cil, to all men that these shall come to see and hear, salut. . . .”[1] In this letter to Fendall, Stuyvesant refers to Herrman and Waldron as “our trusty agents”, and in another letter he calls them “our well beloved and trusty Augustine Heermans and Resolved Waldron.”[2] When the directors of the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam heard of these new settlements, and being unfamiliar with the geography of the English colonies, gave vent to their indignation in a fiery letter addressed to Stuyvesant, blaming him for his lack of tact and for the departure of so many Dutchmen to Virginia.[3] In all justice to Peter Stuyvesant it ought to be stated that if his administration was no more successful than it was, it may have been because it seemed his misfortune to be continually caught between two fires—the rebellious nature of his freedom-loving subjects and the unreasonable attitude and haughtiness of the authorities in Holland.
During his trip to Maryland Herrman kept a journal of his travels from New Amstel to Patexent in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. He quaintly and charmingly describes the country and the people, narrating the following anecdote:
“A certain savage met a Dutchman at Whorekill and told him that he would kill a Dutchman because his father had been killed by a Dutchman before, to which the Dutchman replied that his father had been killed by an Englishman and therefore ought to take revenge on them, on which the savage went off and killed an Englishman.”[4]
In the preamble of the colonial charter of Maryland occurs this phrase, “in a country, Hactenus unculta (generally trans-
