasions for them, which we have had abundantly.
We permitted those most in haste to go ashore before us, and then went ourselves. The skipper received us politely at his house, and so did his wife; but as it was Sunday, which it seems is somewhat strictly observed by these people, there was not much for us to do to-day. Our captain, however, took us to his sister’s where we were welcome, and from there to his father’s, an old corpulent man, where there was a repetition of the worship, which took place in the kitchen while they were turning the spit, and busy preparing a good supper. We arrived while they were engaged in the service, but he did not once look up. When he had finished, they turned round their backs, and kneeled on chairs or benches. The prayer was said loud enough to be heard three houses off, and also long enough, if that made it good. This done, he wished us and his son welcome, and insisted on our supping with him, which we did. There were nine or ten persons at the table. It being in the evening, and we strangers, Mr. Padechal requested us to lodge with him this night, as we did, intending in the morning to look out for accommodations. We were taken to a fine large chamber, but we were hardly in bed before we were shockingly bitten. I did not know the cause, but not being able to sleep, I became aware it was bed-bugs, in such great numbers as was inconceivable. My comrade, who was very sleepy, fell asleep at first. He tumbled about very much; but I did not sleep any the whole night. In the morning we saw how it was, and were astonished we should find such a room with such a lady.
But before we part from the East River, we must briefly describe it. We have already remarked that it is incorrect to call this stream a river, as both ends of it run into the sea. It is nothing but salt water, an arm of the sea, embracing Long Island. It begins at the Little Bay of the North River, before the city of New York, pouring its waters with those of the North River into the sea, between Sandy Hook and Coney Island. In its mouth before the city, and between the city and Red Hook, on Long Island, lies Noten Island403 opposite the fort, the first place the Hollanders ever occupied in this bay. It is now only a farm with a house and a place upon it where the governor keeps a parcel of sheep. From the city, or from this island, the river runs easterly to Correlaers Hoeck and the Wale Bocht, where it is so narrow they can readily hear one another calling across it. A little west of Correlaers Hoeck, a reef of rocks stretches out towards the Wale Bocht, half way over, on which at low tide there is only three or four feet of water, more or less. The river then runs up northerly to Hellgate, where there is an island, in front of which on the south side are two rocks, covered at high water, and close to the island, besides others which can be easily seen. Hellgate is nothing more than a bend of the river, which, coming up north, turns thence straight to the east. It is narrow here, and in the middle of the bend or elbow lie several large rocks. On either side it is wider, consequently the current is much stronger in the narrow part; and as it is a bend the water is checked, and made to eddy, and then, striking these rocks, it must make its way to one side or the other, or to both; but it cannot make its way to both, because it is a crooked bay, and therefore it pursues its course until it is stopped on the opposite side of the bay, to which it is driven, so much the more because it encounters these rocks on the way. Now between the rocks there is no current, and behind them it is still; and as the current for the most part is forced from one side, it finds liberty behind these rocks, where it makes a whirlpool. You must therefore be careful not to approach this whirlpool, especially with small vessels, as you will be in danger of being drawn under. It makes such a whirlpit and whistling that you can hear it for a quarter of an hour’s distance, but this is when the tide is ebbing, and only, and mostly, when it is running the strongest. The river continues from thence easterly, forming several islands, generally on the left-hand side, although there are some in a large bay on the right. When you have passed the large bay of Flushing, which is about eight miles from Hellgate, or rather, as soon as you get round the point, and begin to see an opening, you must keep well to the northeast, in order to sail clear of a long ledge of rocks, some of which stick out of the water like the Lizard in the Channel near Falmouth. After you have passed this you sail easterly along the shore without anything in the way. There are islands here and there, near the land, but they are not large. The end of Long Island, which is one hundred and forty-four miles long, runs off low and sandy. Continuing east you pass Plum Island, which is about four miles in length. Behind the bay of Long Island called the Cromme Gouwe404 there are several small islands, Gardiner’s Island and others. At the east point of Plum Island there is a reef, or some small rocks, but keeping on to the eastward, you sail far enough from them. From Plum Island to Adriaen Blocx Island405 the course is east a distance of twenty or twenty-two miles. This island is eight miles long. Thence to Maertens Wingaert the distance is fifty-two to fifty-six miles further east, and Blockx Island is hardly out of sight when you see Maertens Wingaert. Between Plum Island and Blockx Island you leave Fisher’s Island to the north, nearest Plum Island; and between Blockx Island and Maertens Wingaert you leave on the coast Rhode Island, which does not lie within the coast, as the chart indicates, but outside, and lies nearest Maertens Wingaert. With Maertens Wingaert begin the Elizabeth Islands, which consist of six or seven islands lying in a row, close to each other, towards the coast. The width between Maertens Wingaert and the Elizabeth Islands is eight miles. There is a fine sound or strait for sailing between them, although Maertens Wingaert is somewhat longer. This island is about twenty-eight miles in length towards the east. A little within the east point of it a reef of rocks stretches out three miles from the shore, so that it is best to keep nearest the Elizabeth Islands, although there is room enough between Maertens Wingaert and the reef to sail through with large ships, as there is three and two and a half fathoms of water at low tide. At the westerly point of the Elizabeth Islands there are several rocks, one large and several small ones, called after their fashion, the Sow and Pigs. There is a beautiful bay, and anchorage ground on the east end of Maertens Wingaert.406 From this point of Maertens Wingaert the course is east-southeast about twenty miles, to Nantocket upon the west point of which there is a good bay with anchorage ground. The land is low and sandy; it is fourteen or sixteen miles long. There are several shoals outside in the sea, and also inside between the island and the main land, but they do not run out beyond the east point. When you have the east point to the west-southwest of you, steer straight north to Cape Cod, about twenty-eight miles; but you must here time the tides, which run strong east and west; the flood to the west, and the ebb to the east. The flood tide pulls to the shoals, and the ebb tide on the contrary sets eastwardly to the sea. Cape Cod is a clean coast, where there are no islands, rocks or banks, and therefore all such laid down on the charts of the great reef of Malebarre and otherwise are false. Indeed, within four, eight and twelve miles, there is sixty to sixty-five fathoms of water. This cape or coast is about twenty-eight miles long due north; and from thence to Cape Ann it is also due north, but to Boston it is northwest. There are many small islands before Boston, well on to fifty, I believe, between which you sail on to the city. A high one, or the highest, is the first that you meet. It is twelve miles from the city, and has a lighthouse407 upon it which you can see from a great distance, for it is in other respects naked and bare. In sailing by this island, you keep it on the west side; on the other side there is an island with many rocks upon and around it, and when you pass by it you must be careful, as a shoal pushes out from it, which you must sail round. You have then an island in front, in the shape of a battery, which also you leave on the larboard, and then you come in sight of the island upon which the fort stands, and where the flag is flown when ships are entering.408 That, too, lies to the larboard, and you pass close enough to it for them to hail the ship, what you are, from whence you came, and where you are bound, etc. When you are there you see the city lying directly before you; and so you sail into the bay before the town, and cast anchor. There is a high hill in the city,409 also with a lighthouse upon it, by which you can hold your course in entering.
24th, Monday. We walked with our captain into the town, for his house stood a little one side of it, and the first house he took us to was a tavern. From there, he conducted us to the governor, who dwelt in only a common house, and that not the most costly. He is an old man, quiet and grave.410 He was dressed in black silk, but not sumptuously. Paddechal explained the reasons of our visit. The governor inquired who we were, and where from, and where we were going. Paddechal told him we were Hollanders, and had come on with him from New York, in order to depart from here for England. He asked further our names, which we wrote down for him. He then presented us a small cup of wine, and with that we finished. We went then to the house of one John Tayller, or merchant tailor,411 to whom William van Cleyf had recommended us; but we did not find him. We wanted to obtain a place where we could be at home, and especially to ascertain if there were any Dutchmen. They told us of a silversmith who was a Dutchman, and at whose house the Dutch usually went to lodge. We went in search of him, but he was not at home. At noon we found this merchant tailor, who appeared to be a good sort of a person. He spoke tolerably good French, and informed us there was a ship up for England immediately, and another in about three weeks. The first was too soon for us, and we therefore thought it best to wait for the other. We also found the silversmith, who bade us welcome. His name was Willem Ros, from Wesel. He had married an Englishwoman, and carried on his business here. He told us we might come and lodge with him, if we wished, which we determined to do; for to lie again in our last night’s nest was not agreeable to us. We exchanged some of our money, and obtained six shillings and sixpence each for our ducatoons, and ten shillings each for the ducats. We went accordingly to lodge at the goldsmith’s, whom my comrade knew well, though he did not recollect my comrade.412 We were better off at his house, for although his wife was an Englishwoman, she was quite a good housekeeper.
25th, Tuesday. We went in search of Mr. Paddechal this morning and paid him for our passage here, twenty shillings New England currency, for each of us. We wanted to obtain our goods, but they were all too busy then, and promised they would send them to us in the city the next day. We inquired after Mr. John Pigon, to whom Mr. Robert Sanders, of Albany, promised to send Wouter the Indian, with a letter, but he had received neither the letter nor the Indian; so that we must offer up our poor Indian to the pleasure of the Lord. We also went to look after the ship, in which we were going to leave for London. We understood the name of the captain was Jan Foy. The ship was called the Dolphin, and mounted sixteen guns.413 Several passengers were engaged. There was a surgeon in the service of the ship from Rotterdam, named Johan Owins, who had been to Surinam414 and afterwards to the island of Fayal,415 from whence he had come here, and now wished to go home. There was also a sailor on board the ship who spoke Dutch, or was a Dutchman. The carpenter was a Norwegian who lived at Flushing.
26th, Wednesday. We strove hard to get our goods home, for we were fearful, inasmuch as our trunk was on deck, and it had rained, and a sea now and then had washed over it, that it might be wet and ruined; but we did not succeed, and Paddechal in this exhibited again his inconsiderateness, and little regard for his promise. We resolved to take it out the next day, go as it would.
27th, Thursday. We went to the Exchange in order to find the merchant tailor, and also the skipper, which we did. We agreed for our passage at the usual price of six pounds sterling for each person, with the choice of paying here or in England; but as we would have less loss on our money here, we determined to pay here. After ‘change was over there was preaching,416 to which we had intended to go; but as we had got our goods home, after much trouble, and found several articles wet and liable to be spoiled, we had to stay and dry them.
28th, Friday. One of the best ministers in the place being very sick, a day of fasting and prayer was observed in a church near by our house. We went into the church, where, in the first place, a minister made a prayer in the pulpit, of full two hours in length; after which an old minister delivered a sermon an hour long, and after that a prayer was made, and some verses sung out of the Psalms. In the afternoon, three or four hours were consumed with nothing except prayers, three ministers relieving each other alternately; when one was tired, another went up into the pulpit.417 There was no more devotion than in other churches, and even less than at New York; no respect, no reverence; in a word, nothing but the name of Independents; and that was all.
29th, Saturday. To-day a captain arrived from New York, named Lucas, who had sailed from there last Friday. He said no ships had arrived there from Europe, and that matters remained as we left them. There was a report that another governor was coming to New York, and it was said he was a man who was much liked in Boston; that many complaints had been made against the other one, such as oppressing the people, imposing high duties when his instructions provided they should not be more than two per cent., I believe, rendering a false account, in which he had charged a dock as having been made at a cost of twenty-eight pounds sterling which had not cost a cent, as the citizens had constructed it themselves, etc.418 This will perhaps cause some change in these parts and relieve the people. Lucas brought with him the sister and brother-in-law of Ephraim’s wife, recently married, but we had never spoken to them.419
30th, Sunday. We went to church, but there was only one minister in the pulpit, who made a prayer an hour long, and preached the same length of time, when some verses were sung. We expected something particular in the afternoon, but there was nothing more than usual.
July 1st, Monday. We wrote to De la Grange, at New York, concerning our letters from Europe, and also to Robert Sanders, at Albany, in relation to Wouter.
2d, Tuesday. We had a conversation with the captain at the Exchange. He intended to sail round Ireland, which suited us very well, for although it was said the Hollanders were at peace with the Turks, there were many English vessels taken by them daily, and under such circumstances we ran some danger of being plundered, fighting with them, and perhaps being carried into Barbary. It was therefore better to go around, although it would be late. We went on board the ship with the captain, in order to look through her. She pleased us very much, as she was larger than the Charles, in which we came over. We bespoke a berth in the gunner’s room, on the starboard side. The ship was said to be a good sailer, and the captain to be one of the most discreet navigators of this country. All that was agreeable to us. In the evening Ephraim’s wife’s sister and her husband called upon us, but they were not much in a state to be spoken to, in regard to what was most necessary for them, nor was there much opportunity.
3d, Wednesday. Our captain said he would leave a week from to-day. Nothing further occurred.
4th, Thursday. Nothing transpired.
5th, Friday. In the afternoon Thomas [Theunis] De Key and his wife, half-sister of Elizabeth Roodenburgh, came to visit us, but we conversed little about religious matters, following the providence of the Lord.
6th, Saturday. Nothing occurred.
7th, Sunday. We heard preaching in three churches, by persons who seemed to possess zeal, but no just knowledge of Christianity. The auditors were very worldly and inattentive. The best of the ministers whom we have yet heard is a very old man, named Mr. John Eliot,420 who has charge of the instruction of the Indians in the Christian religion. He has translated the Bible into their language. After we had already made inquiries of the booksellers for this Bible, and there was none to be obtained in Boston, and they told us if one was to be had, it would be from Mr. Eliot, we determined to go on Monday to the village where he resided, and was the minister, called Rocsberry [Roxbury]. Our landlord had promised to take us, but was not able to do so, in consequence of his having too much business. We therefore thought we would go alone and do what we wanted.
July 8th, Monday. We went accordingly, about six o’clock in the morning, to Rocxberry, which is three-quarters of an hour from the city, in order that we might get home early, inasmuch as our captain had informed us, he would come in the afternoon for our money, and in order that Mr. Eliot might not be gone from home. On arriving at his house, he was not there, and we therefore went to look around the village and the vicinity. We found it justly called Rocxberry, for it was very rocky, and had hills entirely of rocks. Returning to his house we spoke to him, and he received us politely. As he could speak neither Dutch nor French, and we spoke but little English, we were unable to converse very well; however, partly in Latin, partly in English, we managed to understand each other. He was seventy-seven years old,421 and had been forty-eight years in these parts. He had learned very well the language of the Indians, who lived about there. We asked him for an Indian Bible. He said in the late Indian war, all the Bibles and Testaments were carried away, and burnt or destroyed, so that he had not been able to save any for himself; but a new edition was in press, which he hoped would be much better than the first one, though that was not to be despised. We inquired whether any part of the old and new edition could be obtained by purchase, and whether there was any grammar of their language in English. Thereupon he went and brought us one of the Old Testaments in the Indian language, and also almost the whole of the New Testament, made up with some sheets of the new edition of the New Testament, so that we had the Old and New Testaments complete.422 He also brought us two or three small specimens of the grammar. We asked him what we should pay him for them; but he desired nothing. Thereupon we presented him our Declaration in Latin,423 and informed him about the persons and conditions of the church whose declaration it was, and about Madam Schurman424 and others, with which he was delighted, and could not restrain himself from praising God the Lord, that had raised up men, and reformers, and begun the reformation in Holland. He deplored the decline of the church in New England, and especially in Boston, so that he did not know what would be the final result. We inquired how it stood with the Indians, and whether any good fruit had followed his work. Yes, much, he said, if we meant true conversion of the heart; for they had in various countries, instances of conversion, as they called it, and had seen it amounted to nothing at all; that they must not endeavor, like scribes and Pharisees, to make Jewish proselytes, but true Christians. He could thank God, he continued, and God be praised for it, there were Indians whom he knew, who were truly converted of heart to God, and whose profession, he believed, was sincere. It seemed as if he were disposed to know us further, and we therefore said to him, if he had any desire to write to our sort of people, he could use the names which stood on the title-page of the Declaration, and that we hoped to come and converse with him again. He accompanied us as far as the jurisdiction of Roxbury extended, where we parted from him.
9th, Tuesday. We started out to go to Cambridge, lying to the northeast of Boston, in order to see their college and printing office. We left about six o’clock in the morning, and were set across the river at Charlestown. We followed a road which we supposed was the right one, but went full half an hour out of the way, and would have gone still further, had not a negro who met us, and of whom we inquired, disabused us of our mistake. We went back to the right road, which is a very pleasant one. We reached Cambridge about eight o’clock. It is not a large village, and the houses stand very much apart. The college building is the most conspicuous among them. We went to it, expecting to see something unusual, as it is the only college, or would-be academy of the Protestants in all America, but we found ourselves mistaken. In approaching the house we neither heard nor saw anything mentionable; but, going to the other side of the building, we heard noise enough in an upper room to lead my comrade to say, “I believe they are engaged in disputation.” We entered and went up stairs, when a person met us, and requested us to walk in, which we did. We found there eight or ten young fellows, sitting around, smoking tobacco, with the smoke of which the room was so full, that you could hardly see; and the whole house smelt so strong of it that when I was going up stairs I said, “It certainly must be also a tavern.”425 We excused ourselves, that we could speak English only a little, but understood Dutch or French well, which they did not. However, we spoke as well as we could. We inquired how many professors there were, and they replied not one, that there was not enough money to support one. We asked how many students there were. They said at first, thirty, and then came down to twenty; I afterwards understood there are probably not ten. They knew hardly a word of Latin, not one of them, so that my comrade could not converse with them. They took us to the library where there was nothing particular. We looked over it a little. They presented us with a glass of wine. This is all we ascertained there. The minister of the place goes there morning and evening to make prayer, and has charge over them; besides him, the students are under tutors or masters.426 Our visit was soon over, and we left them to go and look at the land about there. We found the place beautifully situated on a large plain, more than eight miles square, with a fine stream in the middle of it, capable of bearing heavily laden vessels. As regards the fertility of the soil, we consider the poorest in New York superior to the best here. As we were tired, we took a mouthful to eat, and left. We passed by the printing office, but there was nobody in it; the paper sash however being broken, we looked in, and saw two presses with six or eight cases of type. There is not much work done there. Our printing office is well worth two of it, and even more.427 We went back to Charlestown, where, after waiting a little, we crossed over about three o’clock. On our way home our skipper, John Foy, met us; we spoke to him, and in our respective names, paid him the money for our passage, six pounds each. He wished to give us a bill of it, but we told him it was unnecessary, as we were people of good confidence. I spoke to my comrade, and we went out with him, and presented him with a glass of wine. His mate came to him there, who looked more like a merchant than a seaman, a young man and no sailor. We inquired how long our departure would be delayed, and, as we understood him, it would be the last of the coming week. That was annoying to us. Indeed, we have found the English the same everywhere, doing nothing but lying and cheating, if it but serves their interest. Being in the house again, Ephraim’s brother-in-law, Mr. De Key, and his wife made us a visit.
