The extensive tract of land, bounded on the east by the Delaware, on the north by the present New York, on the west by the Allegheny mountains, and on the south by Maryland, has such an agreeable climate, such an unusually Fertile soil, and its watercourses are so well adapted for trade, that it is not surprising that there, as early as 1638 — five and twenty years after our forefathers built the first house in New Amsterdam (New York) — a European colony was established. The first settlers were Swedes, but some Hollanders soon joined them. Surrounded on all sides by savage natives, continually threatened and often harassed, they contented themselves with the cultivation of but a small portion of the land. After, however, King Charles II. had, in settlement of a debt, given the whole province to William Penn, there came a great change. There, before long, at his invitation and through his assistance, his oppressed fellow-believers, followers like himself of George Fox, found a place of refuge. They settled on the Delaware, and, united by the common sufferings endured for their convictions, they founded a city, to which they gave the sugges-
- ↑ The article here translated from the Dutch, and annotated, appeared in the “Doopsgezinde Bijdragen” for 1869, under the title of “Vriendschapsbetrekkingen tusschen de Doopsgezinden hier te landeen die in Pennsylvanie.”
