The Massachusetts government foresaw the dangerous consequences of the French fort at Crown Point, and governor Belcher gave us the first information of it in a letter from Boston to Mr. Van Dam. He informed him of the vote of the general court to bear their proportion of the charge of an embassage to Canada to forbid the works, and pressed him to engage the opposition of the Six Nations. Van Dam laid the letter before his council on the 4th of February, 1732, who with singular calmness advised him to write to the commissioners of Indian affairs at Albany, ordering them to inquire whether the land belonged to the confederates or the River Indians. That Mr. Van Dam ever wrote to the commissioners I have not been able to discover; nor whether any complaint of the encroachment was sent home, according to the second advice of council on the 11th of February, who, besides the first step, were now pleased to recommend his transmitting governor Belcher's letter and the Boston vote to the several south western colonies.

The passiveness we discovered on this impudent and dangerous invasion of his majesty's rights, is truly astonishing; and the more so, as the crown had at that time four independent companies, which had long been posted here for our protection, at the annual expense of about 7500 pounds sterling. A very good scheme, in some measure to repair this shameful misconduct, was afterwards projected by settling the lands near lake George with loyal protestant highlanders from Scotland. Captain Laughlin Campbel, encouraged by a proclamation to that purpose, came over in 1737, and ample promises were made to him. He went upon the land, viewed and approved it, and was entreated to settle there even by the Indians, who were taken with his highland dress. Mr. Clarke, the lieutenantgovernor, promised him in a printed advertisement the grant of 30,000 acres of land, free from all but the charges of the survey and the king's quit rent.

Confiding on the faith of the government, captain Campbel went home to Isla, sold his estate, and shortly after transported, at his own expense, eighty-three protestant families, consisting of four hundred and twenty-three adults besides a great number of children. Private faith and public honour loudly demanded the fair execution of a project so expensive to the undertaker and beneficial to the colony; but it unfortunately dropped, through the sordid views of some persons in power, who aimed at a share in the intended grant; to which Campbel, who was a man of spirit, would not

consent.

Captain Campbel afterwards made an attempt to redress himself, by an application to the assembly here, and then to the board of trade in England. The first proved abortive, and such were the difficulties attending the last, that he left his colonists to themselves, and with the poor remains of his broken fortune, purchased a small farm in this province. No man was better qualified than he, for the business he had engaged in. He had a high sense of honour and a good understanding; was active, loyal, and of a military disposition: for upon the news of the late rebellion in Scotland, he went home, fought under the duke, returned to his family, and soon after died, leaving a widow and several children, who still feel the consequences of his disappointments.

Mr. Van Dam finished his administration on the 1st of August, 1732, when William Cosby, esq. arrived with a commission to govern this and the province of New-Jersey. The history of our public transactions, from this period to the present time, is full of important and entertaining events, which I leave others to relate. A very near relation to the author had so great a concern in the public controversies with colonel Cosby, that the history of those times will be better received from a more disinterested pen. To suppress truth on the one hand, or exag

gerate it on the other, are both inexcusable faults, and perhaps it would be difficult for me to avoid those extremes. Besides, a writer who exposes the conduct of the living, will inevitably meet with their fury and resentment. The prudent historian of his own times will always be a coward, and never give fire till death protects him from the malice and stroke of his enemy.

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1

APPENDIX.

THE HISTORY OF NEW-YORK.

CHAPTER I.

A GEOGRAPHICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTRY.

THE province of New-York, at present, contains Long Island, Staten Island, and the lands on the east side of Hudson's river, to the bounds of Connecticut. From the division line between that colony and the Massachusetts Bay, northward, to the line between us and the French, we claim an extent to Connecticut river.* On the west side of Hudson's

* The grounds of this claim are contained in the following report of a committee of council, to governor Clinton, on the 2d of March, 1753, which was drawn up by Mr. Alexander.

"May it please your Excellency,

"In obedience to your excellency's order in council, of the 3d day of July last, referring to a committee thereof, the petitions of Robert Livingston, jun. Esq. and of the owners of a certain tract of land called Westenhook, complaining of new claims and encroachments made upon their lands by the inhabitants of Massachusetts Bay, and also the surveyor-general's and the attorneygeneral's reports on the said two petitions: the committee having maturely weighed and considered of the same, humbly beg leave to report to your excellency:

"1st. That they apprehend the claims of Massachusetts Bay to the manor of Livingston, or the said tract of land called Westenhook, cannot be well founded; because they find that the Dutch claimed the colony of New Netherland, as extending from Cape Cod to Cape Cornelius, now called Cape Henlopen, westward of Delaware Ray, along the sea coast, and as far back into the country as any of the rivers within those limits extend; and that they were actually possessed of Connecticut river, long before any other European people knew any thing of the existence of such a river, and were not only possessed of the mouth of it, where they had a fort and garrison, but discovered the river above a hundred miles up, had their people trading there, and purchased of the natives almost all the lands on both sides of the said river.

"2dly That governor Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor of the said province, by his letter dated the 2d of September, 1664, new stile, in answer to a letter from governor Richard Nicholls, of the 20-30th August preceding, demanding the surrender of all the forts and places of strength possessed by the Dutch, under his (governor Stuyvesant's) command, writes as follows:-Moreover it's without dispute, and acknowledged by all the world, that our predecessors, by virtue