10th, Wednesday. We heard that our captain expected to be ready the first of the week.
11th, Thursday. Nothing occurred.
12th, Friday. We went in the afternoon to Mr. John Teller’s, to ascertain whether he had any good wine, and to purchase some for our voyage, and also some brandy. On arriving at his house, we found him a little cool; indeed, not as he was formerly. We inquired for what we wanted, and he said he had good Madeira wine, but he believed he had no brandy, though he thought he could assist us in procuring it. We also inquired how we could obtain the history and laws of this place. At last it came out. He said we must be pleased to excuse him if he did not give us admission to his house; he durst not do it, in consequence of there being a certain evil report in the city concerning us; they had been to warn him not to have too much communication with us, if he wished to avoid censure; they said we certainly were Jesuits, who had come here for no good, for we were quiet and modest, and an entirely different sort of people from themselves; that we could speak several languages, were cunning and subtle of mind and judgment, had come there without carrying on any traffic or any other business, except only to see the place and country; that this seemed fabulous as it was unusual in these parts; certainly it could be for no good purpose. As regards the voyage to Europe, we could have made it as well from New York as from Boston, as opportunities were offered there. This suspicion seemed to have gained more strength because the fire at Boston over a year ago was caused by a Frenchman. Although he had been arrested, they could not prove it against him; but in the course of the investigation, they discovered he had been counterfeiting coin and had profited thereby, which was a crime as infamous as the other. He had no trade or profession; he was condemned; both of his ears were cut off; and he was ordered to leave the country.428 Mr. Tailler feared the more for himself, particularly because almost all strangers were addressed to him, as we were, in consequence of his speaking several languages, French, some Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, etc., and could aid them. There had also some time ago a Jesuit arrived here from Canada, who came to him disguised, in relation to which there was much murmuring, and they wished to punish this Jesuit, not because he was a Jesuit, but because he came in disguise, which is generally bad and especially for such as are the pests of the world, and are justly feared, which just hate we very unjustly, but as the ordinary lot of God’s children, had to share. We were compelled to speak French, because we could not speak English, and these people did not understand Dutch. There were some persons in New York who could speak nothing but French, and very little English. The French was common enough in these parts, but it seemed that we were different from them. Of all this we disabused Mr. Tailler, assuring him we were as great enemies of that brood as any persons could be, and were, on the contrary, good Protestants or Reformed, born and educated in that faith; that we spoke only Dutch and French, except my companion, who could also speak Latin, and had not come here to trade, but to examine the country, and perhaps some morning or evening the opportunity might arrive for us to come over with our families, when affairs in Europe, and especially in Holland, might be settled, as the times there had been bad enough; that if they would be pleased to listen to Mr. Eliot, the minister at Roxbury, he could give them other testimony concerning us, as we had particularly conversed with him. This seemed in some measure to satisfy him. I think this bad report was caused by some persons who came from New York, truly worldly men, whom we had not sought when we were there, nor they us, and who, although they knew better, or at least ought to have known better, yet out of hatred to the truth, and love of sin, said of us what they conceived, and their corruption inclined them to say. But the Lord who alone knows us rightly will forgive them, and make Himself known to them if it pleases Him, and then they will know us.
13th, Saturday. As we had promised Mr. Eliot to call upon him again, we went to Roxbury this morning. We found him at home, but he excused himself that he had not much time, and had a great deal to do. He called his son, who was there, and who also appeared to be a minister,429 to speak with us; but we excused ourselves, and said we would not hinder him and would rather leave. However, several questions and reasons passed between us in relation to the Confession which we had given him, and which he praised highly, and in relation to the professors of it, both pastors and people, in regard to which we satisfied him; but the son, who was neither as good nor as learned as his father, had more disposition or inclination to ridicule and dispute, than to edify and be edified. We told him what was good for him, and we regretted we could not talk more particularly to him. But the father remarked that if the professors were truly what they declared in the Confession, he could not sufficiently thank God for what He had done. We assured him it was so, and took our leave. He requested us to stop and dine with him, but we excused ourselves.
14th, Sunday. We went to church, but heard a most miserable sermon by a young person, a candidate.
15th, Monday. The burgesses drilled and exercised in the presence of the governor. There were eight companies on foot, and one on horseback, all which divided themselves into two troops or squadrons, and operated against each other in a sham battle, which was well performed.430 It took place on a large plain on the side of the city. It did not however terminate so well, but that a commander on horseback was wounded on the side of his face near the eye, by the shot of a fusil, as it is usually the case that some accident happens on such occasions. It was so in New York at the last parade, when two young men on horseback coming towards each other as hard as they could, to discharge their pistols, dashed against each other, and fell instantly with their horses. It was supposed they were both killed, and also their horses, for there were no signs of life in them; but they were bled immediately, and after two or three hours they began to recover, and in two days were able to go out again. One of the horses died. We went to see John Teller, and paid him for the wine and brandy. He seemed to have more confidence in us. We gave him to read, as further proofs, the letters which Mr. Ephraim Hermans and Mr. John Moll had written to us from the South River, both of whom he knew. He told us the Reformed of Rochelle had sent some deputies to the colony of Boston and the Independent church there to request the liberty to come over and live in a place near them, or among them, and in their country, which was granted them; and that they returned home three months ago.431
16th, Tuesday. We packed our goods in readiness to leave.
17th, Wednesday. We placed our goods on board ship.
18th, Thursday. We took leave of Mr. Teller, thanking him for his attention and kindness, and presented him with a copy of our Cantiques Sacrés,432 for which he was thankful. We would cheerfully have given him the Maximes433 also, but our goods were packed on board the ship, and we could not get at them. He was now of a better mind and well satisfied, returning us our letters with thanks. While we were sitting at table this noon, it thundered very hard, whereupon one of the daughters of the woman of the house where we were staying commenced to scream and cry. We asked her if she were afraid of the thunder, upon which her mother inquired of us, if we were not. We said no, but the word had scarcely escaped our lips before there came a frightful clap, which seemed to cleave the heart from the body, and entirely changed our ideas. My comrade, Mr. Vorsman, turned as pale as a white sheet, and could hardly speak. I was fearful he had met with some mishap, but he recovered himself. It was said there had scarcely ever been heard there such thunder. One man was killed, and two others not far from being so. These three persons were running in a field, and two of them seeing and hearing the weather lay down flat on the ground under a tree; the third man played stout and brave, jeering at the others who called to him to come with them. Soon the lightning struck him dead to the earth, and separated the other two from each other. There was also a hard rock, not far from our lodgings, split through.
19th, Friday, and 20th, Saturday. Nothing occurred.
21st, Sunday. Coming out of the church, Mr. Teller spoke to us, and invited us to dine with him, but we thanked him.
22d, Monday. We took our leave, and went on board the ship, which was all ready to sail, except that they were waiting for the captain.
23d, Tuesday. After some delay the captain came on board with the rest of the passengers, accompanied by many of their friends. Weighed anchor at three o’clock in the afternoon, it being almost low water, and set sail with a southwest and south-southwest wind. In passing the fort we fired the salvo, which it answered; the pilot and the company then left us and we put to sea. But before going further to sea we must give a brief description of New England, and the city of Boston in particular.
When New Netherland was first discovered by the Hollanders, the evidence is that New England was not known; because the Dutch East India Company then sought a passage by the west, through which to sail to Japan and China; and if New England had been then discovered, they would not have sought a passage there, knowing it to be the main land; just as when New Netherland and New England did become known, such a passage was sought no longer through them, but farther to the north through Davis and Hudson straits. The Hollanders, when they discovered New Netherland, embraced under that name and title all the coast from Virginia or Cape Hinloopen eastwardly to Cape Cod, as it was then and there discovered by them and designated by Dutch names, as sufficiently appears by the charts. The English afterwards discovered New England and settled there.434 They increased so in consequence of the great liberties and favorable privileges which the king granted to the Independents, that they went to live not only west of Cape Cod and Rhode Island, but also on Long Island and other places, and even took possession of the whole of the Fresh River,435 which the Hollanders there were not able to prevent, in consequence of their small force in New Netherland, and the scanty population. The English went more readily to the west, because the land was much better there, and more accessible to vessels, and the climate was milder; and also because they could trade more conveniently with the Hollanders, and be supplied by them with provisions. New England is now described as extending from the Fresh River to Cape Cod and thence to Kennebec, comprising three provinces or colonies: Fresh River or Connecticut, Rhode Island and the other islands to Cape Cod, and Boston, which stretches from thence north. They are subject to no one, but acknowledge the king of England for their lord,436 and therefore no ships enter unless they have English passports or commissions. They have free trade with all countries; but the return cargoes from there to Europe go to England, except those which go secretly to Holland. There is no toll or duty paid upon merchandise exported or imported, nor is there any impost or tax paid upon land. Each province chooses its own governor from the magistracy, and the magistrates are chosen from the principal inhabitants, merchants or planters. They are all Independents in matters of religion, if it can be called religion; many of them perhaps more for the purposes of enjoying the benefit of its privileges than for any regard to truth and godliness. I observed that while the English flag or color has a red ground with a small white field in the uppermost corner, where there is a red cross, they have here dispensed with this cross in their colors, and preserved the rest.437 They baptize no children except those of the members of the congregation. All their religion consists in observing Sunday, by not working or going into the taverns on that day; but the houses are worse than the taverns. No stranger or traveller can therefore be entertained on a Sunday, which begins at sunset on Saturday, and continues until the same time on Sunday. At these two hours you see all their countenances change. Saturday evening the constable goes round into all the taverns of the city for the purpose of stopping all noise and debauchery, which frequently causes him to stop his search, before his search causes the debauchery to stop. There is a penalty for cursing and swearing, such as they please to impose, the witnesses thereof being at liberty to insist upon it. Nevertheless you discover little difference between this and other places. Drinking and fighting occur there not less than elsewhere; and as to truth and true godliness, you must not expect more of them than of others. When we were there, four ministers’ sons were learning the silversmith’s trade.
The soil is not as fertile as in the west. Many persons leave there to go to the Delaware and New Jersey. They manure their lands with heads of fish. They gain their living mostly or very much by fish, which they salt and dry for selling; and by raising horses, oxen, and cows, as well as hogs and sheep, which they sell alive, or slaughtered and salted, in the Caribbean Islands and other places. They are not as good farmers as the Hollanders about New York.
As to Boston particularly, it lies in latitude 42° 20´ on a very fine bay. The city is quite large, constituting about twelve companies. It has three churches, or meeting houses, as they call them.438 All the houses are made of thin, small cedar shingles, nailed against frames, and then filled in with brick and other stuff; and so are their churches. For this reason these towns are so liable to fires, as have already happened several times; and the wonder to me is, that the whole city has not been burnt down, so light and dry are the materials. There is a large dock in front of it constructed of wooden piers, where the large ships go to be careened and rigged; the smaller vessels all come up to the city. On the left-hand side across the river lies Charlestown, a considerable place, where there is some shipping. Upon the point of the bay, on the left hand, there is a block-house, along which a piece of water runs, called the Milk Ditch.439 The whole place has been an island, but it is now joined to the main land by a low road to Roxbury. In front of the town there are many small islands, between which you pass in sailing in and out. On one of the middlemost stands the fort, where the ships show their passports. At low tide the water in the channel between the islands is three and a half and four fathoms deep, in its shallowest part. You sail from the city southeasterly to the fort, by passing Governor’s island on the larboard, and having passed the fort, you keep close to the south, then southeast, and gradually more to the east to the sea. On reaching the sea we set our course due east, with the wind south-southeast, and made good progress.
24th, Wednesday. The wind and our course continued the same; but it is to be observed, the compass here is a point and a half northwesting. We spoke an English ship bound to Virginia. We found our latitude [42°] 40´ north, and the distance we had sailed 96 miles.
25th, Thursday. The wind became more southerly, but we held our course the same as before, or east by south. Latitude 42° 68´. Distance reckoned to be 136 miles. The English ship which had remained in company until now, left us. It began to blow so hard in the evening that we had to reef the topsails and take in the mainsail, and proceed with the mizzen-sail and foresail.
26th, Friday. The wind was due south, although it had been a little more westerly during the night. We observed the latitude 42° 51´; reckoned the distance run 96 miles.
We had stipulated, when we engaged our passage, to eat in the cabin, but when we got to sea we did not do so. There were ten passengers besides us two, and among them two females. These ten had jointly bought a large quantity of provisions and groceries, and placed them in the cabin, they having such power over the captain. We were therefore compelled to remain outside, although we remonstrated. We saw afterwards that it was the Lord’s doings, who would not that we should be in nearer communion with such wicked persons. We then arranged to eat with the mate and another passenger above on the half deck. We four brought together what provisions we had, and were well satisfied with each other. We had to-day a good topsail breeze and fine weather.
27th, Saturday. It was rainy during the night; and although our bunk was in the gunner’s room, it leaked in there very much. At sunrise it cleared up a little. We could not obtain any observation, but supposed the latitude was 43°. The course was east-southeast, the distance run 100 miles. As it was Saturday evening a hog was killed, there being seven or eight on board the ship.
28th, Sunday. The weather was fine, with a westerly wind, but not an entirely clear atmosphere.
Among the passengers in the cabin was a minister, an Independent, who had formerly been in the East Indies, at Bantam on the island of Java. He had been visiting his friends in New England, but undoubtedly could not obtain any situation among them, and was returning to England in order to sail if he could in the first ships back to the Indies. This poor minister, every morning and evening, made a prayer, read some chapters out of the Old and New Testaments, and sang a psalm, all after the manner of the Independents. On Sundays he preached both in the morning and afternoon, and we attended in order to avoid scandal and dissipate as much as possible the breath of calumny.
We could not obtain any altitude to-day, in consequence of the haze. Our course had been almost the whole night southeast by east and the course was therefore east by south; the distance was upwards of eighty miles. At noon it became calm, afterwards rainy, and in the evening the wind changed to the northwest, but continued still....440
[August, 1680] 17th, Saturday. I slept very little last night in consequence of the noise. We had sailed during the night a little to the east, because our captain was afraid of falling on the island of Bus,441 as he was not much west of it, though according to our reckoning he was to the east of it. We found our latitude was 57° 30´, and therefore hoped to pass Bus and the rock Rockol.442 We sailed on several courses, but the one maintained was northeast by north. The distance sailed was 100 miles....
18th, Sunday. We took an observation. Latitude 58° 30´. It was very cold here and the days long. The wind continued northeast and north-northeast, with hard weather, which caused us to take in our sails, and about ten o’clock in the evening to tack about. I remained on deck myself, in order to keep a lookout for the great rock Rockol.
19th, Monday. We obtained an observation at 57° 51´, and we still more believed we were before the rock Rockol, which lies in 57° 40´: but we put our hope and trust in God, committing ourselves into His hands.
20th, Tuesday. It became gradually more still, and at last we could sail east-northeast, and northeast. We had sailed 72 miles. We could not take an observation.
21st, Wednesday. The wind was northwest, and our course east and east by north, with little headway. We found the latitude 58° 10´; the course held was east by north; the distance 40 miles. We, therefore, supposed we were between Rockol and St. Kilda.443 Towards evening the wind shot from the north-northwest, so that we could sail east-northeast, and afterwards northeast by east; but there was a rolling sea, and, therefore, we could not go ahead much because it came from the front. The wind however improved.
22d, Thursday. The wind was west-northwest, and the course northeast by east, with the sea continuing to roll against us in front. We found ourselves at noon in 59° 5´, at which we rejoiced, because we had to enter the North Sea between the 59th and 60th degree. The distance sailed was 88 miles upon several courses. At noon the course was set northeast by east in order to sail above the island of little Barro.444 There was a small purse made up by the passengers, each one contributing what he pleased, for the person who should first discover land. We gave two shillings each. The minister would not give anything. It seems that meanness is a peculiarity of this class of people. This was done in order that the sailors might look out more zealously for land, and so we might not fall upon land unexpectedly. The purse was nailed to the mast, so that, being always in sight, it might be a constant incentive, and whoever might first see land might take it off. We were becalmed the whole night.
23d, Friday. It was calm, beautiful weather. They thought they saw land, so the sailors said, and that it was Barro, but I could observe nothing. We also had greener water, and therefore supposed we were on soundings. The deep lead was thrown, but at 200 fathoms it came short. The latitude was 59° 34´, the wind northeast, and we sailed east, for we were almost in the latitude of the south point of Shetland. We saw, several times, quantities of spermaceti drifting, a yellowish fat, which lies in the water, all together, but solid like the green scum which floats in ditches. We also saw rockweed floating; and a small land bird came on board the ship, from which we concluded we were approaching land. The wind was more free, and after running out and in it remained north-northeast. It blew so hard that the topsails had to be reefed at first, and then taken in. We sailed sometimes east, then east by north and east by south, and again east.
24th, Saturday. It blew very hard from the north-northeast accompanied by rain, and we therefore could not ascertain the latitude but reckoned we were in 59° 20´. The course was held half way between east and south, which brought us near the before mentioned rocks. It became calm at night.
