342 STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF THE 



residences there. In 1634 about sixty persons, several of theni 

 Frenchmen, under the presidency of a captain Marshall, had 

 constructed dwellings on the banks of the Surinam, where 

 they grew tobacco. Like many actual planters of the Missis- 

 sippi, they went great part of the year to sea, selling their pro- 

 duce, and making freight of their ships, but regularly returned 

 to sow and to reap, and deposited here the collections of their 

 industry. In the year 1650, this voluntary settlement was 

 thought worthy of being attended to ; and Lord Willoughby, 

 of Parham, was appointed governor, to whom certain char- 

 tered rights were given, in conjunction with the Earl of Cla- 

 rendon's second son. But in 1667, the Dutch took this settle- 

 ment by surprize ; and obtained the entire cession of it in 

 1674, by the treaty of Westminster, in exchange for the pro- 

 vince of New York ; an unwise, a deplorable commutation. 



The first Dutch settlers at Paramaribo, or Middelburg, as it 

 was then called, were from the province of Zealand ; but the 

 States granted the colony to the West India Company, which 

 in its turn sold a third share to the corporation of Amsteldam, 

 and a third to Cornelius Van Aarsen, lord of Somelsdyk. This 

 nobleman went out as governor, taking with him some con- 

 victs sentenced to hard labor, and about three hundred volun- 

 tary emigrants. He was not a popular governor ; he instituted 

 indeed an elective court of police, but claimed a degree of 

 power over his fellow settlers, which they were only wil- 



