34 
total of the library that is the first one recorded in what is now 
the state of New York, and which must be considered a fair 
sample of the literature that a well-to-do and educated pioneer 
from the Low Countries would be presumed to bring with him 
into the wilderness of Manhattan. 
One gold signet ring and one Japanese cutlass were also the 
property of Jonas Bronck. His live stock was plentiful, and all 
are listed from the cows, calves, mares, stallions and oxen, to 
the hogs, of which there were “numbers unknown running in 
the woods.” We read also of 6 skepels of wheat, 66 ditto of rye 
and 3 of winter barley ‘sowed in the bouwery in the cleared land.” 
This inventory is dated May 6, 1643. His widow later married 
Arent van Corlaer, Commissioner at Rensselaerwyck, the man 
who first established the friendship with the Indians and who 
founded Schenectady. 
So many and so graphic are the descriptions of the New Am- 
sterdam landscape which have come down to us, that though 
little is now left of that luxuriant wilderness, it is not an alto- 
gether difficult matter to reconstruct the surroundings into which 
Jonas Bronck moved in 1639. His contemporary, Adriaen Van 
der Donck, purchased about the same time an estate on the 
tion of the New Netherlands,” said to have been printed in 
Dutch about 1653, and translated many years later, he gives an 
interesting and it is not to be doubted an accurate description of 
the country between New Amsterdam and Albany. He writes 
of the great rivers teeming with fish of all kinds, the many “ fine 
waters, kills, brooks and streams, which are navigable,” always 
abounding with fish and suitable for every kind of waterwork, 
and of the many waters ‘which are agreeable to men and ati- 
mals” and which ‘may be drunk without danger,” many of 
which were highly thought of by the Indians for their medicinal 
value. 
The hilly country around New Amsterdam is described vividly 
with its abundant covering of trees, ‘several kinds of oaks, such 
as white, smooth bark, rough bark, gray bark and black bark. 