25th, Sunday. It continued calm until noon. We obtained the latitude, 59° 30´. Our progress was 40 miles, and the course a little more north than east. At noon the wind was south and south-southeast, with a fresh breeze. We saw this morning a flock of land birds, like finches; also pigeons and small gulls, which keep themselves on the shore. Towards evening it was very foggy. We sailed during the night east-southeast.
26th, Monday. It was tolerably good weather, but it soon came up thick and rainy with a strong wind. We continued sailing east by south. Calculated the distance 56 miles. We kept a good lookout, for my reckoning upon the one chart was out and differed from the other 32 miles. The Lord protects us from disaster, and will guide us further, as we fully trust in Him.
27th, Tuesday. We had not had during the whole voyage such hard weather as during this night. The wind was southeast and south-southeast, with a thick mist and rain, which at last made us lie by, with only the mizzen sail, in a hard short sea which tossed and pitched us. We saw all day many land and sea birds which caused us to look out carefully for land. The distance made was 84 miles. At evening the wind was south-southwest, whereby we sailed or drifted east by south and south-southeast until day.
28th, Wednesday. It was better weather, and we again began to sail. The wind was southwest. The lower sails were well reefed, but we shipped several heavy seas. The sea rolled the whole day. It was lucky for a sailor that the Lord preserved him from being washed overboard by an over-breaking sea; it was a narrow escape, but in floating off he caught a rope or something, to which he clung and was saved. We saw much sea-weed, and whole flocks of rock and land birds, and also a species of ducks and geese, besides another kind of bird. Fish lines were made ready, but we could catch nothing. The latitude was 59° 51´, which was a good height and encouraged us. We sailed still east-southeast on a maintained east course.
29th, Thursday. While we were at prayer this morning, “Land! Land!” was called out; and although these prayers were so drowsy and miserable, especially for us, who were opposed to their doctrines, I had to restrain and mortify myself by not going up on deck, as several did, and almost all wished to do. It was the gunner who first discovered land, and took from the mast the little purse, in which he found 28 shillings and 6 pence sterling, that is, fifteen guilders and fourteen stivers, a good day’s wages. The land we saw was the Orkney Islands, 28 to 32 miles south-southeast of us, which we sketched as well as we could. About two hours afterwards we saw very high land in front of us to the leeward, which we supposed at first was Fairhill,445 an easy mistake to make, as we had made our latitude 59° 48´, but we soon saw other land in front on the starboard, and we now discovered that the land to the larboard was the rock Falo, and that on the starboard was Fairhill, which agreed very well with our latitude. I sat on the main yard to observe how the land rose up, and while there saw a vessel or a sail, which soon caused great consternation on board of our ship, and still more when I said there were two of them. They were afraid they were Turks; and so much did this idea blind them that eyes, understanding, and reason had no office to perform. These small vessels were certainly large ships and Turks. Everything was put out of the way; many did not know what they were doing from fear, which increased greatly, when they saw one of the vessels coming towards us before the wind. It was all hurly-burly, and every one was ordered immediately to quarters. I was very busy, our place being on the quarter-deck where there were four guns, which I pushed into the port holes. These were loaded and we were soon ready for fight. In the meanwhile, the vessel coming nearer, the minister, who should have encouraged the others, ran below into the powder room, all trembling and shaking. He inquired if that was far enough below water, and if he could be shot there. Another person from the East Indies was with him. The surgeon had all things ready for the battle, but unfortunately I looked out and saw it was a Dutch smack with a small topsail, flying the Prince’s flag. But they silenced me; Turk it was, and Turk it should remain, and I must go back to my quarters. At last she came alongside, and they hailed her, but could not understand what was replied. I was then called upon to speak to them, and I went on the stern and saw that it was as I had said. I inquired where they were from, and what they were doing there. They answered, they were from Amsterdam; were cruising in search of two East Indiamen which the Chamber of Amsterdam446 had missed, and they wanted to know whether we had seen anything of them. We informed them we had seen no ships since we were on the banks of Newfoundland, and we were from New England, bound to London. We asked if there were any danger from the Turks. None at all, they said, which gave courage to our captain and others, as well as the minister, who had emerged from the powder room, where he had hidden himself. We also inquired how affairs stood with England, Holland, and France. They answered, well, as far as they knew. Having obtained this information, I told our captain such good news was worth a salute, and he fired a six-pounder shotted. The Dutch captain asked for a little tobacco in exchange for pickled herrings; but many excuses were offered, and he got none. He said the other vessel was a Hollander from Iceland, and we had nothing to fear; that almost all the ships which we might see in the North Sea were ships from Holland; a remark which annoyed our captain and the others very much; and not being able to stand it, they tacked about ship and wore off, leaving the cruiser and passing outside, or between Fairhill and the Orkneys.
30th, Friday. We had lain over again at midnight, with a south-southwest wind. At daybreak it was entirely calm. I was called out of my berth to go to the captain, in order to discriminate the land, distinguishing Fairhill and the Orkneys. He exhibited great ignorance and fear, for we had seen the land well the day before, and the cruiser had fully informed us; he knew well enough how we had sailed during the night, and with what progress, and that we all agreed with the foregoing height of the pole. We took several crayon sketches of Fairhill and the other lands, the more because they are not shown from that side in the Zeespiegel of Lichtende Colom.447 We found the latitude to-day to be 59° 40´. Many birds came round the ship, and some sparrow hawks and small blue hawks, which we caught with our hands. We stretched over again to the Orkneys, in order to be clear of Fairhill; the wind being southeast and southeast by east, we had foggy and misty weather.
31st, Saturday. We saw the Orkneys this morning, although we had shifted eight miles during the night. We stretched away from them again and discovered a strong current, which the nearer Scotland and the Orkneys it was the stronger it was. It runs mostly east and east-southeast, and west and west-northwest. The latitude obtained was 59° 26´. At evening we found ourselves about 28 or 32 miles from Fairhill north-northeast. This is a beautiful round hill, as its name in English denotes. We held our course with several tacks, over and back, to reach the North Sea. We saw several ships but could not get near enough to speak to them.
September 1st, Sunday. The weather was misty; the wind as before, calm. Could not obtain the latitude, but we reckoned we had sailed about forty miles, east by south. We saw some herring-busses.
2d, Monday. The wind continued southeast and south-southeast. The weather was good but calm and misty. We calculated the latitude 58° 40´. We kept beating from and to the shore.
3d, Tuesday. It was still drizzling and calm. We saw several vessels in which we would gladly have been, in order to see if there were no opportunity of going in them to Holland, whither they seemed to be sailing, or at least to obtain some refreshment of fish or something else; but the captain would not consent. At noon we turned towards the shore and sailed mostly south.
4th, Wednesday. The wind southeast and south-southeast, with dead water as if we were sailing in a river. We had been near the shore all night, on various courses, of one, two, and three points difference. We took a good observation, namely, 58° 8´; the distance sailed was sixty miles, the course held south-southwest. At noon the water was greener, and we therefore supposed we were in deeper water. We saw this morning the four ockers,448 before mentioned behind us, but we were soon afterwards out of sight of them.
5th, Thursday. Our course was east by north and east-northeast, now a little in, and then again out. The wind was mostly south-southwest. We found the latitude 58° 34´, so much were we set north. We had not gone ahead far, as there was not much wind, and the sea rolled directly against us. We reckoned the distance to be at night forty miles. But it was entirely calm, and the wind subsided with mist and rain. We drifted thus all night. The deep lead was thrown at midnight, and eighty fathoms of water were found. We endeavored to catch some fish, but did not succeed. We caught several sparrow hawks and small blue hawks.
6th, Friday. We had made little progress. The wind was northwest. There was a thick mist with drizzling rain. Our course until noon was east-southeast; the latitude was 59°; the distance 104 miles. We spoke an ocker, and inquired where we were. He said he was lying on the reef to fish, about 136 miles, he supposed, from Newcastle in Scotland,449 southwest of him, which agreed well with our calculation. Had 50 fathoms of water. This reef shoots out from the coast of Jutland and runs into the middle of the North Sea, northwardly around the Shetland Islands, and from thence almost to Rockol, but it lies nearer to the Scottish coast than to the coast of Norway, and a little more so than is represented on the chart. We caught many birds and also swallows.
7th, Saturday. It had been very calm through the night; but the wind shifted to the south, and we therefore had to change our course continually; at last it was south-southeast, and we could not sail higher than west by north. We found the latitude 56° 24´, but could not judge well because the sun was obscured. The reckoning was 55° 55´; the course was south by west; the distance 56 miles. We here came into a whole school of tunnies which afforded us great amusement. We also saw several ships ahead of us and heard much firing of guns.
8th, Sunday. Calm and rainy weather. We had made, this whole night and from noon yesterday, not more than 28 or 32 miles progress. The course was south-southeast sailing over against the wind, in order to come upon the Doggerbank.450 Saw several vessels, one of which ran before us, over to Newcastle. Reckoned at noon to-day we were 40 miles from the Doggerbank.
9th, Monday. In the morning watch, threw the deep lead in 25 fathoms, sandy bottom, green, white and red. About ten o’clock we had 20 fathoms with the same ground. The atmosphere was thick and hazy. The latitude we supposed was 55° 19´. We were now certainly on the Doggerbank. We caught many young spier hayties, which the English call dogs, and because large numbers of these fish always keep there, the bank, which is very large and almost makes the figure of a fishing boat, is called the Doggerbank. At four o’clock we had 18 fathoms, and in the evening 17. The course still south-southeast, and the wind northeast, breezy and calm, intermingled. In the night the deep lead was thrown several times, and we found 19, 18, 15 and 14 fathoms of water.
10th, Tuesday. The wind blew from almost all points; at ten o’clock it was northeast and east-northeast, with 12, 11, 10, 9½ fathoms of water. The latitude was 54° 44´. We saw several large ships and heard heavy firing of guns which made our captain and others very serious, for we heard 40 or 50 shots. Seeing a ship behind us, we let the sails run and waited for her. On her approaching us, we found she was a Dutch flute;451 and when we spoke her, they said they were from Muscovy, bound for Amsterdam. We wished with our whole hearts we were on board of her with our goods, for we should then sooner have been home. There was a rolling sea, so that there was no prospect of being put aboard of her; besides, the captain would not have been willing. They could not tell us much news. We asked where they reckoned they were, and they said not far from where we knew, that they were on the Doggerbank. In the evening we found the water deeper than 20 fathoms, and afterwards 25, at midnight 30, and in the day watch 45, with a bottom of fine sand.
11th, Wednesday. In the forenoon, found the water more shallow, 25, 23 and 20 fathoms, and we therefore believed we had passed from the Doggerbank to the Welle,452 another bank so called. We obtained a good observation, and the latitude was 54° net; the ship’s altitude 5´ being deducted, left 53° 55´, which agreed very well with our chart, with the depth, and our reckoning. The distance was put at 40 miles. We saw many ships around us, but could speak none. It continued calm until evening, when we found 20 and afterwards 17 fathom water, over a coarse red and white sandy bottom, mixed with small stones. The course was south-southeast.
12th, Thursday. The latitude 53° 45´, that is, the height of our eyes above the water being deducted; the distance 24 miles; the course south-southeast, a little southerly. We reckoned we were at the middle of the Welle bank. We longed for a good wind, and we were only sixty miles from Yarmouth and 100 or 104 from Harwich. We fished a little, only caught two or three small codfish, and hauled up with the hook a great quantity of stone and sea weed. In the first watch the wind was north and northeast, with slack water in 15, 14, 17, 19 and 20 fathoms. The captain therefore sailed southeast and southeast by south, through fear of the Lemenoirs453 and other Yarmouth shoals.
13th, Friday. It blew a stiff topsail breeze. We had 17 and 18 fathoms of water, which looked quite white, and made me think we were near the White Water, another bank so named on which there is 17 and 16 fathoms. We sailed south-southwest. We waited for a herring-buss coming towards us, and spoke to her. She was from Rotterdam, had been at sea a long time, and had seen no land. They told us they were between Wells and the White Water, nearer the latter, and that South Foreland was south-southwest of us. They could tell us nothing more. We wished we were in the buss, for then we might have been in the Maes that evening, as she had a good wind. The latitude was 52° 50´. We sailed southwest in 23 fathoms of water, with a bottom of fine sand a little reddish and mixed with black. In sailing towards the shore we had 18 fathoms; when about three, or half past three o’clock in the afternoon they cried out, Land! and proceeding further on, we saw the grove near Yarmouth, and shortly afterwards Yarmouth steeple, southwest by west and west-southwest from us. We sailed more southerly and discovered the whole coast. We came to anchor about seven o’clock in 16 fathoms.
14th, Saturday. It had been good weather through the night, and we had rested well. We saw when the sun rose, which shone against the coast and was entirely clear, how the coast ran. The land is not so high as it is west of the Thames to Land’s End. There are many villages. Yarmouth looked like a pleasant little place, as it lay north-northwest of us. We saw many ships sailing one way and the other. Having waited for the ebb to run out we got under sail about eight o’clock. We sailed by Sowls,454 and came to anchor again about three o’clock in the afternoon. The passengers had everything ready to go ashore, and so overland to London. There was a signal made with the flag from our ship, and a shot fired for a pilot or some one else to come on board. Towards evening a small boat came with five men, but no pilot. The flood making about nine or ten o’clock in the evening, and running along the whole Scottish and English coast, from the Orkneys to the Thames, we sailed on again until we came to another village where our passengers went ashore. It was about midnight. The weather was fine and the moon shone bright; we fired five or six guns. The minister was sad and complained that it was Sunday, or Saturday evening, and he dared not go ashore, lest he should break the Sabbath; but finally he let his wishes override his scruples, and went off with the passengers. We obtained a pilot and some refreshments, and then sailed on till we came before Dunwich,455 the oldest place in England, and once the mightiest in commerce. We came again to anchor in order to wait for the tide. The wind continued west-southwest.
15th, Sunday. The wind mostly as before. We were under sail about ten o’clock, with the flood tide, and tacked along the land in seven fathoms of water to the point of Aldborough,456 to reach which we made five or six short tacks. Running close to the shore, we came among a fleet of, I think, full 200 coal ships, all beating up the river, which made it difficult to avoid each other. We passed through the King’s Channel. I have never seen so many sunken ships as there were in the mouth of the Thames, full eight or ten in different places, from various causes. The tide being spent we came to anchor before a village called St. Peter.
16th, Monday. The wind being mostly north, the weather was cold and piercing. The whole fleet was under sail, with the flood tide, and we along with them. They had talked loudly in Boston of the sailing qualities of our ship, but almost the whole coal fleet sailed ahead of us.
18th, Wednesday. The wind remained still, with mist. We saw it would be some days yet before the ship would reach the city, and therefore determined to go up in a wherry, that is a row-boat, from Gravesend. As soon as one came alongside we went aboard, and passed by Gravesend and other villages. It was nine o’clock in the evening when we landed at St. Catharines,457 and went to a tavern called the Dutch Smack, but they would not receive us. We then went to the Inlander, the landlord of which was a Fleming, and a Papist, but not the worst one. We paid for the boat three English shillings in all. We three, namely, Vorsman, Jan Owins, the surgeon of our ship, a Rotterdammer, and myself, supped together; this was the first time we had slept in a bed in a long time.
19th, Thursday. We went through the city, the newly built portion458 as well as the other, but we found it very different from what we had imagined. We went to the Exchange and conversed with our captain and the other passengers. We endeavored to find the first vessel going to Holland. They told us there were two smacks or galiots lying ready, and would leave on Monday, for which we prepared ourselves.
20th, Friday. We went to Withal [Whitehall], where the king resides, and where we supposed we should see something special in the buildings, but in this we were mistaken. There are better places in London; the best house there was the banqueting house, which does not surpass some merchants’ houses in Amsterdam. We strolled into St. James’s Park, which is nothing but a large inclosed meadow, with some canals and ditches dug through it, in one portion of which are ducks swimming, and willow trees planted. The guard on horseback coming ahead, we heard the king459 was in the park. We went in, but did not see him; but walking through we saw his curiosities of birds which he kept there in cages slightly enough closed, such as eagles, cranes, a very large owl, a toucan, birds which we call hoontjen in Friesland, virviteaus, doves, starlings, and others of little importance. He had received from the Indies, by the last ships, two ostriches or cassowaries which were shut up and much prized, though they are very common in Holland. We came to his horse stable; there was only one horse in it, and that was so lean it shamed every one, as also did the small size of the stable, which stood near that of the Duke of Monmouth, where there were six tolerable good Frisic horses, with a saddle horse or two. Our stables460 look more kingly than these. We were about leaving the place when we heard them cry out, “To arms! to arms!” to a troop of soldiers standing there, and looking around, we saw at a distance the king coming, accompanied by six or eight noblemen, from whom you could distinguish him only from his having his hat on his head, while they had theirs off. He saluted all who saluted him, as he passed along, which he also did to us. I will not speak of his person as he has been sufficiently described by pen and burin. Nor will I speak of the condition of London. The long and short of it is, that city is larger than Amsterdam, but does not approach it, or any other city in Holland, either in neatness or in the regularity of the buildings, even those erected since the great fire. What are worthy of mention is a certain column, very high and well constructed, erected on the spot where the great fire broke out in 1666, and the Tower, not prettily built, but very old, constructed by the Romans in the time of Julius Cæsar.461 Whitehall and Westminster, and all within them, are not worth going to see.
