United States or Lithuania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Everything about the ship, however, looked well, and to the surprise of those in the Anne, many heads belonging to others beside the crew were to be seen above the rail. A sail was in sight, moreover, standing in, and this vessel Capt. Saunders stated was the brig Henlopen, purchased on government account, and loaded with stock, and other property for the colony.
That wilderness was not only full of wild beasts, but of Indian savages, who every fall would come in wandering tribes to spend the winter along the shores of the fresh-water lakes below Henlopen.
Then Henlopen shut his eyes, counted six, turned around twice, multiplied the day of the week by 19, subtracted 17, and the answer was a cream-colored horse with four pink feet and a frightened face, which looked at me sadly, sighed deeply and then backed up into the shafts of a buggy with red wheels and white sulphur springs.
The Directors urged Stuyvesant to purchase immediately from the Indians the tract of land between Cape Henlopen and Bombay Hook. This contained a frontage on Delaware bay of about seventy miles. "You will perceive," they wrote,
The wind had gone to rest with the sun, and the sharp frost that followed left its congealed breath upon the shallow pools of water nearly half an inch in thickness by morning. From my bed I could see through the window the bright flashes from Cape May and Cape Henlopen lights. Had not misfortune beset me, a four-hours' pull would have landed me at Lewes.
All this was very wonderful, and so were the clustered boats riding at anchor in the harbor. It was like a new world, so different was it from the sand hills and the sedgy levels of Henlopen. Tom Chist took up his lodgings at a coffee house near to the town hall, and thence he sent by the postboy a letter written by Parson Jones to Master Chillingsworth.
"Why should I have added to your other cares, by heaping this on your shoulder, dear Mark? The thing could not easily be prevented; though I may as well tell you, now, what cannot much longer be kept a secret the Henlopen will bring a Methodist and a Presbyterian clergyman in her, this voyage, if any be found willing to emigrate; and I have heard, lately, that Friends expect a preacher."
In the year 1629, this energetic company purchased of the Indians the exclusive title to a vast territory, extending north from Cape Henlopen, on the south side of Delaware Bay, two miles in breadth and running thirty-two miles inland. The reader of the record of these days, often meets with the word Patroon, without perhaps having any very distinct idea of its significance.
Here in the delta their engineer laid out a town, called Christinaham, and a fort behind the rocks on which they had landed. A cove in the Christina made a snug anchorage for their ships, out of the way of the tide. They then bought from the Indians all the land from Cape Henlopen to the Falls of the Delaware at Trenton, calling it New Sweden and the Delaware New Swedeland Stream.
The boats of the Henlopen also took two more, and that of the Abraham, one. Betts in the Martha, and the governor in the Mermaid towed four of these whales into the southern channel, and into what now got the name of the Whaling Bight. This was the spot where Betts had tryed out the first fish taken, and it proved to be every way suitable for its business.
Word Of The Day