28 AUTHENTIC HISTORY 



CHAPTER II. 



FRO:\I THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT OF PENNSYLVANLN. TO THE 

 ARRIVAL OF AVILLIAM PENN. 



In an official report draAvn up by a Dutcli Chamber [A. D. 1598] from 

 documents and papers placed in tlieir hands, December 15, 161:4, it is said 

 that " NcAv- Netherland, situate in America, l^etween English Virginia 

 and New England, extending from the South {Delaware) River, lying in 

 latitude 38|'', to Cape Malabar, in latitude -11^-°, was first frequented by 

 the inhabitants of this country in the year 1598, and especially by those 

 of the Greenland Compan}^, l3ut without making any fixed settlements, 

 only as a shelter in the winter ; for which purpose they erected there two 

 little forts on tlie South and North Rivers, against the incursions of the 

 Indians."^ 



Sir Walter Raleigh's discovery of the Delaware cannot be substanti- 

 ated by evidence. 



Lord Delaware, on his passage to Virginia, is said to have touched at 

 Delaware Bay in 1610, and "from this circumstance the Bay prolahhj 

 received his name, and may have given to him the credit of its discovery, 

 as it was so called in a letter from Captain Argall, written from Vir- 

 ginia in 1612."2 But, if this be true, it was a year after the well-known 

 visit of Henry Hudson, who is now almost universally regarded as the 

 discoverer of the Delaware. Henry Hudson, an Englishman by birth, 

 in the service of the Dutch East India Company, reached the Delaware 

 in the " Yagt Halve Maan" ( Yacht Half -Moon) on August 28, 1609. The 

 journals of Hudson and of Robert Juet, his mate, have been preserved 

 in the Transactions of the N. Y. Historical Society. The honor of the 

 discovery and the right to the land are claimed by the English on account 

 of Hudson's birth, and by the Dutch on account of his having been at 

 the time in their service and sailed under their flao-. 



The Delaware River and Bay have been known by diflerent names. 

 The Indians called it Poutaxat, Mariskitton, and Makerisk-Kiskon, 

 Lenape-Wihittuck or the stream of the Lenape ; the Dutch called it Zuydt 

 or South River, A^assan River, Prince Ilendrick's or Charles' River; the 

 Swedes denominated it New Swedeland Stream ; Ileylin, in his Cosmo- 

 graphy, calls it Arasapha ; and the English named it Delaware. Cam- 

 panius says it Avas so named after Mons. de la Warre, a captain under 

 Jacques Cartier, and that it was discovered in 1600. If this be true, it 

 1 O'Callaghan quoted hy Ilazaicl. ^N. Y. Ilistor. Collections. 1009. 