21st, Saturday. Our ship having arrived before the city yesterday, we went on board to bring away our goods, as also did the surgeon. We took leave of the captain, mate, and carpenter, who was a young man and a Norwegian, stupid, but not the most evilly disposed. He had our love, and I had occasionally conversed with him when we were on the watch together at night, and sometimes made an impression upon him. He lived at Flushing, and wished, he said, that he could go and live with me even for nothing. He desired me not to forget him. I must also say this of the captain, that he was well known in London, and in all Boston, as a pious, good, and discreet man; but I was astonished when I saw and heard the following circumstance. A poor servant, who had served his time out in New England, came to him in Boston and asked if he could go over with him; he would do his best in working like any other sailor for his passage, as he well understood shipwork. The captain told him he might go with him. When we were at sea, this person was sick several days, and when he recovered did as well as he could, but, it is true, he did not do all that an experienced sailor could have done. When we arrived in the North Sea the captain made a memorandum by which this poor fellow promised to pay half the passage money, that is, thirty guilders, when he arrived in London. He called him, and read it to him, and told him, because he could not work like a good sailor, he must sign that writing, and if he did not do so, he would sell him again when he reached London, which he assured him would be done. The man began to complain and cry, saying he had not so promised, but he would work like any other, and do as well as he could. But notwithstanding his crying and objecting he had to sign the paper, or be sold. In this appeared the piety and sense of justice of our captain, though perhaps the other was not entirely without blame, though he had had blows enough. It seems he had some friends in London who paid the amount.
I must here mention another word about Boston, which is, that I have never been in a place where more was said about witchcraft and witches. From time to time persons had been put in prison, and executed; and a woman was in prison and condemned to die, when we left there.462 Very strange things were told of her, but I will not repeat them here.
22d, Sunday. I went into the Dutch church, where a young man who was a Cocceian preached.463 In the afternoon we went to the French church, and in going there passed by a large gate, through which many people were entering into a great hall. We looked in, and when we saw they were Quakers, walked quickly away, and went into the French church, whose congregation is much larger, and its church much smaller than the Dutch church—so small indeed, that they could not all get in. When therefore the Lord’s Supper was administered, they used the Dutch church, and the Dutch preached then in the French church, as they are not far apart. But as the French church was especially for the French, we went out, my comrade for the purpose of inquiring after Mr. Owins, and I to go to the Dutch church again, where another Cocceian preached well enough. I saw there the envoy from Holland, a Zeelander, whom I knew, with his family;464 but he did not know me.
23d, Monday. It was said we were to leave to-day, but we saw it would not be the case. The captain, with whom we were to go, was one Douwe Hobbes of Makkum, who brings birds over from Friesland every year for the king. There was a boat lying there ready to leave for Rotterdam, but it seems they intended to go in company.
24th, Tuesday. No departure to-day either. While we were at the Exchange, there was a great crowd of people in the street. We saw and heard two trumpeters, followed by a company of cavalry dressed in red, then a chariot drawn by six horses, in which was the Duke of York. Then came some chariots of the nobility, and the Prince Palatine,465 with several chariots, and two trumpeters in the rear.
25th, Wednesday. Could not sail yet, but the Rotterdammer sailed with thirty passengers, with little or no freight. In going down she broke the bowsprit of our ship. Mr. Ouwen left us in her, after we had taken leave of him.
26th, Thursday. Heard early this morning our ship was going down the river, for she lay opposite our room; we immediately hurried ourselves. It was very uncivil in the mate, for the captain was still in the city, and would go to Gravesend. We took a wherry and went after her, as she had not gone far in consequence of the mist and lightness of the wind. We drifted to-day scarcely outside of the ships.
27th, Friday. It was misty and calm. We therefore did not go as far as the current would have carried us. We had to come to anchor in consequence of the mist, in order not to drift against the ships, or upon the shoal.
28th, Saturday. We drifted and clawed along until we came to anchor before Gravesend, as the Rotterdammer did an hour or two afterwards. Owins, who was not very well accommodated, called out to us as we passed, and asked if we would not go ashore with him. We declined, for we could not have wished to have been better accommodated, as we two had a large, fine cabin to ourselves.
29th, Sunday. When we took our goods out of the ship at London, we let our trunks be examined, but there was nothing inspected. We gave the inspectors a penny and they were satisfied. Our skipper arrived now at Gravesend in the night, and had everything made ready for the inspectors. We had ourselves ready for their arrival. They came on board about eight o’clock, but they looked once only in the hatches without asking anything, and went away again. We went ashore in the forenoon and dined there. We had been to London, and the captain said we should eat the ship’s ordinary fare, which seemed now to us princely fare. However, as he was most of the time drunk when on shore, he had given it no consideration. We went through Gravesend to look at it, but it does not signify much—it is more foul and dirty in name than in fact. We also went out into the country a little, which pleased us best. I have never seen anywhere so many blackberries, which were now ripe. The ebb tide having come, we got under sail yet before evening, the wind being good, but it did not continue so long. Opposite Gravesend there is a strong castle well fortified, and another one of less importance on the lower side. Whenever ships pass up or down, they must strike [the flag] here in going between the two fortifications.466 We arrived at evening before the river of Chatham, where we anchored.
30th, Monday. The wind was easterly and light. We scratched along as far as to get in the King’s Channel, as also did the Rotterdammer, which sailed down with us.
October 1st, Tuesday. The wind as before; we therefore tacked with the tide before the Naze,467 intending to run into Harwich, both for the purpose of waiting for a good wind, and to buy a store of provision which the skipper through his drunkenness had forgotten. The Rotterdammer, which had not kept along the shore with us, but had continued through the King’s Channel, finding no good harbor there, returned again to Chatham, in order, as the wind continued south southeast, to go out along the south shore, and thus we separated.
2d, Wednesday. The wind still easterly. We therefore made several tacks, and ran into Harwich; a miserably poor little fort stands on the east point of the bay, yet you must strike your flag as you sail by it. The bay is large and suitable to harbor a great number of ships. The town is on the west side, passing which, a small river runs up into the land. We anchored about ten o’clock in the morning. We went ashore and dined, and I then, in company with some others, walked out of town; but my comrade returned, having concluded to cross over in the packet boat, and went to inquire about it. When I returned he told me it would leave that evening, and would save much time. He spoke to our skipper, who was not willing to release us without our paying him the whole passage money, namely two ducatoons apiece. Many words passed and hard enough they were on both sides, in which the skipper was very impertinent, yet not altogether in the wrong. We went aboard, and his passion having subsided, we satisfied him with two ducats,468 and took our goods to the packet boat. We went ashore to enter our names, according to the custom; my comrade giving his acknowledged name, I was compelled to do the same. We paid twelve shillings and sixpence each. We went into another room to take fresh leave of our captain and mate, when there came a scoundrel to take down our names and examine our goods, as he said, and we were compelled to give the same names again, in order that they might agree with those given before; but he was a swindler and obtained from each of us another shilling, for he did not go on board to examine, although he could perhaps do so; we went quickly on board to look after our property. It was about nine o’clock at night when we started; but as it was so calm we came outside without casting anchor, having a full moon and delightful weather. A sand reef stretches out into the sea from the before-mentioned little fort, inside of which the water is the deepest, being three and four fathoms at low water. It is shallowest in the middle, and level towards the west shore, having two fathoms of water or less. There are two lights in the town, which you bring in range, in order to sail in or out. The highest light stands most inside, and when that comes west of the lowest you are west of the gate or channel; and when it is east, you are east of the channel, and are on, or east of the reef.
3d, Thursday. The wind east-southeast, and we therefore sailed along the shore past Orfordness469 into the sea. The course thence to the Maes is east by south, but we sailed for the most part east, and sometimes east by north. I thought our Friesland smack was at sea before evening, for the wind was better for her than for us, as the course from Orfordness to the Texel is east-northeast, which was a due side wind. It was also better for the Rotterdammer.
4th, Friday. The wind east-southeast and east by south, but still. We continued our course easterly, and sometimes a little more northerly. We threw the deep lead and had 18 fathoms of water. The latitude at noon was 52° 25´. I warned them that we were too low, and would come before Schevelingh.470 This packet was so full of fleas that it was impossible for me to sleep. Every passenger who desired a berth had to pay five shillings for it, but we did not. There was such a hard rain in the night, accompanied by thunder and lightning, that we could not keep dry in the vessel below, for it leaked there as if it were open, or not much better. We had an English minister on board, who had been called to the English church at Rotterdam. He lay and prayed, and groaned, as hard and loud as if he would die of fear.471 The wind shifting to the southwest we held it close.
5th, Saturday. When day came, and it had cleared up somewhat, we saw at nine o’clock the tower of Schevelingh directly east, or in front of us, and half an hour afterwards that of Gravesend472 to the leeward, whereupon we were compelled to beat, in order to bring into the Maes, which we continued to do the whole day till midnight, before we reached Briel. Coming to the pier there, most of the passengers left for Maassluis, so as not to wait, but we could not do so on account of our goods.
6th, Sunday. As soon as it was day we put our goods on board the Rotterdam ferry-boat, which was to leave about nine o’clock. In the meanwhile we went to look about the place, and in the church, where a Cocceian preaches. After breakfast we went on board, but it was ten o’clock before we got off. We had to beat as far as Schiedam, where some royal yachts were lying, which had sailed with us from Gravesend, and had brought over the Prince Palatine, who had gone on to the Hague.473 We were delayed somewhat here, in consequence of transferring some persons into another boat. We reached Rotterdam about two o’clock, and were informed that no boat carrying goods left for Amsterdam on Sundays; but that one left Delft at six o’clock, and we had time enough to go there. We left our goods on board the canal-boat for Delft, and started at three o’clock for that city, where we arrived at five, and learned that we had been misinformed, and that the boat from Delft to Amsterdam left daily at four o’clock. We had to go and lodge in a tavern for twenty-four hours. We went to church.
7th, Monday. In order not to be all day at Delft, we walked on to the Hague, and passed by the house of Sister d’Owerk.474 I asked my comrade whether I should not inquire after our friends, and if perchance any of them were at the Hague; but he would not consent. We returned to Delft at two o’clock, and after dinner left at four for Amsterdam.
8th, Tuesday. Having passed through the night as best we could, we arrived at five o’clock in the morning before the gate of Amsterdam, which was opened at six, and we were admitted. We went close by the house of M. Bardewits,475 where I was again inclined to go in, but my comrade not approving of it at the Hague, I abandoned the idea. We put up at the inn where we lodged before our departure, and had our goods brought there, paying five shillings freight for our goods alone. We separated in order to do our business as speedily as possible. I went to deliver all the letters, and my comrade to sell the amber. We met on the Exchange at noon. When I had delivered my letters, I went to the boat for Sneek,476 to inquire how it was at the House,477 and when she would sail. They would leave on Thursday evening; and all went well at the House as far as they knew. My comrade, who had also made inquiries, brought the same word. He told me also how he had succeeded with the amber; that it was all spurious, and was worth nothing. He therefore had determined to send it back again just as we had received it. We went in the afternoon to perform some errands for the woman with whom we had lodged at New York, delivering two beaver skins to her husband’s daughter.478 And with this we consumed the day.
9th, Wednesday. This was a day of public prayer. We had nothing more to do except to buy a large Bible for Mr. Ephraim Hermans, according to our promise, with his spermaceti, which we did. It cost us twenty-eight guilders, because it was the last one of Ravesteyn’s edition.479 There was a new edition in press at the Fish Market, at the place where we bought this one, upon the point of the gate as you go to the Post Office. We put it on board of the ship of which Jan Gorter was captain and which would leave in a month’s time, and addressed it to Mr. Arnout de la Grange, to whom we also sent the amber with directions what to do with them. My comrade wrote to Ephraim, and also to Annetie Versluis.
10th, Thursday. We had our goods in good time in the boat. My comrade had also a basket with distilling glasses (retorts) in it, which he had bought. I went to Joannis van Ceulen, mathematician, who had made a new sea-atlas, a copy of which he had sent to the king of England, and also to the king of France.480 It is a beautiful work; but he was surprised, after having corrected it so much as he had, that I should point out to him several errors. I endeavored to obtain a chart of Maryland, from Augustine Herman’s draught, but could not find it here; nor could I in England.481 At four o’clock we went on board of the boat. The wind was light and contrary, so we only drifted along. It was good weather. Our hearts gave thanks to God when we reflected through what ways He had conducted us, and how fatherly He had preserved us, and brought us here. There sprang up a breeze in the night, so that,
11th, Friday, in the morning, we passed by Urck,482 and arrived at the Lemmer, where our goods were examined; but we had nothing to pay, and went on. It was so calm, with the wind contrary, that it was midnight before we arrived at Sneek. It was very dark and rainy, and we were fearful we could not find the way, else we should have gone to the House in the night.
12th, Saturday. Having given directions to our skipper, how he should send our goods after us, and having paid him, we went to speak to the boatman, who was to take the goods. It was about seven or half-past seven o’clock when we left Sneek on foot. After going some distance on our way, we passed through Bosum; and about ten o’clock reached our house, where all arms and hearts were open to receive us, which they did with affection and tenderness, in the love of the Lord, who had been with those who had remained at home, and us who had travelled, all now brought together, and united by His mercy. To Him be the power, and wisdom, and honor, and glory to all eternity. Amen.
Footnotes
1 Murphy, Anthology of New Netherland, p. 95.
2 See infra, p. 264, note 2.
3 a. Paul Hackenberg’s letter, see p. 291, note 2, post; Willem à Brakel, Trouwhertige Waerschouwinge (Leeuwarden, 1683), p. 63; Album Acad. Lugd.-Bat., 1650, “Henricus Schluterus,” the brother. b. Brakel in Murphy’s Anthology, p. 95. c. Letter from Herford in Schotel, Anna Maria van Schurman (Hertogenbosch, 1853), app., p. 40.
4 Verklaringe van de Suiverheid des Geloofs en der Leere van Jean de Labadie.
5 Volume I. Journal of a Voyage to New York and a Tour in Several of the American Colonies in 1679-80, by Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter of Wiewerd in Friesland (Brooklyn, 1867).
6 Journal of the Dutch Embassy to Maryland, 1659, by Augustine Herrman, in Narratives of Early Maryland, in this series, pp. 309-333.
7 A copy of this map is in the British Museum. No other is known.
8 Maryland Archives, II. 144.
9 Baltimore County Land Records.
10 Déclaration de la Foi, pp. 84, 122, 123.
11 Traité de la Solitude Chrétienne.
12 Cimbria Litterata, III. 37.
13 Her Eukleria seu Melioris Partis Electio (Altona, 1673) is perhaps the chief authority for the history of the Labadists from this point on.
14 For this princess, see Guhrauer’s article in the Historisches Taschenbuch for 1850, and Miss Elizabeth Godfrey’s A Sister of Prince Rupert.
15 H. van Berkum, De Labadie en de Labadisten (Sneek, 1851), II. 170 et seq. The history of the sect can be followed in Van Berkum, in the first volume of Ritschl’s Geschichte des Pietismus (Bonn, 1880), and in Ypeij and Dermout, Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Hervormde Kerk (Breda, 1827), vol. III.
16 An interesting description of the life of the community on Bohemia Manor is given in An Account of the Life, Travels, and Christian Experiences in the Work of the Ministry by Samuel Bownas (London, 1756).
17 F. Nagtglas, Levensberichten van Zeeuwen (Middelburg, 1890), I. 146.
18 Getrouw Verhael van den Staet en de laetste Woorden en Dispositien sommiger Personen die God tot sich genomen heeft, uyt de Gereformeerde en van de Werelt afgesonderde Gemeynte, voor desen gegadert tot Herfort en Altena, en tegenwoordig tot Wiewert Vrieslant (second ed., in New York Public Library, Amsterdam, 1683), pp. 30-32. The original French, Fidelle Narré des États et des Dernières Paroles (Amsterdam, 1681), and an English version (ibid., 1685), are in the British Museum.
19 See p. 130, note 1, infra.
20 Some writers put the Surinam venture before the voyage of 1679, and it is noticeable that Danckaerts says he has been in the West Indies; p. 61, infra. But the little “book of saints” which has just been mentioned says, of a Juffrouw Huyghens, who died in January, 1680, a lady very zealous for the conversion of the Indians, that she said that “if any of us went out thither, she would wish to be one of the first.” Evidently no such expedition or migration had yet taken place in 1680; van Sommelsdyk’s going out as governor gave the opportunity, he being a brother of their patronesses.
21 Maryland Archives, XIII. 126, also naturalizing Sluyter, Bayard, and de la Grange.
22 F. Nagtglas, Levensberichten van Zeeuwen, I. 146; J. Kok, Vaderlandsche Woordenboek, XI. (1708) 41.
23 See p. 264, note 2, infra.
24 Meaning Anna Maria van Schurman.
25 Schotel, Anna Maria van Schurman, app., p. 40; Schurman, Eukleria, II. 38; Getrouw Verhael, pp. 16-24.
26 See p. 265, note 1, infra.
27 See pp. 168, note 1, and 291, note 2, infra.
28 Works of William Penn (London, 1726), I. 90, 91. See also p. 202, note 1, post. Sluyter is also mentioned as a leading disputant and exhorter by the neighboring minister, Willem à Brakel, in his Trouwhertige Waerschouwinge voor de Labadisten (Leeuwarden, 1683), p. 63.
29 Maryland Archives, XX. 163.
30 Ibid., pp. 398, 399.
31 Margaret Filipse. See post, p. 5, note 1.
32 The manor-house of Thetinga, at Wieuwerd in Friesland, about seven miles southwest of Leeuwarden. By walking to Oosterend and a little beyond one found, as the canals then lay, a canal route to the Zuider Zee. The diarist, it will be observed, refrains from naming the place, and gives only the beginnings of the place-names mentioned just below.
33 The chronology needs explanation. Thursday, June 8, 1679, new style (which was the style our travellers observed), was May 29, old style, and May 29, old style, was Ascension Day, the keepers of old style observing Easter this year on (their) April 20, though the keepers of new style observed it on (their) April 2. The new style had been adopted by the province of Holland in 1582, immediately upon its promulgation by Pope Gregory XIII., but in Friesland and the other provinces of the Dutch Republic the old style continued to prevail until 1700.
