EARLY HISTORY OF CAPE MAY COUNTY. 165 



that the Doctor, sensible he had betrayed the trust reposed in him, 

 left the society at his death a thousand pounds as a salvo. 



As history throws no light on the original occupiers of the soil, 

 conjecture only can be consulted on the subject. It would seem 

 probable, in as much as many of the old Swedish names, as recorded 

 in Campanius, from Rudman, are still to be found in Cumberland 

 and Cape May, that some of the veritable Swedes of Tinicum or 

 Christiana might have strayed, or have been driven to our shores. 

 When the Dutch governor, Stuyvesant, ascended the Delaware in 

 1654, with his seven ships and seven hundred men, and subjected 

 the Swedes to his dominion, it would be easy to imagine, in their 

 mortification and chagrin at a defeat so bloodless and unexpected, 

 that many of them should fly from the arbitrary sway of their 

 rulers, and seek an asylum where they could be free to act for them- 

 selves, without restraint or coercion from the stubbornness of myn- 

 heer, whose victory, though easily obtained, was permanent, as the 

 provincial power of New Sweden had perished for ever. 



Master Evelin's letter in Plantagenet's New Albion,* dated 1648, 

 says : " I thought good to write unto you my knowledge, and first 

 to describe to you the north side of Delaware unto Hudson's River, 

 in Sir Edmund's patent called New Albion, which lieth between 

 New England and Maryland, and that ocean sea. I take it to be 

 about 160 miles. I find some broken land, isles and inlets, and many 

 small isles at Eg Bay ; but going to Delaware Bay by Cape May, 

 which is twenty-four miles at most, and is, I understand, very well 

 set out and printed in Captain Powell's map of New England, done, 

 as is told me by a draft I gave to Mr. Daniel, the plotmaster, which 

 he Edmund saith you have at home : on that north side (of Cape 

 May) about five miles within is a port or rode for any ships, called 

 the Nook, and within liveth the king of Kechemeches, having, as I 

 suppose, about fifty men. I do account all these Indians to be 

 eight hundred, and are in several factions and war against the Sar- 



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