George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 2, 17th edition.

[287] were purchased of the natives; and near the mouth of

Chap. XV.}

Christiana Creek, within the limits of the present state of Delaware, Christiana Fort, so called from the little girl who was then queen of Sweden, was erected. Delaware was colonized.

The colony was not unmolested. Should the Dutch suffer their province to be dismembered? The records at Albany¹ still preserve the protest, in which Kieft, then director general of New Netherland, claimed for the Dutch the country on the Delaware: their possession had long been guarded by forts, and had been sealed by the blood of their countrymen. But at that time, the fame of Swedish arms protected the Swedish flag in the New World; and while Banner and Torstenson were humbling Austria and Denmark, the Dutch did not venture beyond a protest.

Meantime tidings of the loveliness of the country had been borne to Scandinavia, and the peasantry of Sweden and of Finland longed to exchange their lands in Europe for a settlement on the Delaware. Emigration increased; at the last considerable expedition, there were more than a hundred families² eager to embark for the land of promise, and unable to obtain a passage in the crowded vessels. The plantations of the Swedes were gradually extended; and to preserve the ascendency over the Dutch, who renewed their fort at Nassau, Printz, the governor, established his residence

1643

in Tinicum, a few miles below Philadelphia. A fort, constructed of vast hemlock logs, defended the island;³ and houses began to cluster in its neighborhood. Pennsylvania was, at last, occupied by Europeans; that commonwealth, like Delaware, traces its lineage