34 The chief executive officer of a Dutch town.
35 A port on the west coast of Friesland, where they took the packet to cross the Zuider Zee to Amsterdam.
36 An important commercial town in North Holland, on the chief point they would pass on the west side of the Zuider Zee.
37 Margaret Philipse. Frederick Philipse (1626-1702), who in 1674 was listed as the richest man in New York, and later owned the great Philipse manor and was for twenty years a member of the governor’s council, had in 1662 married Margaret, widow of Pieter Rudolph de Vries, herself a well-to-do and enterprising merchant. She was the daughter of Adolf Hardenbroek of Bergen, and died before 1692. It is not necessary to accept in toto the diarist’s estimate of her.
38 I.e., if they were not Labadists of Wieuwerd.
39 The Y (now spelled Ij) is the river or inlet on which Amsterdam is situated. Buiksloot and Nieuwendam are suburban places on its north side.
40 The Voetians and the Cocceians were at this time the leading theological parties in the Reformed Church of the Netherlands. Gysbertus Voetius (1589-1676), professor of theology at Utrecht, was the pietistic, rigidly orthodox Calvinist; at first favorable to Labadie as to a man of earnest zeal to increase piety in the church, he turned against him as Labadie developed into separatism. Johannes Cocceius (1603-1669), professor at Leiden and one of the chief exponents of the “federal” theology (theology of covenants), represented a school more liberal in tendency and freer in exegesis, though still closely Biblical. Our travellers approved neither group.
41 A large island at the mouth of the Zuider Zee. Ships outgoing to America would pass between it and the Helder, or extreme north point of North Holland.
42 The Labadists had dwelt at Altona, in Holstein, then Danish, from 1672 to their removal to Wieuwerd in 1675. Labadie died there.
43 No doubt the allusion is to Antoinette Bourignon and her conventicles. Mlle. Bourignon (1616-1680), born in Lille, France, was a mystical enthusiast of tendencies not dissimilar from those of Labadie. Like him she wrote much, had temporarily a great vogue, and removed with her followers from place to place—Amsterdam, Schleswig, Holstein, Hamburg, East Friesland, Friesland. Their congregation was at Hamburg when the Labadists were at Altona, close by, and was now at Franeker, not far from Wieuwerd. Efforts had at first been made toward union, but by this time there was open opposition between the two sects. The “assembly of Mr. B.” means the conventicle maintained at Amsterdam by a merchant named Bardowitz or Bardewisch. He had been one of the foremost followers of Labadie, had interpreted his discourses into Dutch for those who did not understand French, and when Labadie retired to Herford in 1670 had been left in charge of that portion of the congregation which remained in Amsterdam. There he for many years, without pretending to be a minister, held a conventicle of separatists in his own house.
44 The southern extremity of a great shoal near the mouth of the Zuider Zee, northeast of the island of Wieringen. “Under the Vlieter” would mean at the east side of this shoal, in the Tesselstroom or channel to the Texel.
45 Sluyter.
46 A village on the east side of the Texel.
47 I Peter v. 6.
48 Near the middle of the island.
49 Or Mennonite. Their sect, largely Dutch, were followers of Menno Simons (1492-1559), refraining from military service, oaths, and public office. It sprang from among the Baptists of the Reformation period, and had much in common with the Society of Friends in the period of the present book.
50 Still another Oosterend, at the east point of the Texel.
51 The main channel past the Texel.
52 Jan is not otherwise known to us, though apparently he had, or had had, some connection with the Labadist community which made his name familiar to their agents.
53 Falmouth, England.
54 Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), a pious German shoemaker, author of many noted mystical writings.
55 We are left to infer that Margaret Philipse also, like Jan, had some relation to the Labadists, and perhaps that she had just visited them. But her husband, Frederick Philipse, was a native of the town of Bolsward, mentioned above, and she may therefore have gone there.
56 These are channels leading out around the Helder, the Nieuwe Diep close to that cape on the inside, the Lands Diep close to it on the outside. Farther out lay the old channel and the Spaniard’s Channel.
57 In this translation distances are stated in English miles.
58 The Texel channel being the great western passage out from the Zuider Zee, the other or eastern passage was the Vlie, lying on the other side of the great shoal known as the Bree Sand, and leading out between the islands of Vlieland and Schelling.
59 A guilder or florin was equivalent to about 40 cents.
60 West Friesland was the ancient name for the northern part of the province of Holland, Alkmaar one of its chief towns.
61 The westernmost island of the province of Zeeland.
62 Evert Duyckinck; see post, p. 28, note 2.
63 In the fragmentary manuscript journal of the voyage of 1683, Danckaerts notices, on land, between Canterbury and Dover, the same great abundance of beetles, which every evening fly out to sea from Dover in great numbers.
64 A distorted rumor of the rising of the Covenanters in June, 1679; but everything was now seen in the light of the Popish Plot.
65 Sandbanks off the southeast coast of England, called by the English the Galloper, the Whiting, and the Goodwin Sands.
66 Beachy Head.
67 Of Gibraltar.
68 Durlston Head.
69 A small long three-masted trading-ship.
70 Start Point.
71 This dangerous reef was called by the Dutch Meeuwsteen (Sea-mews’ Rock), by the English Eddystone. Of the lighthouses for which it has been celebrated, the first was begun in 1695.
72 Dodman Point.
73 The southernmost point of Cornwall. Falmouth is about midway between it and Dodman Point.
74 Falmouth, which had come into existence in 1613, numbered in 1679 some two hundred and fifty houses. The two castles alluded to as commanding the harbor were Pendennis castle on the west (southeast of the town), famous for its obstinate defence in 1646 by the royalists under Lord Arundell, and St. Mawes on the east.
75 The custom house had lately been transferred to Falmouth from Penryn. Bryan Rogers was one of the chief merchants of the former.
76 The new church at Falmouth, built by Sir Robert Killigrew. The sermon was probably from the Two Books of Homilies authorized by the Church.
77 There was but one mayor.
78 One of the Cape Verde islands.
79 Evert Duyckinck was the son of a Westphalian painter and glazier of the same name who had come out to New Netherland early, in the service of the Dutch West India Company.
80 Pendennis castle is meant. The governor was Richard, Lord Arundell of Trerice, son of the old governor who had commanded during the siege of 1646.
81 Robert Sinclair. Though he returned on the Charles, he came back to New York in 1682, married the sister of Evert Duyckinck, became a sea-captain, and died in 1704.
82 A gold coin of Holland, worth originally about two dollars and a half, but at this time less. It would apparently have been worth fifteen guilders of zeewan (wampum) in New Netherland.
83 Jan Teunissen van Dykhuis, of Brooklyn.
84 Twenty stivers made one florin or guilder, and three guilders one ducat.
85 Falmouth customs officers had the right, or opportunity by connivance of the government, to bring in some goods duty-free.
86 A Dutch silver coin, worth about $1.25.
87 The Charles set sail from Falmouth the next day, July 21, 1679. The account of the voyage is here omitted. It is a somewhat interesting picture of the hardships, discomforts, and other incidents of an Atlantic voyage in the seventeenth century, but it is excessively long.
88 Navesink.
89 “Headlands,” at the Narrows.
90 Robert Sinclair.
91 Gerrit Evertsen van Duyn, carpenter and wheelwright, emigrated in 1649 from Nieuwerkerk in Zeeland, married Jacomina, daughter of Jacob Swarts Hellekers, lived mostly in New Utrecht and Flatbush, and died in 1706. He had returned to the Netherlands in 1670, but was now coming out for good.
92 The mate told him, September 1, off the Bermudas, that one never failed to have storms there; and that one dark night “it seemed as if the air was full of strange faces with wonderful eyes standing out of them” (cf. Shakespeare’s Tempest); and then he remembered to have read the same, in his youth, in a little book called De Silver Poort-Klock (The Silver Gate-Bell).
93 Corsairs from North Africa, who at that time constantly infested the seas near England and concerning whom the narrative of the first part of the voyage shows frequent alarms.
94 An anker was about ten gallons.
95 After this the original manuscript begins a new pagination. See introduction to this book.
96 Zwolle in the Netherlands.
97 I.e., “black Jacob.” His name was Jacob Hellekers, and his house, in which the Labadists lodged while in New York, stood where now stands no. 255 Pearl Street, near Fulton Street.
98 Rev. Gideon Schaets was settled as pastor at Rensselaerswyck in 1652, later at Beverwyck and Albany, continuing in service there till he died in 1694, aged 86. Peter Tesschenmaker had come up from Dutch Guiana, and had supplied the pulpits at Esopus and at Newcastle on the South River (Delaware River), for about a year in each place. The history of his formal call, examination, ordination in October, 1679, and appointment, is set forth in Ecclesiastical Records of New York, I. 724-735. The only three other Dutch Reformed ministers in the Province at this time were those named below: Rev. Wilhelmus van Nieuwenhuysen of New York (1672—d. 1681), Rev. Casparus van Zuuren of Flushing, Brooklyn, and Flatlands (1677-1685), and Rev. Laurentius Gaasbeeck of Esopus (1678—d. February, 1680).
99 Pemaquid, on the coast of Maine, where this governor had built a fort in 1677, on territory embraced in the Duke of York’s patent. The governor was Sir Edmund Andros (1674-1681). He visited Pemaquid in the autumn of 1679. He was of course nowise subordinate to the governor of Jamaica.
100 Governor’s Island.
101 The inscription, on a stone extant till 1835, is here quoted almost literally. It ran, “Anno Domini 1642, W. Kieft, director general, has caused the commonalty to build this temple.” Willem Kieft was director-general of New Netherland from 1638 to 1647. A plan of town and fort may be seen at p. 420 of Narratives of New Netherland, in this series.
102 Nieuwenhuysen. The text is in I Timothy v. 17, “Let the elders that rule well, be accounted worthy of double honor.”
103 Rebecca, daughter of Jacob Hellekers’s wife by her former husband, was married to Arie or Adrian Corneliszen, who had a license to sell wines and other liquors, and lived a little out of town, beyond the Fresh Water.
104 Jean Vigné had in previous years been four times one of the schepens, or municipal councillors, of New Amsterdam. If he was born in New Netherland in or about 1614, there must have been at least one European woman in the colony at an earlier date than has been supposed, namely, back in the years of the first Dutch trading along that coast. But many things concerning the earliest years of New Netherland must remain in uncertainty until the publication of a certain group of documents of that period, evidently important, which were sold in 1910 by Muller of Amsterdam and are now in private possession in New York, and withheld from public knowledge.
105 Abraham de la Noy was a schoolmaster. See post, p. 63, note 2. Probably the writer means Peter de la Noy, who was clerk under the collector of the port. Later he was one of the chief supporters of Leisler.
106 The Smith’s Flats, a tract of low-lying land along the East River, outside the palisade of the town, and extending from present Wall Street to Beekman.
107 Perhaps a reminiscence from the days (1671-1675) when the Labadists lived on the Elbe, at Altona.
108 The stiver of Holland money was equivalent to two cents. Six white beads of wampum to the stiver was the rate established by authority in 1673.
109 Arnoldus de la Grange and his wife Cornelia (Fonteyn), resident at this time in New York, removed soon after to Newcastle, on the Delaware River, where he had various tracts of land and where he in 1681 erected a windmill. In 1684-1685 he was concerned in the purchase from Augustine Herrman of land in Bohemia Manor for the Labadist settlement, and later is found as a member of their community.
110 Delaware River.
111 Beeren Eylandt, afterward called Barren Island, lay east of Coney Island, between it and Jamaica Bay. Vlaeck means “the flat.”
112 Less than half a cent.
113 The second church building in Brooklyn, erected in 1666, and standing till 1766. It stood in the middle of what is now Fulton Street, near Lawrence Street. Gowanus was a distinct hamlet to the southward from Breukelen.
114 French of the Walloon variety. See p. 70, note 1, post.
115 Striped bass and shad, respectively. In reality the word elft has nothing to do with eleven, for elft = Fr. alose or Eng. allice.
116 This settler was Simon Aertsen De Hart, who came to New Netherland in 1664 and settled at Gowanus Cove. The house in which he entertained the travellers was till lately still standing, near Thirty-ninth Street, west of Third Avenue, Brooklyn, but was destroyed to make room for the terminal buildings of the Thirty-ninth Street ferry. A picture of it as it appeared in 1867 is plate XII. in Mr. Murphy’s edition of this journal.
117 Thirty cents.
118 Shake-down, bed on the floor.
119 Pronounced Nyack; the region around the present site of Fort Hamilton, on the eastern side of the Narrows. It was at that time largely surrounded by a marsh and hence is referred to in the text as an island.
120 Mica.
121 Jacques Cortelyou. He came out from Utrecht as tutor to the children of Cornelis van Werckhoven, to whom this New Utrecht tract was first granted by the Dutch West India Company. He became the official surveyor of the province, made in 1660 a map of New Netherland, and founded New Utrecht, on Long island, and a settlement in New Jersey.
122 There is probably here some confusion between the original grant to van Werckhoven and subsequent regrants to Cortelyou.
123 Follower of René Descartes (1596-1650), the celebrated French philosopher and mathematician, founder of Cartesianism and of modern philosophy in general.
124 See Governor Andros’s recommendation to the constables and overseers of Brooklyn to contribute to the relief of Cortelyou and the other inhabitants of New Utrecht, on account of their losses by fire, 1675, in Stiles, History of Brooklyn, I. 198.
125 This sketch is still preserved, accompanying the manuscript of this journal in the possession of the Long Island Historical Society. It bears the legend, in Dutch, “Views of the land on the south side and southwest side of the great bay between the Nevesincks and Long Island, six [Dutch] miles from New York.... All as it appears from... Jaques [blank]’s house at Najaq.” It is reproduced as plate II. in Mr. Murphy’s edition.
126 Flatlands, where Elbert Elbertsen Stoothoff, father-in-law of Jan Theunissen, and a man of prominence, lived.
127 Niewenhuisen.
128 Gravesend, still farther down the south shore of Long Island.
129 Flatbush.
130 This may mean Surinam (Dutch Guiana). Later, in 1683, a Labadist colony went out to Surinam, but failed; Danckaerts went out to join them, but returned.
131 Elbert Elbertsen.
132 Tincture of calamus; sulphur balsam, a mixture of olive oil and sublimed sulphur.
133 “The Gradations of the Spiritual Life,” by Theodorus à Brakel (1608-1699), an orthodox clergyman of note in the Reformed Church of Holland. Jacobus Koelman was originally a minister of the same church, in Zeeland, but became a schismatic and a Labadist and was forbidden to preach. In 1682 the people on the South River made much effort with the Classis of Amsterdam to have him sent over to be their minister, but in vain, and shortly after he left the Labadists, and in 1683 published a book against them. The book here spoken of was probably one of the works of Rev. John Brown of Wamphray in Scotland, written during his exile in Holland, 1663-1679.
134 Abraham de la Noy seems to have taught in New York from 1668 to his death in 1702, conducting at this time a private school, but from 1686 serving as master of the Dutch parochial school.
135 Named from Barent Blom, a settler. Later called Great and Little Barn Islands, now Ward’s and Randall’s Islands.
136 Of Manhattan.
137 The road was finished in 1673. Traced along the modern streets, it ran up Broadway, Park Row, the Bowery, Fourth Avenue (to Union Square), Broadway (to Madison Square), and then irregularly to the Harlem River at Third Avenue and 130th Street. The heights spoken of east (northeast) of the village of New Harlem were the present Mount Morris and Mott Haven.
138 So called because its main street ran through the farm or bouwery of Peter Stuyvesant.
139 Or east.
140 Resolved Waldron (1610-1690), elected constable in October, 1678. He was the chief man of the place, had been deputy fiscael of New Netherland in the time of Governor Stuyvesant, and held many provincial and local offices. In 1659 he and Augustine Herrman went to Maryland on an embassy for Stuyvesant; see its journal in Narratives of Early Maryland, in this series, pp. 309-333. Thus it may have been he who told Danckaerts and Sluyter of Herrman and of Bohemia Manor. It is almost certain that he never was in Brazil; but Hendrick Vander Vin, clerk and voorleser of Harlem, whom our travellers may have met at Waldron’s house, had had an important official position there.
141 Catrix for Carteret. Captain James Carteret, son of Sir George Carteret, the proprietary of New Jersey, had commanded a ship at the reduction of St. Christopher in 1667, had come to New Jersey in 1671, and had allowed himself to be made leader of the malcontents in an uprising in that province in 1672. In 1673 he married the daughter of the mayor of New York, and set out for Carolina, where he was a “landgrave,” but returned to New York, and ultimately (1680) to Europe.
142 The diarist is perhaps confusing the two Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey.
143 Philip Carteret, a distant cousin, not a nephew, of Sir George, is the person here meant. He was appointed governor of New Jersey under the joint proprietorship of Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, in 1664, and of East Jersey in 1674, under the sole grant to Sir George. He resigned in 1682, and died in December of that year, in this country. “This Carteret in England” means of course Sir George. The half of New Jersey called West New Jersey, first granted to Fenwick and Byllynge, came as a trust into the hands of Penn, Lawrie, and Lucas (see Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey, and Delaware, in this series, pp. 177-195), who used it for Quaker colonization.
144 The Palisades.
145 Valentine Claessen, whose sons took the surname of Valentine. He was a Saxon from Transylvania; his wife, Marritie Jacobs, was a Dutch woman, of Beest in Gelderland.
146 Walter Webley, nephew of Colonel Lewis Morris.
147 Greenwich.
148 In fact, about fourteen.
149 French-speaking persons from those provinces of the Low Countries then remaining under the rule of Spain, but now constituting the kingdom of Belgium.
150 The Oude Dorp (Old Town or Old Village) stood near the present South Beach on the east side of the island. The steep bluff spoken of was at what is now called Fort Wadsworth.
151 Still called New Dorp; a village some two miles east of Richmond.
152 Menhaden.
153 Perhaps Christopher Billop of Bentley. The creeks next spoken of are Richmond Creek and Main Creek, which make well into the island from its west side.
