America Climbs the Cornstalk 93 



their furs the beaver-killers demanded gunpowder and mus- 

 kets. Everyone knows how the long-barreled rifle grew longer 

 and longer to call for a higher and higher stack of beaver pelts 

 in "equal" trade. 



Down the Hudson floated the long, sharp-prowed canoes 

 laden with pelts for Peter Stuyvesant's warehouses in New 

 Amsterdam. Up the lordly river sailed the sleeps, rounding 

 Anthony's Nose, tacking across difficult Martilaer's Reach, 

 bringing supplies from Europe, from the West Indies, from 

 Virginia to the docks of the patroons. The stout Van Cort- 

 lands, Verplancks, Beekmans, Van Rensselaers had attained 

 their titles by establishing a colony of fifty persons on their 

 grants within six years' time from the granting. They had come 

 to the New World as business men, traders. But the fatness 

 of the valley overcame them. With the hunger of those who 

 had known only the thin farms and cabbage fields of Europe's 

 lowlands, they seized on the acres, cleared them, planted 

 orchards, vineyards, corn and wheat fields. Each patroon en- 

 gaged in trade with the Indians, buying beaver sometimes for 

 cuttings from apple and peach trees as well as for gee-gaws 

 and corn. He built his own sloeps, and sailed them to far ports. 

 He grew his own food and cattle; and he sat on his stoep smok- 

 ing his long-stemmed pipe of Virginia tobacco in the summer 

 twilights, watching for the evening star over the Dunderberg, 

 well content that he was out of a warring, uncertain Europe. 



The Hudson River settlers raised wheat for export and corn 

 for their own use. The mate of the Half Moon had reported of 

 the September harvest in those parts: 



I saw there a house well constructed of oak bark, and a great 

 quantity of maize or Indian corn and beanes of last year's growth 

 there lay near the house for the purpose of drying, enough to load 

 3 ships; beside what was growing in the fields. 



Not only were the Dutch jealous of the advance of the 

 New Englanders. They also saw their fur trade, which was 

 reported to be worth 10,000 a year, menaced by the Swedes 



