HISTORIC TALES

OLDEN

OF

TIME.

PRIMITIVE STATE OF OUR COUNTRY.

THE youth of the present day, surrounded by numerous tokens of wealth, splendour and civilization, have little or no conception of the former waste and wilderness state of the regions in which we now dwell. They look abroad and see our present luxury and abundance, and with scarcely a second thought infer that things, as they see them now, were always so ;but this is a conclusion wholly aside from the truth. It is but a short period of time-as nations count time, (say, but 150 years ago,) since the present great city of Philadelphia, and all the adjacent inland country of Pennsylvania, was "one still and solemn desert in primeval garb." It was a country clothed with wood, and in allusion to this fact, it was called Penn-Sylvaniaa compounded Latin word expressing the woody country of Penn. Those woods, even where we now walk, ride or dwell, were once filled with excellent game, or

numerous beasts of prey, and the land in general was occupied by many Indians.

To help our young readers the better to understand the primitive state of such a country, we shall endeavour to cast together for their contemplation such facts as then existed.

The river Delaware (called Lenape Wihittuck by the Indians,) which fronts our State of Pennsylvania, was first discovered in the year 1609-(only think how short a time since!) by that celebrated navigator, Captain Henry Hudson, the same who also, about the same time, discovered and explored the Hudson or North River at New York. The States General of Holland, for whom he was acting, began to colonize the country along the waters of the Delaware in 1623; and to protect their settlers from Indians or new comers, they built their first fort, called Nassau, and probably their first village, at the place since known as Gloucester Point in New Jersey, two miles below the present Philadelphia. The place was then known to the Indians by the name of Arwanus and sometimes as Takaacho. Our readers will therefore understand, that this our country, now so wholly English in its popula-tion, was nevertheless originally of the Holland race: they calling the country Nieu Nederlandt, and our river, the Zuydt Riviere.

Captain Kornelius Jacobus Méy (pronounced May) – must be regarded as the first explorer of our bay and river; and it was he who first constructed the fort and village as above mentioned at Gloucester Point, called also Pine Point. From him we have also named our

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prominent points of port entrance, such as Cape

May" and "Cape Cornelius." Cape Hinlopen was named after Jelmer Hinlopen, another Dutch navigator of that time.

In the year 1630, the Dutch made peculiar efforts to settle and colonize the country. Several merchants of Amsterdam sent out in that year Captain Devries, with two vessels to effect their object. They designed to raise tobacco and grain, and to catch whales and seals; for then, let my young readers observe, our salt waters abounded with those sea animals, now no longer known near our shores. The little colony, consisting of only three dozen persons, (mark this, to then begin our present great nation!) with their cattle and implements of husbandry, (for these had to be brought with them to this then wilderness land,) made their settlement up a creek two leagues from Cape Cornelius, which they named Swaendael or Swandale, because of its then numerous swans- -birds now no longer visiting our regions. This little colony thus begun, near the present Lewistown in Delaware, was soon after destroyed by the Indians, whom they incited to such violence on themselves, through the ill-natured misconduct of one of their inferior officers.

In the next year, 1631, a great attempt at colonization was commenced by the Swedes and Fins, under the sanction and support of Queen Christianna. They arrived in such numbers as to begin the present New Castle, then called Stockholm, and also to build their first fort for another settlement at Christiana, now the present Wilmington. At the island of Tenecum, they built a fort called New Gottenburgh, and constructed a village, calling their governor's house Printz's Hall.

All these, on the site now occupied as the Lazaretto grounds. These Swedes, in time, became sufficiently numerous to occupy the most of the favourable positions along the margin of the river Delaware, and extending themselves up as high as the present Pennypack creek at Holmsburgh, calling the creek after its Indian name of Pennapect, and the country" Upland," in contradistinction to the present "lower counties" then called Low-lands. Our entire country they called Nya Swerige, or New Swedeland.

These Swedes, whilst they inhabited our country as a distinct nation; talking their own language, and governing according to the laws and usages of their mother country,-had for their security numerous log forts or block houses in country localities; such as Chincessing, Korsholm, Finlandt, Lapananel &c. One was at or near the present Swedes church,-another was in Passaiunk near the Schuylkill river. The name of Schuylkill is supposed to have been given by the Dutch, and to mean in their language hidden river, in reference to its covered appearance at its mouth. The Indians called it Nittabaconck and Manaiunk.

It might well surprise the present generation, seeing such profusion of comforts and refinement around us now, to know the rough and rude manner in which their Swedish forefathers once dwelt in this land. Their log houses consisted of but one room, to which the door of entrance was so low as to require one to stoop. Instead of window-panes of glass, they had little holes. before which a sliding board was put; or on other occasions, they had isinglass; the cracks between the logs were filled with clay. The chimnies in a corner were

either of stone, or sometimes of mere clay and coarse grass mixt. They wore vests and breeches of skins; and even the women wore jackets and petticoats of the same; their beds, too, were generally of such skins as bears', wolves', &c.

In time, the Dutch, who had grown into power in New York, determined to dislodge and conquer the Swedes, and therefore in 1655, they sent round to the Delaware a fleet with 700 men, which for ever put down the nationality of the Swedes, as a separate people. But the New York Dutchmen, had scarcely got through their self-gratulations at their success over the Swedes, before they themselves were subdued and laid aside from all rule over our domains, by their surrender in 1664, to the fleet of the Duke of York. His officers forthwith seized upon, and put under the rule of the British government, all the lands and people laying within the bounds of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

In this eventful measure, lays the cause of our being at this day an English people; that is, a people speaking the English language, observing English manners and laws, profitably cultivating English taste and literature, and anglicizing our New World, by our success and example. But for this event, our language and habits might now have been Dutch or Swedish, or both intermixed. Let then our present youth conside rw ha a difference this fact would have made to them, had not circumstances been so altered.

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