154 Pierre Cresson, a Picard, who after many years in Holland came out to New Netherland in 1657, and lived at Harlem till 1677, when he obtained this grant on Staten Island. His son Jacques embraced the Labadist views.
155 I.e., behind the Kill van Kull. Mill Creek is probably the stream now known as Elizabethtown Creek.
156 Now Shooter’s Island, opposite Mariner’s Harbor.
157 This was the Rev. Charles Wolley, the only English minister then in the province. A graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he came out with Governor Andros in 1678 as chaplain to the garrison, and remained in New York till 1680. He published in 1701 (London, two editions) a pleasant though fragmentary little book entitled A Two Years Journal in New York, well worth reading in comparison with Danckaerts’s account of the province. Two reprints of it have been issued (New York, 1860; Cleveland, 1902), the former edited by Dr. E.B. O’Callaghan, the latter by Professor Edward G. Bourne.
158 Hackensack.
159 The word, in the form neetup, has survived in local speech in some parts of New England. “What cheer, neetup?” was the Indian’s salutation to Roger Williams on his arrival at Seekonk.
160 The chief (evil) spirit.
161 Sachem, lord.
162 Ephraim Herrman, eldest son of Augustine Herrman of Bohemia Manor, had on September 3, 1679, six weeks before this date, married Elizabeth Rodenburg, daughter of Lucas Rodenburg, formerly vice-director of Curaçao. South River is the Delaware.
163 Communipaw, in New Jersey, founded in 1658. It is uncertain whether the name is of Indian origin (Gamoenipaen), or is a Dutch name made up from that of Pauw. The former is more likely.
164 Jacques Fierens was from 1642 to 1669 a noteworthy printer, bookseller, and publisher at Middelburg in Zeeland, where Danckaerts (see the introductory note B to this volume) then lived. Fierens’s shop, as we know from other sources, was at the sign of the Globe in Gistraat or Giststraat (i.e., Heilige Geest Straat, Holy Ghost Street).
165 In 1673, after the Duke of York and the English had held New York nine years, two Dutch commodores, Cornelis Evertsen and Jacob Binckes, retook it for the States General. The Dutch, however, held it only a year.
166 Fytje Hartman, widow of Michael Jansen Hartman. She had seven children.
167 Bergen was founded in 1661. Both it and Communipaw are now in Jersey City.
168 Raccoon.
169 Hackensack River.
170 Immetie Dirx, widow of Frans Claesen.
171 Say three cents.
172 Parish clerk, precentor, and (usually) schoolmaster. The church records of Bergen go back to 1664, and the first church edifice was built in the next year, 1680.
173 Now Constable’s Point. Pavonia was the domain of Michael Pauw. Haverstraw lay well to the northward, Hackensack to the northwestward, of the Bergen peninsula.
174 “The Town is compact and hath been fortified against the Indians.” Captain Nicolls, in George Scot, The Model of the Government of East New Jersey, p. 142.
175 Jacques Cortelyou and his associates had a large grant of land at Aquackanonck (Passaic). Northwest Kill is the Passaic River.
176 A morgen was about two acres.
177 Deed of March 28, 1679, from the Indian sachem Captahem to a group of Bergen men.
178 There were few Friends yet in New York, but on Long Island there were already quarterly and half-yearly meetings.
179 Passaic.
180 The Dutch translation of Jean de Labadie’s Points Fondamentaux de la Vie vrayement Chrestienne (Amsterdam, 1670).
181 Several very interesting pen-and-ink drawings accompany the manuscript of this journal. See the introduction to the volume.
182 Brooklyn, Flatbush, New Utrecht.
183 Large stationary net.
184 The reference is to Governor Nicolls’s code, commonly called the Duke’s Laws, first promulgated in 1665, for Long Island and the Delaware River region, and reissued by Governor Lovelace in 1674. Copies were sent to each Long Island township, and thus to New Utrecht. The code was printed in 1809 in the first volume of the Collections of the New York Historical Society, and may also be found in a Pennsylvania issue, Charter to William Penn, etc. (Harrisburg, 1879).
185 The Pensées of Blaise Pascal had been published, posthumously, in 1670.
186 These words appear as a marginal note in the original manuscript.
187 Piscataway, N.J., founded in 1666, some seven or eight miles up the Raritan River from its mouth at Perth Amboy. Achter Kol, below, was the Dutch name for what is now corruptly called Arthur Kill, and, by extension, for Newark Bay and the portion of New Jersey immediately west of Staten Island, Arthur Kill, and the Kill van Kull.
188 Hackensack and Passaic Rivers.
189 Woodbridge, N.J., founded in 1665.
190 The mill of Jonathan Dunham, whose house was standing till 1871.
191 Madame van Brugh, née Katrina Roelofs, later Madame van Rodenburg, now the wife of Johannes Pieterszen van Brugh.
192 Dr. Henry Greenland, formerly a resident of Newbury, Mass., and of Kittery, Maine. The route which travellers at this time took through New Jersey crossed the Raritan at the present site of New Brunswick, and then proceeded to what is now Trenton. The crossing of the Raritan is not mentioned in the journal.
193 In 1675 the moiety of Berkeley and Carteret’s grant called West New Jersey came into the hands of three English Friends, Penn, Lawrie, and Lucas, as trustees. In the four years since that time more than a thousand Friends had settled in the province. The owner of the mill was Mablon Stacey, a Yorkshire Quaker, who had just built it, on Assanpink Creek, in what is now Trenton.
194 The Labadists had dwelt at Herford in Westphalia from 1670 to 1672, and at Altona in Holstein from 1672 to 1675.
195 Matinnaconk Island lies in the Delaware River between Bordentown an Burlington.
196 See post, pp. 154-156.
197 Jean Baptiste van Helmont (1577-1644), an eminent Belgian chemist, physiologist, and physician. Of his collected writings, Ortus Medicinae, there were many editions and translations, and one of the English versions may have been edited with sympathy by a Quaker, for with much scientific acuteness Van Helmont combined much mystical philosophy.
198 Chester, Pennsylvania.
199 Tacony, Philadelphia County.
200 Tinicum Island, a few miles below the present site of Philadelphia (which, it should be remembered, was not founded till 1682). On this island the Swedish governor Johan Printz had in 1643 built his stronghold of Nya Göteborg, or New Gothenburg, and his mansion; and here, after his return to Sweden, his daughter Armegot Printz, wife of his lieutenant and temporary successor Johan Papegoia, lived from 1654 to 1662, and from 1673 to 1675.
201 Here and in many other places the diarist spells the name Grangie.
202 Built by Governor Printz in 1646.
203 This sketch is not preserved with the manuscript.
204 Papegoia returned to Sweden in 1656, but did not die till 1667.
205 This suit of Madame de La Grange against Madame Papegoia took place at New York in 1672.
206 The Scanian War, 1675-1679.
207 Her only brother, it appears, had died. But she had three sons in the Swedish military and naval service in 1675.
208 Otto Ernst Koch or Kock, a justice of the peace of the court held at Upland during this period when the region on the right bank of the Delaware River was under the administration of the Duke of York.
209 Peter Alrichs, a Dutchman of Nykerk near Groningen, had been commandant of the region during the brief Dutch reoccupation of 1673-1674, and was now a justice of the Newcastle court. He was a nephew of Jacob Alrichs, governor of the region 1657-1659, under the rule of the city of Amsterdam.
210 In the next year, 1681, Arnoldus de La Grange sued Kock in the Upland court. The case was postponed “by reason that there’s noe court without Justice Otto, whoe is a party,” and, under Penn’s government, was decided in favor of La Grange in 1683.
211 Probably this was Alice Gary, formerly Alice Ambrose, who in 1662 had been whipped at Dover and Hampton, N.H., and Salisbury, Mass., and in 1665 had been punished at Boston, along with Wenlock Christison. She now lived on West River, in Maryland.
212 Robert Wade, who had come out with Fenwick in 1675, and settled at Salem, N.J., but presently removed to Upland (Chester). He and his wife were probably the first Quakers in Pennsylvania. Penn occupied this house when he first landed in 1682, and here the first assembly of Pennsylvania met.
213 James Naylor. The episode occurred at Bristol, England, in 1656. Anna Salters was at that time Anna or Hannah Strayer, whose conduct in that episode was as here described.
214 So appointed by Governor Andros in 1676.
215 Turtle Creek, now Shelpot Creek. At its falls the Swedes had built a mill in 1662.
216 The creek mentioned was Brandywine Creek. Fort Christina stood on a part of the present site of Wilmington, Delaware. For the Dutch conquest of it in 1655, see Narratives of New Netherland, in this series, pp. 379-386, and Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, pp. 167-176.
217 Fort Christina stood on the north side of Christina Creek. Stuyvesant’s main battery was erected behind the fort, on the land or north side of it, but he also had works on the opposite or south side of Christina Creek. Lindström’s original plan of the siege may be seen reproduced in Dr. Amandus Johnson’s The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware, II. 602.
218 Jean Paul Jaquet was vice-director on the Delaware during the initial period of Dutch control, 1655-1657.
219 Anna Margareta, eldest of the three daughters of Augustine Herrman of Bohemia Manor. She afterward married Matthias Vanderheyden.
220 Presiding justice of the court at Newcastle. See post, p. 144.
221 This Newcastle sketch seems not to have survived.
222 Appoquinimink Creek, in the lower part of Newcastle County, Delaware.
223 Kasparus Herrman, second son of Augustine Herrman of Bohemia Manor. Andros in 1676 had confirmed him in the possession of lands on the northeast side of Augustine Creek in Delaware, a part of St. Augustine Manor (see note 2 on page 112), and here we may assume that he was living, near Reedy Isle.
224 Great numbers of indented white servants came into Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. See E.I. MacCormac, White Servitude in Maryland, in Johns Hopkins University Studies, XXII.
225 This was one of Augustine Herrman’s estates. His possessions included Bohemia Manor and Little Bohemia (acquired in 1662), St. Augustine’s Manor (1671), and Misfortune, or the Three Bohemian Sisters (1682). All lay in the region between Elk River and the Delaware. Bohemia Manor was the tract in present Maryland between Bohemia River (and Great Bohemia Creek) and Back Creek, Little Bohemia that between Great and Little Bohemia Creek, the Three Bohemia Sisters a tract north of Back Creek, and St. Augustine, the tract in present Delaware east of Bohemia Manor and extending from St. George’s Creek or the present line of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal southward to Appoquinnimink or perhaps Blackbird Creek. The tract which the Labadists afterward purchased lay in the southeast part of Bohemia Manor, east of the manor-house, and on the north side of Great Bohemia Creek. Their house was still standing a few years ago. Our travellers had gone down the Delaware River some fifteen miles from Newcastle, and were now near the present Port Penn, Delaware.
226 In 1671 the New York authorities ordered those at Newcastle to clear one-half of a road from there to Augustine Herrman’s plantation, the Marylanders having agreed to clear the other half. In a rare tract, Copies of some Records and Depositions Relating to the Great Bohemia Manor (1721), Herrman van Barkelo, an elderly resident, describing the “old Highway Road or Delaware Path about Thirty eight Years ago,” and giving some reminiscences of Ephraim Herrman about the same time (1683), when the deponent lived with the Labadists on Bohemia Manor, adds that as he then “travelled the... Delaware Road,... he observed the Trees marked or notched along the said Delaware Road Sides, that the Notches seemed to him to be made about Eight or Ten Years before that Time.”
227 See the Introduction, p. xvii. Augustine Herrman, born in Prague in 1608, seems to have resided at New Amsterdam most of the time from 1633 to 1659. In the latter year he was sent on an embassy into Maryland. His journal of that embassy is printed in Narratives of Early Maryland, in this series, pp. 309-333. From 1662 to his death in 1686 he lived on his estates in Maryland, already described, and was the great man of northeastern Maryland. His house stood till 1815, when it was destroyed by fire.
228 Twenty thousand acres, rather, or perhaps twenty-four thousand. The map, one of the finest ever executed in English America in the seventeenth century, is entitled Virginia and Maryland, As it is Planted and Inhabited this present Year 1670 Surveyed and Exactly Drawne by the Only Labour and Endeavour of Augustin Herrman Bohemiensis. It was engraved by Faithorne. Only one copy is now known, that in the British Museum. A facsimile was lately published by Mr. P. Lee Phillips (Washington, 1911).
229 Queen Henrietta Maria, consort of Charles I.
230 On the east side of Chesapeake Bay the line of division between Maryland and Virginia ran east from Watkins Point on the bay shore to the Atlantic. On the west side the boundary was the Potomac.
231 Chesapeake.
232 Chesapeake.
233 The travellers had no first-hand knowledge of the subject, and their comment is without authentic value.
234 “My father is and has been all this winter extreme weakly.” Ephraim Herrman to Secretary Matthias Nicolls, Newcastle, January 17, 1680.
235 A second wife, of whom little is otherwise known.
236 Probably Captain Henry Ward, several times member of assembly from Cecil County, who had a plantation in Sassafras Neck.
237 Probably Måns Andersson. He and Hendrick Hendrickson, mentioned below, are known as petitioners for naturalization in 1674.
238 Captain James Frisby, member of the Maryland assembly for Cecil County in 1678. George Fox held a notable meeting at his house in 1672. The first court-house of Cecil County was erected on the north side of Sassafras River, a short distance east of what is still called Ordinary Point.
239 Captain Nathan Sybrey was a member of assembly for Cecil County in 1678. The Great Bay, above, means the Chesapeake. “Howel’s Point” is noted on Herrman’s map, at the mouth of Sassafras River.
240 The sketch is not preserved. The place would seem to be west of Newtown, Maryland, where Herrman’s map indicates “Salsbury Creek.” Richard Adams was a petitioner to the Maryland assembly from Cecil County in 1681.
241 Where Danckaerts had lived.
242 German.
243 An act of assembly of 1671 naturalized Cornelius Commegys the elder, Millementy [so in the act as printed, read Willemtje] his wife, and his four children, Cornelius, Elizabeth, William, and Hannah, the first born in Virginia, the younger three in Maryland. He settled at Quaker Neck on the Chester River, in Kent County, below Chestertown.
244 Vianen is in South Holland, near the borders of Utrecht. The act of naturalization and the record of their marriage at New Amsterdam in 1658 speak of him as born in Lexmont (Leksmond, a village near Vianen) and his wife in Barneveld, a village near Amersfoort.
245 Henry Hosier was a member of the assembly from Kent County in 1679.
246 Sluyter, though Dutch, came from the German town of Wesel.
247 Steenwijk is in Overyssel.
248 This suggestion was finally realized by the cutting of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, completed in 1829.
249 The meaning of this passage is made clear only by the discovery of the facts mentioned in Note B prefixed to this volume. The names Jasper and Susanneken (a diminutive of Susanna) appeal to Danckaerts and excite these reflections because they were the names of himself and his wife, who had died in 1676.
250 It was upon the piece of land here alluded to that the colony of the Labadists was afterward planted. See p. 112, note 2, supra.
251 The first Lord Baltimore, George Calvert, who secured the patent of 1632, never voyaged to Maryland as here described. Also, the grant was definite in bounds, from the Potomac to 40° N. lat. Cecilius Calvert, the second lord, died in 1675. Charles Calvert, the third, was at this time both proprietary and governor, having come out to his province this winter, arriving in February, 1680. The writer erroneously attributes the granting of Maryland to Queen Mary Tudor, predecessor of Queen Elizabeth, instead of to Queen Henrietta Maria.
252 Lord Culpeper came out to Virginia as governor this year, arriving in May, 1680. His predecessor as governor, Sir William Berkeley, had been recalled and had died, but Colonel Jeffreys and Sir Henry Chicheley had meantime been lieutenant-governors successively.
253 Despite these criticisms as to slavery, it appears, if we can accept the hostile testimony of Dittelbach, Verval en Val der Labadisten (Amsterdam, 1692), that Sluyter, when in control of the Labadist plantation at Bohemia Manor, employed slave labor without hesitation and with some harshness.
254 No cities, of course, but some villages.
255 The war of 1672-1674. But the attack on the Hoere-kill (Whorekill, now Lewes, Delaware) was not an act of war against the Dutch, but an attack by Marylanders on inhabitants who were under the jurisdiction of the Duke of York, in a territory disputed between him and Lord Baltimore.
256 The reference is to the Popish Plot in England; in respect to Boston, it is probably to King Philip’s War, 1675-1676, and the hostilities along the Maine coast in 1677, though there is no reason to attribute these to French or Jesuit instigation. Yet possibly the great fire of August 8-9, 1679, is meant; see p. 269, note 1, infra.
257 Domine Petrus Tesschenmaker remained in charge of the church in Newcastle till 1682. After brief sojourns in New York and on Staten Island, he was called to the church in Schenectady. There he served from 1685 to 1690, when he was killed in the Indian massacre of that year.
258 Bread and Cheese Island lay up Christina Creek, some ten miles west of present Wilmington, Delaware, and at the junction of Red Clay Creek and White Clay Creek. The planter was Abraham Mann, who in 1683 was sheriff and member of assembly for Newcastle County.
259 Our travellers used the new style, current in Holland (though not in Friesland), the English and their colonists the old. Christmas of old style was January 4 of new.
