THERE is no one classical narrative of the history of New Nether-
land--nothing corresponding in position to Bradford History of
Plymouth Plantation or Governor Winthrop's Journal. A volume
intended to convey the best contemporary representation of New
Netherland history must perforce be composed of several pieces,
most of them not of high literary merit, but having the advantage of
showing New Netherland and its events from various angles. The
limits of the volume have not permitted the inclusion of every in-
teresting or important contemporary narrative of the colony, but it is
believed that all the best are here. One piece, the "Description of
the Towne of Mannadens as it was in September, 1661," has not
been printed before.

Most of the early narratives of New Netherland are written in
Dutch. Hence the first difficulty with such a volume, next after
that of selection, is that of securing good translations of seventeenth-
century Dutch pieces, some of them distinctly crabbed and rough
in style. The old translations, published fifty or sixty years ago in
the Collections of the New York Historical Society, the Documentary
History of the State of New York, and similar volumes, are in some
cases very bad, and in nearly all cases susceptible of considerable
improvement. For the purposes of the present book they have been
carefully revised or remade, by comparison with the originals. The
introductions to several of the pieces express the editor's obligations
to friends who have aided him in this revision. In the case of cer-
tain of the pieces, of which the originals are manuscripts at the Hague,
this work of revision was performed by Professor William I. Hull, of
Swarthmore College, and Dr. Johannes de Hullu, of the Rijksarchief
(Dutch National Archives); others, of which the John Carter Brown
Library contained printed copies, were revised by Professor A.
Clinton Crowell, of Brown University; one, from a manuscript in
New York, by Mr. S. G. Nissenson. In other instances the editor
himself did this part of the work. If, however, the volume, as is
believed, substitutes unusually correct translations for the imperfect

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