12                              New York.
 

CHAPTEE II.

THE DUTCH TOWN UNDER   THE FIRST   THREE DIRECTORS.

1626-1647.

With the arrival of Director Minuit, the settlement
at the mouth of the Hudson first took on permanent
form and became an organized community. He bought
Manhattan Island from its Indian owners for the sum
of sixty guilders, or about twenty-four dollars, and dur¬
ing the summer founded thereon a little town, chris¬
tened New Amsterdam. It soon grew to contain some
two hundred souls. Even at the beginning, the popu¬
lation was composed of peoples diverse in race and
speech; not only were there Dutchmen and Walloons,
but also even thus early a few Huguenots, Germans,
and Englishmen.

The island w^as then a mass of tangled, frowning
forest, fringed with melancholy marshes, which near
the present site of Canal Street approached so close
together from either side that they almost made an¬
other small island of the southern end. The settlers
staked out a fort on the southernmost point, and hud¬
dled near it in their squalid huts; while they closely
watched their cattle, which were in imminent danger
from wolves, bears, and panthers whenever they strayed
into the woodland.

Minuit was a kindly man, of firm temper, much en¬
ergy, and considerable executive capacity; on the whole