260 Jan Boeyer was constable of Newcastle the next year.
261 For fideicommissum.
262 Augustine Herrman did not die till 1686. In 1684 he executed his final deed of conveyance to Peter Sluyter alias Vorsman, Jasper Danckaerts alias Schilders, Petrus Bayard of New York (nephew of Governor Stuyvesant and ancestor of all the Bayards of Delaware), John Moll, and Arnoldus de La Grange, conveying the “Labadie Tract” of some 3750 acres on the north side of Bohemia River. Moll and de La Grange immediately released their interest in the land to Danckaerts and Sluyter, Bayard did so in 1688, and Danckaerts in 1693, from Holland, conveyed to Sluyter all his rights. Augustine Herrman at his death conveyed the rest of Bohemia Manor to his son Ephraim as an entailed estate. But evidently he had by that time repented of his dealings with the Labadists, for a codicil to his will appoints trustees to carry it out because “my eldest Sonn Ephraim Herman... hath Engaged himself deeply unto the labady faction and religion, seeking to perswade and Entice his Brother Casparus and sisters to Incline thereunto alsoe, whereby itt is upon Good ground suspected that they will prove no True Executors of This my Last Will of Entailement... but will Endeavour to disanull and make it voide, that the said Estates may redound to the Labady Communality.” MS., Md. Hist. Soc.
263 About ten gallons.
264 Robert Wade. See p. 105.
265 Salem, New Jersey, had been founded by John Fenwick in 1675.
266 Lucas Rodenburgh was vice-director of Curaçao from 1644 to 1655.
267 Peter Alrichs came over in 1657.
268 Wicacoa was in the southeastern part of the present area of Philadelphia, where Gloria Dei Church, still standing, was erected by the Swedes in 1697.
269 A manuscript map of the upper Delaware, which accompanies the journal, shows a plantation of Peter Alrichs on the right bank, opposite Matinnaconk Island and Burlington, and near the present Bristol, Pennsylvania.
270 See p. 96, note 1.
271 New York Bay; so named from Samuel Godyn, one of the earliest patentees of New Netherland.
272 The settlement at the Whorekill was Swanendael, founded by David de Vries and other Dutch patroons in 1631. See his Notes in Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey, and Delaware, in this series. The origin of New Sweden was quite different from what is stated in the text. It sprang from commercial companies formed in Sweden, allied with Dutch merchants.
273 The conquest of New Sweden by the Dutch under Stuyvesant took place in 1655; narratives of it are in the volume just named and in Narratives of New Netherland, in this series. The surrender was of course not demanded in the name of the city of Amsterdam but in that of the Dutch republic, the United Provinces. The Dutch West India Company in 1656 sold a part of the territory to the city of Amsterdam.
274 Came to the crown of England and was conferred by King Charles II. on his brother, James, duke of York, afterward James II. The duke’s grant of New Jersey to Berkeley and Carteret in 1664 conveyed it to them undivided. The partition was effected by the new grants of 1674 and the Quintipartite Deed of 1676, creating East New Jersey and West New Jersey.
275 A strange corruption of the name of Edward Byllynge; less altered is the name of the other proprietor of West Jersey, mentioned below, John Fenwick, who founded Salem in 1675. West Jersey in that year fell into the hands of Penn, Lawrie, and Lucas as trustees. Their letter in Narratives of Pennsylvania, pp. 177-185, explains the system of land sales, of which our censorious traveller takes so dark a view.
276 They took the “lower road” or more easterly path to the Raritan.
277 Cornelis van Langevelt was married within the ensuing year to Dr. Greenland’s daughter; he was probably son of Cornelis van Langevelt of New Amsterdam. Under the name Cornelius Longfield he appears as deputy from Piscataway to the general assembly of East Jersey in 1696-1697. “Thomas the baker in New York” is Thomas Lawrence.
278 At or near the present site of New Brunswick.
279 It is an affluent of the Raritan, coming into it from the south.
280 Say, two dollars and a half.
281 Cologne earth is a brown ochre.
282 Governor Philip Carteret was a cousin of the proprietary.
283 Sent word, rather. Governor Carteret arrived in New Jersey late in 1665. Piscataway was so named from Piscataqua in New Hampshire (Portsmouth), and Woodbridge from the Rev. John Woodbridge of Newbury, Massachusetts, from which two places the first settlers came.
284 Step-father; Johannes van Brugh. See p. 94, note 1, supra.
285 Deutel Bay was a small bight in the East River, about at the foot of Forty-seventh Street. The name was later corrupted into Turtle Bay. It was not a cove of Long Island.
286 See p. 5, note 1, supra.
287 Pemaquid, on the Maine coast, where Governor Andros had caused a fort to be erected, which he visited in the autumn of 1679.
288 Francis Rombouts was mayor of New York in 1679-1680.
289 The Album Studiosorum Academiae Lugduno-Batavae (Hague, 1875) contains the entry of “Petrus Sluyter Vesaliensis” (i.e., of Wesel) as entering the University of Leyden in 1666 as a student of theology, at the age of twenty-one. Also, Sluyter in 1670 told Paul Hackenberg at Herford that he had studied three years in the Palatinate (without finding one truly pious pastor or teacher). Domine Selyns, in a letter to Rev. Willem à Brakel, says that Sluyter gave himself out as a physician, but unsuccessful in practice, Danckaerts as a wine-racker, as here. Danckaerts is understood from Zeeland sources to have been originally a cooper for the Dutch West India Company at Middelburg.
290 Six beavers, according to a municipal ordinance of 1676.
291 Simon Aertsen de Hart.
292 The Beaver was the ship by which Gerrit van Duyn’s wife had just come out. For the writer as a cooper see p. 168, note.
293 Jacques Cortelyou.
294 Probably a mistake for Jacob Theunissen, who was a baker at this time.
295 “The Liftings up of the Soul to God”; one of Labadie’s publications (Dutch, Amsterdam, 1667), of which, however, Danckaerts evidently had with him only the original French, Elévations d’Esprit à Dieu (Montauban, 1651).
296 Les Saintes Décades des Quatrains de Piété Chrestienne (Amsterdam, 1671), poems by Jean de Labadie.
297 Passaic.
298 Sluis in Staats-Vlanderen, now in Zeeland.
299 What appears to be the Dutch version of this, Handboekje van Godsaligheid, by Labadie, was published at Amsterdam in 1680.
300 Yellow Point.
301 Passaic River.
302 Milford, i.e., Newark, founded in 1666 by settlers from Milford, Connecticut, and other Connecticut towns. Opposite, between the Hackensack and Passaic rivers, lay Captain William Sandford’s plantation (granted 1668), afterward called New Barbadoes. North of his grant lay that of Captain John Berry (1669), still higher that of Jacques Cortelyou and his partners.
303 Probably connected with Kitchi, great.
304 See pp. 76-78, supra.
305 The falls of the Passaic, at Paterson, New Jersey.
306 Not preserved.
307 Governor’s Island. The Spaniards spoken of may have been Verrazano’s men.
308 The canticoy of the Indians was wild dancing.
309 Esopus, founded in 1652. See pp. 220-221, post.
310 Rev. Laurentius van Gaasbeeck, licentiate in theology and doctor of medicine (M.D., Leyden, 1674), had come to the Esopus in September, 1678, and had preached at its three villages of Kingston, Marbleton, and Hurley. He died in February, 1680. A letter from the church, asking for another minister, is in Ecclesiastical Records of New York, II. 748. Tesschenmaker had served the church temporarily before Gaasbeeck’s arrival.
311 Evert Duyckinck the elder and his son Gerrit were painters and glaziers; the father is also designated in the Dutch church records as “Schilder,” maker of pictures.
312 Albany.
313 Governor Andros’s proclamation of March 13/23, 1680, against Governor Carteret’s assuming to exercise powers of government in New Jersey. It may be found in New Jersey Archives, I. 293.
314 See p. 28, supra.
315 Schenectady, Rensselaerswyck, Esopus.
316 William Leete was governor of Connecticut at this time, but there seems to be no evidence of his leaving his colony to go to the West Indies.
317 William Dyer had been commissioned by the Duke of York in 1674 as collector of the port of New York, and was still acting as such. The next year, 1680-1681, he was mayor of the city.
318 Since the revolution of 1672 in Holland, William III., Prince of Orange, afterward king of Great Britain, had been stadholder (governor) of that province, and of four others of the seven provinces of which the Dutch federal republic, the United Provinces, consisted. But the other two provinces, Friesland and Groningen, kept as their chief executive Count Henry Kasimir II. of Nassau-Dietz, a third cousin of the Prince of Orange. The stadholder of Friesland was not on good terms with his great relative, and under his lead Friesland stood somewhat aloof from the policies of the latter and of Their High Mightinesses the States-General of the United Provinces. The title His Royal Highness would be given to the Prince of Orange by Andros because of his recent marriage (1677) to the Princess Mary, daughter of the Duke of York and niece of Charles II.
319 Pemaquid.
320 Meus for Bartholomaeus, Bartholomew.
321 When the English conquered New Netherland, in 1664. Zwolle is in the province of Overyssel. The old man was Jacob Hellekers, his daughter’s husband Gerrit van Duyn. See p. 36, note 2. In fact, however, Gerrit had not gone back to Holland till 1670, nor his wife till 1671.
322 See pp. 36, 43, 49, 68, 169, 171, 228.
323 Jacob Hellekers’s wife was Theuntje Theunis. She was thrice married: to Ide ——, to Jacob Hellekers, to Jan Strijker. Peter Denys of Emmerich was farmer of the weigh-house; for Arie or Adriaen Corneliszen, see p. 47, note 1; Theunis Idenszen, a man of forty-one at this time, was assessor of the out ward in 1687, was married to Jannetje Thyssen, and had six children; Willem Hellekers was constable of the east ward in 1691.
324 “You do not know that the devil has taken possession of our poor man.”
325 “Woman of pretended piety.”
326 Domine Schaets’s son-in-law was Thomas Davidtse Kekebel or Kieckebuls. His wife had been sent away from Albany by the magistrates. In 1681 she and her husband came into a final concord; Doc. Hist. N.Y., quarto ed., III. 534.
327 Cats Kill. The falls alluded to are the Kaaterskill Falls.
328 The garden of the Thetinga State, the manor-house at Wieuwert. The tree is the arbor-vitæ.
329 The fuyck is a hoop-net used for catching fish. Its shape is that of a truncated cone. The ground-plan of Albany (see p. 216, post, and the plan of 1695 in Rev. John Miller’s Description of New York) had that shape.
330 Robert Sanders of Albany was a prominent Indian trader, skilled in Indian languages.
331 Mohawk River.
332 The falls of Niagara had been mentioned by Cartier and by Champlain, but the first full description of them, that of Hennepin in his Description de la Louisiane, was not published till 1683.
333 The falls at Cohoes are at present about 900 feet broad and 75 feet high.
334 Peanuts.
335 No Frederick Pieters seems to be known. It was perhaps Philip Pieterse Schuyler, progenitor of a distinguished family, who lived on a large farm at the flats below West Troy.
336 Schenectady, of which Danckaerts tried to make Dutch words, quasi “beautiful section.”
337 Probably Adam Vrooman, who at the time of the general massacre by the Indians, 1690, defended his house with great courage and success.
338 But it appears from the report of a physician and several surgeons, printed in Ecclesiastical Records of New York, II. 869-871, that in 1683 “Dr. Vorstman” (Peter Sluyter) attempted to practise medicine, and with disastrous results.
339 Aletta.
340 The record of baptisms of the Dutch church at Schenectady does not begin till 1694.
341 There was a church, and Domine Gideon Schaets came over from Albany four times a year to administer the sacrament, but there was no settled minister till the call of Domine Petrus Tesschenmaker in 1684.
342 Methinks he was moved by seeing this bended branch, to bend himself before God, and therefore hung his hat upon it; though I dare not so affirm certainly.—Note of the journalist.
343 Parish clerk and lay reader. This was Reynier Schaets, chirurgeon and justice of the peace, killed in the massacre of 1690.
344 The form of Schenectady a few years later is shown in the map in Miller’s New York (1695).
345 The patroonship of Rensselaerswyck was founded in 1630 by Kiliaen van Rensselaer of Amsterdam. It was a great manorial estate, extending along the west bank of the Hudson from Beeren Island to the Mohawk and running so far back from the river as to embrace about the same area as the present Albany County, though Albany itself was not a part of it. The first patroon had died in 1646, the second, his oldest son Johannes, had also died, and the present heir was the latter’s son Kiliaen. The lady here described was Maria, the widow of Jeremias van Rensselaer, the original patroon’s third son, who had ruled the colony from 1658 to 1674. She was a daughter of Oloff Stevensz van Cortlandt, and lived till 1689. Her husband’s youngest brother Richard had lived at the colony from 1652 to 1672, but was now in Holland, treasurer of Vianen, and never came to America again.
346 Ninety bushels.
347 Rev. Gideon Schaets (1608-1694) was minister of Rensselaerswyck from 1652 to 1657, and of Fort Orange (Beverwyck, Albany) from 1657 to 1694.
348 With these data may be compared the matter of the Pompey Stone, found in Pompey, N.Y., and bearing apparently a Spanish inscription of 1520.
349 Wild, savage, is the word commonly used by the Dutch of that time to denote the Indians.
350 See p. 198, note 3.
351 Rev. Bernhardus Arensius had since 1674 ministered to these two Lutheran congregations, and continued till his death in 1691.
352 Illetje’s mistress.
353 This was one Frans Pieterse Clauw, who had come out to Beverwyck (Albany) in 1656.
354 “Clover Reach,” now Claverack.
355 Sketch not preserved.
356 Gerrit Duyckinck.
357 A ground-plan of Esopus or Kingston, showing the stockade with its gates, and the houses and fortifications as they are here described, may be found in Miller’s Description of New York.
358 The Esopus war occurred in 1658-1660.
359 Willem Hellekers.
360 See p. 202, note.
361 Theunis Idensen is found becoming a member of the Dutch Reformed Church at New York in the next month, June 17, 1680.
362 The Figurative Map of 1616 gives the name Riviere van den Vorst Mauritius (River of Prince Maurice). Wassenaer (1624) speaks of the river as “called first Rio de Montagnes, now the River Mauritius.” De Laet, in Nieuwe Wereldt (1625), gives “Manhattes River” and “Rio de Montaigne,” but says that “the Great River” is the usual designation. In his Latin version of 1633, and French of 1640, he adds a mention of the name Nassau River. As Dr. Johannes la Montagne did not come to New Netherland till 1637, the derivation here given can not hold. River of the Mountains is an obvious enough name, to any one who had sailed up through the Highlands of the Hudson.
363 Greenwich, a district of old New York.
364 At a cove in the north part of the town of Newburgh.
365 As if like a clover-leaf. Noten Hoeck was opposite Coxsackie, Potlepels (now Polopel’s) Island opposite Cornwall. Kock Achie or Coxsackie is probably Koeksrackie, the cook’s little reach, to distinguish it from the Koeks Rack, cook’s reach, the name which the early voyagers gave to a reach far below, near present Peekskill.
366 Referring, but of course mistakenly, to Lake Champlain, or Lakes Champlain and George.
367 See pp. 30, 52, 59, 61, supra.
368 Gerrit van Duyn.
369 Rev. Casparus van Zuuren, of Gouda in Holland, was one of the four Dutch Reformed ministers now remaining in New York (and Delaware)—Schaets, Nieuwenhuisen, van Zuuren, Tesschenmaker—and was minister of Midwout (Flatbush), Brooklyn, and Amersfoort (Flatlands), but lived at Midwout. He came out from Holland in 1677 and returned to a pastorate there in 1685.
370 In 1664 Jacob Hellekers and Theunis Idensen both lived in New Utrecht. N.Y. Col. Doc., II. 481. Jaques is Jacques Cortelyou. Socinian means a Unitarian, a follower of Faustus Socinus.
371 Simon Aertsen de Hart.
372 About ten dollars.
373 Wappinger’s Creek, in Dutchess County.
374 For Pierre the Gardener, Pierre Cresson, see p. 74. The son referred to was Jacques Cresson, who became a Labadist, and died in 1684. His wife was Marie Renard. His book was Labadie’s Le Héraut du Grand Roi Jésus (Amsterdam, 1667). After his death his widow went to Curaçao, returned, but removed to Philadelphia, and died there in 1710. The two were among the first members of the Dutch church at Harlem.
375 Nicolas de la Pleine, of “Bersweer in France,” was married in 1658 to Susanna Cresson, native of Ryswyk in Holland, sister of Jacques Cresson. He was constable in 1685.
376 Apparently this means the mother of Susanna Huyberts, wife of Casparus Heerman. See p. 130, note 1.
377 See p. 141, note 2, supra.
378 According to the records of the Dutch Reformed Church in New York, Elizabeth’s half-sister, Helena van Brugh, was married the day before this, May 26.
379 Richard Pattishall of Boston. He was killed by the Indians at Pemaquid in 1692.
380 But it was also Ascension Day of the new style.
381 I do not know who this could be if it were not John Pynchon of Springfield, assistant and councillor of Massachusetts 1665-1703. He owned much property in Boston and was often there; his large possessions in western Massachusetts and his position as the chief trader at Springfield would make it natural to use him in the way described; and in 1677 he had, at Albany, taken part, as representative of his colony, in Governor Andros’s negotiations with the Mohawks.
382 The Walebocht, or bay of the Walloons, was a bight in the Long Island shore, where the Brooklyn Navy Yard now stands. It was so named from a group of Walloons who settled there at an early date. The modern form of the name is Wallabout.
383 Meaning, apparently, “with mere human goodness.”
384 This old woman was Catalina Trico (1605-1689), widow of Joris Jansen Rapalie. She was the mother of eleven children, of whom the eldest, Sara, born in 1625 at Fort Orange, is understood to have been “the first born Christian daughter in New Netherland,” Jean Vigné (see p. 47, note 2) being the first-born child. Two depositions by her of 1685 and 1688, printed in Doc. Hist. N.Y., III. 31-32, quarto ed., give interesting details of the beginnings of the colony, for she came out “in 1623” (1624, rather) in the Eendracht (Unity), the first ship sent out to New Netherland by the Dutch West India Company. After three years at Fort Orange and twenty-two at New Amsterdam, she and her husband settled at the Walebocht. In the second deposition she speaks of herself as born in Paris, not Valenciennes. How she was aunt of de la Grange I do not know. He was the son of Joost de la Grange and Margaret his wife, afterward the wife of Andrew Carr. His wife was Cornelia de la Fontaine. Joining the Labadists in their purchase, he was naturalized by the Maryland assembly in 1684, and in 1692 was understood to be living in their community at Bohemia Manor. Maryland Archives, XIII. 126, XX. 163.
385 A dollar, piece of eight reals.
386 It was believed by the local ministers that Danckaerts and Sluyter while in New York engaged actively in proselytizing. Thus, Rev. Henricus Selyns, Domine Niewenhuisen’s successor, says in a letter to Rev. Willem à Brakel, “They regularly attended church and said they had nothing against my doctrines; that they were of the Reformed Church, and stood by the Heidelberg Catechism and Dordrecht Confession.... Afterwards, in order to lay the groundwork for a schism, they began holding meetings with closed doors, and to rail out against the church and consistory, as Sodom and Egypt, and saying they must separate from the church; they could not come to the service, or hold communion with us. They thus absented themselves from the church.” Murphy, New Netherland Anthology, pp. 95, 96.
387 Pieter Bayard was a nephew of Governor Stuyvesant and a brother of Nicholas Bayard, of the council. He joined in the Labadist purchase, but soon withdrew.
388 Governor Carteret was not a lord.
389 See p. 5, note 1.
390 Edward Randolph, the famous royal agent, arrived in New York December 7, 1679.
391 Captain Mathias Nicolls, secretary of the province.
392 While it may be doubted whether in strictness the language of the grants to Berkeley and Carteret gave them rights of government, precedents extending from 1665 allowed them the constant exercise of such rights. Andros, however, especially now that Sir George Carteret had died, in January, 1680, asserted that all rights of government remained unimpaired in the Duke of York. Governor Carteret’s narrative of the high-handed proceedings by which he tried to exercise these rights may be seen in Leaming and Spicer’s Grants and Concessions, pp. 683, 684. Substantially it agrees with that of Danckaerts. The arrest took place on April 30, 1680, the trial on May 27. But by additional deeds of release, in August and September, 1680, the Duke conceded governmental rights to the representatives of the proprietaries. Andros was recalled, but remained in favor.
393 About fifty-five cents for a bushel.
394 By “the Quakers on the South River” the writer means the province of West Jersey, the dealings with Carteret having related to East Jersey alone. The people of Connecticut, it is hardly necessary to remark, did not claim to be members of the republic of Boston, though united with it in the New England confederation.
395 One dollar and seventy cents.
396 A sect of mystical and antinomian Anabaptists, followers of David Joris of Delft (d. 1556); otherwise called Familists, or the Family of Love.
397 Meaning the community of Wieuwerd.
398 Not identified.
399 At this point there is a break in the journal. See the Introduction to the volume.
400 In the easterly part of Flushing, Long Island.
401 Martha’s Vineyard. They sailed through Vineyard Sound.
402 This seems to mean the creek which made in from the cove at the foot of Milk Street.
403 Governor’s Island.
404 “The crooked bay,” i.e., Peconic Bay.
405 Block Island, discovered by Adrian Block. The journalist is wrong as to Rhode Island not lying within the coast.
406 Vineyard Haven.
407 It can hardly have been more than a beacon. The first lighthouse was built in pursuance of an act of 1715, the preamble of which begins, “Whereas we want of a lighthouse at the entrance of the harbour of Boston hath been a great discouragement to navigation,” etc. The new lighthouse was to be erected “on the southermost point of Great Brewster, called Beacon Island.”
408 George’s Island; next, Castle Island, with the “castle” first built in 1635.
409 Beacon Hill.
410 Simon Bradstreet, elected in May, 1679, was governor of Massachusetts till 1686—the last governor under the old charter. He had come out in 1630, and was now seventy years old.
411 Original, “Jan Tayller of [Dutch for or] Marchand Tayller.” No John Taylor of Boston answering to the description has been identified.
412 Sluyter was from Wesel, on the Rhine. Though it was a German town, many of its inhabitants were Dutch (like Peter Minuit) and Walloon.
413 Captain John Foy appears in the records of the court of assistants, as still master of the Dolphin, in 1691.
414 A Dutch settlement in Guiana, owned at this time by the province of Zeeland; the present Dutch Guiana.
415 In the Azores.
416 The Thursday Lecture.
417 This fast is not noted in the elaborate list in Mr. Love’s Fast and Thanksgiving Days of New England. The Old South Church had a fast on June 29, O.S., but this was June 28, N.S.
418 There was an official inquiry into these charges. See accusation and defense in N.Y. Col. Doc., III. 302, 308.
419 The bridegroom was Captain Theunis de Key (b. 1659), son of Jacob Theuniszen van Tuyl of New York. The bride was Helena van Brugh, half-sister of Elizabeth Rodenburg, being the daughter of the latter’s mother Catharina Roelofs by her second husband, Johannes Pieterszen van Brugh of Haarlem and later of New York.
420 Rev. John Eliot (1604-1690), the Apostle to the Indians, came over to Massachusetts in 1631 and in 1632 was ordained as “teacher” of the church of Roxbury. He soon engaged in efforts to Christianize the Indians, and in 1646 began to preach to them in their own tongue. He formed a community and church of “praying Indians” at Natick, and others elsewhere. His translation of the Bible into the dialect of the Massachusetts Indians was completed in 1658. The first edition of the New Testament, printed at Cambridge, was issued in 1661, the whole Bible (Old Testament of 1663, New Testament of 1661 imprint, and metrical version of the Psalms) in 1663.
421 Eliot was not quite seventy-six.
422 The first edition of the whole Bible seems to have been 1040 copies, of the separate New Testament, 500. Many copies were lost or destroyed in the Indian war of 1675-1676; but 16 copies now existing of the New Testament, and 39 of the Bible, in this first edition, are listed in Mr. Wilberforce Eames’s bibliography. In 1677 Eliot began to prepare a revised edition of the whole work. It was published in 1685. The printing of the New Testament portion was begun in 1680 and finished in the autumn or winter of 1681; the printing of the Old Testament was not begun until 1682.
Wonderful to relate, the identical copy of the Old Testament (edition of 1663, and metrical Psalms) which Eliot presented to Danckaerts and Sluyter is still in existence, in the library of the Zeeland Academy of Sciences at Middelburg in the Netherlands. It lacks the title-page, but in its place contains the following manuscript note. See the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, XIII. 307-310, and the Dutch pamphlet there named.
“All the Bibles of the Christian Indians were burned or destroyed by these heathen savages. This one alone was saved; and from it a new edition, with improvements, and an entirely new translation of the New Testament, was undertaken. I saw at Roccsberri, about an hour’s ride from Boston, this Old Testament printed, and some sheets of the New. The printing-office was at Cambridge, three hours’ ride from Boston, where also there was a college of students, whether of savages or of other nations. The Psalms of David are added in the same metre.
“At Roccsberri dwelt Mr. Hailot, a very godly preacher there. He was at this time about seventy years old. His son was a preacher at Boston. This good old man was one of the first Independent preachers to settle in these parts, seeking freedom. He was the principal translator and director of the printing of both the first and second editions of this Indian Bible. Out of special zeal and love he gave me this copy of the first edition, for which I was, and shall continue, grateful to him. This was in June, 1680.
“Jasper Danckaerts.”
423 The Labadists’ declaration of their orthodoxy and of their reasons for separating themselves from the national (Dutch Reformed) church was first issued in French, in 1669. Two editions of a Dutch translation were published: the first, “translated from the French by N.N.,” at Amsterdam in 1671; the second, “translated from the French by P. Sluiter,” at Herford in 1672, both by the same printer. Of the former, there is a copy in the library of Haverford College; of the latter, in the New York Public Library. Two editions in German are also known (Herford, 1671, 1672). The Latin, here referred to, is entitled “Protestatio Sincera Purae et Verae Reformatae Doctrinae Generalisque Orthodoxiae Johannis de Labadie,” and is to be found in the book Veritas sui Vindex, seu Solemnis Fidei Declaratio Joh. de Labadie, Petri Yvon, Petri du Lignon, Pastorum, etc. [the Dutch and German have also the names of “Henry and Peter Sluiter, preachers,” on the title-page] (Herford, 1672).
424 Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678), a woman of prodigious learning, held in the highest esteem by literary contemporaries in Holland as well as other lands. She renounced her literary associations to affiliate herself with Jean de Labadie and his followers, shared their fortunes at Amsterdam, Herford, Altona, and Wieuwerd, where William Penn visited her in 1677; and died among them at Wieuwerd in 1678.
425 The first building of Harvard College, the building “thought by some to be too gorgeous for a Wilderness, and yet too mean in others apprehensions for a Colledg” (Johnson, Wonder-Working Providence, p. 201), had partly tumbled down in 1677. The building now visited was the “New College,” the second Harvard Hall, built with difficulty 1672-1682 and destroyed by fire in 1764. Edward Randolph, in a report of October 12, 1676, writes: “New-colledge, built at the publick charge, is a fair pile of brick building covered with tiles, by reason of the late Indian warre not yet finished. It contains 20 chambers for students, two in a chamber; a large hall which serves for a chappel; over that a convenient library.” A picture of the building may be seen in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, XVIII. 318.
426 Rev. Urian Oakes, minister of Cambridge, was at this time acting president, and was installed as president in the next month. There were apparently seventeen students in the college at this time who subsequently graduated, and perhaps a few others. The library no doubt contained more than a thousand, perhaps more than fifteen hundred books.
427 The allusion is to the printing-office at Wieuwerd, which Dittelbach, Verval en Val der Labadisten (Amsterdam, 1692), p. 50, says was a very costly one. The Labadists had everywhere maintained their own printer, Loureins Autein going with them in that capacity from Amsterdam to Herford. As to the building occupied by the famous Cambridge press, Randolph mentions “a small brick building called the Indian colledge, where some few Indans did study, but now it is a printing house.” Printing here was this year at a low ebb; nothing is known to have been printed but the second edition of Eliot’s Indian New Testament.
428 The case is that of Peter Lorphelin, accused in connection with the great fire of August 8-9, 1679, computed to have resulted in a loss of two hundred thousand pounds. Found guilty of clipping coin, he was punished as above; Records of the Court of Assistants, I. 145. No real evidence seems to have connected him with the fire.
429 Doubtless Benjamin Eliot, youngest son of the Apostle, who assisted his father in his labors as pastor and as translator.
430 Detailed orders for this general training and sham-fight, as executed in 1686 by eight companies of foot and four troops of horse, may be seen in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, XXXIII. 328-330.
431 A dozen Huguenots came to Boston the next year, and in 1686 a settlement of them was formed at Oxford, Massachusetts.
432 Labadie’s Cantiques Sacrés are to be found in Fragmens de Quelques Poësies et Sentimens d’Esprit de M. Labadie (Amsterdam, 1678), but it would seem that they must also have been issued separately.
433 Labadie, Abrégé du Véritable Christianisme Théorique et Pratique, ou Recueil de Maximes Chrestiennes (Amsterdam, 1670).
434 This is to ignore the voyages of Gosnold, Pring, Weymouth, etc., and the settlement at Fort St. George in 1607.
435 The Connecticut.
436 The reading is eer, but heer was of course intended. The control by the English king was much more real than is here indicated. The next sentence alludes to the Navigation Acts and their evasion. As to customs, Edward Randolph had in 1678 been appointed collector for New England, and had begun his conflict with the Massachusetts authorities, but with little success thus far. Land-taxes did in fact exist.
437 On Endicott’s cutting of the cross from the flag, in 1634, see Winthrop’s Journal, in this series, I. 137, 174, 182. Since the decision then reached (1636), the cross had been left out of all ensigns in Massachusetts except that on Castle Island.
438 The meeting-houses of the First Church, North Church, and South Church (built 1640, 1650, 1672).
439 The battery at the foot of Fort Hill, north of which a cove and creek then ran to the foot of Milk Street. The narrow isthmus to Roxbury existed when the first settlers came.
440 Several pages are here omitted, narrating nineteen days of voyaging, but containing nothing of importance or of interest. The Dolphin’s course was over the Newfoundland banks, and then around the north of Scotland into the North Sea.
441 Buss Island has a curious history. It was reported as discovered in 1578, and again in 1668 and in 1671. An elaborate map of it was then published, and for a hundred years it appeared on charts of the North Atlantic as a considerable island, about lat. 58° N., long. 28° W. from Greenwich. But it has no existence and, though volcanic subsidence is possible, it probably never did exist.
442 Rockall, a lofty and rocky islet in the North Atlantic, lat. 57° 36´ N., long. 13° 41´ W.
443 A remote island of the outer Hebrides, the westernmost of the group.
444 Apparently this does not mean the island of the Hebrides now called Barra, but that called Bernera, west of Lewis—Barra Major on some contemporary maps.
445 Fair Isle is a lonely island midway between the Orkney and Shetland islands. Sailing between these groups, the voyagers saw first Orkney, then Foula Island (here Falo), then Fair Isle. The manuscript contains at this point profile sketches of the islands of Fairhill and Foula.
446 The Chamber of Amsterdam was one of the local component boards of the Dutch East India Company.
447 “Sea Mirror or Shining Column,” an atlas of marine charts published by Peter Goos of Amsterdam in various editions, in 1654 and later years.
448 Dutch fishing-boats.
449 England, rather. There is no such reef or shallow as is described below.
450 The Dogger Bank is a great shoal in the North Sea, lying between northern England and Denmark.
451 See p. 21, note 1.
452 The Well Bank lies south of the Dogger Bank, and off the mouth of the Humber.
453 The Leman Bank lies some forty miles northeast of Yarmouth, and south of the Well Bank; the White Water, next mentioned, lies east of the latter, toward the Frisian coast.
454 Southwold, on the Suffolk coast.
455 Dunwich, now mostly under the waters of the North Sea, was once an important place, and one of considerable antiquity. The bishopric of the East Saxons was established there in A.D. 630; indeed, the town dates from Roman times (Sitomagus).
456 Still on the Suffolk coast. The King’s Channel, mentioned below, was the chief entrance into the estuary of the Thames from the northeast.
457 Just east of the Tower of London, where now are the St. Katharine Docks.
458 Meaning the part newly built since the Great Fire of 1666.
459 Charles II.
460 At Wieuwert.
461 The Tower of London has no such antiquity. The oldest part dates from William the Conqueror. The monument commemorating the Great Fire, erected by Sir Christopher Wren, still stands in Fish Street Hill, near London Bridge.
462 On May 20, 1680, Elizabeth Morse, wife of William Morse, of Newbury, was indicted and tried in Boston, for practising witchcraft upon her own husband. She was convicted and sentenced to be hanged; and was in prison at Boston, at the time our journalist was there, awaiting her execution. It is, undoubtedly, her case to which he refers. She was, however, released in 1681.
463 In 1550 Edward VI. gave the church of the Augustinians (Austin Friars) to the Dutch Protestants in London, and the neighboring church of St. Anthony’s Hospital in Threadneedle Street to the Walloons. Both were destroyed in the Great Fire, but had now been rebuilt. The Dutch church had two ministers. The habit of interchange between the two churches, mentioned below, prevailed in Pepys’s time, and was still maintained as late as 1775.
464 Dirk van Leiden van Leeuwen (1618-1682), burgomaster of Leyden, but born at Briel, in Zeeland.
465 This was the electoral prince Karl (1651-1685), afterward (August, 1680-1685) the elector Karl II., son of Karl Ludwig, grandson of Frederick V. and Elizabeth, and great-grandson of James I. of England. He had been sent to England by his father in a vain endeavor to persuade the latter’s cousin, Charles II., to relieve the Palatinate by taking action against Louis XIV. An entertaining account, by his tutor, of their visit in 1670 to his aunt at Herford and to the Labadists, may be found in Miss Una Birch’s Anna Maria van Schurman (London, 1909), pp. 168 et seq.
466 Tilbury Fort on the north side of the Thames, opposite Gravesend, and probably Shorne Battery on the south side. The “river of Chatham” is of course the Medway, where Admiral de Ruyter in 1660 had burned King Charles’s ships.
467 The easternmost point of the Essex coast, just south of Harwich.
468 Say four dollars instead of five.
469 A point on the Suffolk coast, some dozen miles northeast of Harwich.
470 Now Scheveningen, a famous watering-place near the Hague.
471 The Rev. John Spademan, of Swayton, in Lincolnshire, was called to the English Presbyterian church at Rotterdam, as successor to Mr. Maden, who died in June, 1680.
472 Gravesande lay some distance to the north of the mouth of the Maas, Briel at the south side of its main mouth, Maasluis a few miles up the river, on its northern bank.
473 See p. 291, note 2.
474 Mr. Murphy says, “my sister d’Owerk.” But the French phrase here used, “ma seur d’Owerk,” means sister in the religious sense. The lady designated is one of whom Penn speaks in his account of his tour in Germany and Holland in 1677. Reaching the Hague, “The first thing we did there, was to enquire out the Lady Overkirk, a Person of a Retired and Religious Character, separated from the publick worship of that Country”... “Sister of the Somerdykes.” Works (ed. 1726), I. 108, 107. By birth she was Isabella van Sommelsdyk. Her husband, Hendrik van Nassau, lord of Ouwerkerk, was captain of the body-guard of William III., later in England his master of the horse, and for thirty years his faithful follower and intimate.
475 See p. 7, note 3.
476 In Friesland, near Wieuwerd.
477 The house of the Labadists at Wieuwerd.
478 See p. 190, for this daughter of Jacob Hellekers by his first wife.
479 The heirs of Paulus van Ravesteyn of Amsterdam had published in 1670 an octavo edition of the States-General (“authorized”) Dutch version of the Bible. In 1680 another, Remonstrant, version was published in the same city.
480 Grand Nouvel Atlas de la Mer (Amsterdam, 1680), by Johannes van Keulen.
481 See p. 114, note 2.
482 A small island in the Zuyder Zee. Lemmer is a village on the Friesland shore, from which one would go up by canal to Sneek, and so on to Wieuwerd.