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Margoli Crantin Sectory 16
Page 01
It was in this very year that Kieft came to supersede Van Twiller, who had given just cause for complaint by his eagerness to enrich himself at the expense of the West India Company. During the administration of Kieft occurred the long and doubtful conflict with the natives detailed in the succeeding chapter. Arbitrary and exacting, he drove the Indians to extremities, and involved the Dutch settlements in a war which for a time threatened their destruction. Not till 1645 was peace re-established, and in 1647 the unpopular governor was recalled. In 1647 not more than three hundred fighting men remained in the whole province. Its total population was between fifteen hundred and two thousand. In 1652 New Amsterdam had a population of seven or eight hundred. In 1664 Stuyvesant put the number in the province at ten thousand, about fifteen hundred of whom were in New Amsterdam.
Further, our student must submit to a thorough grounding in world-geography with its physical and human sides welded firmly together. He must be able to pick out on the map the headquarters of all the more notable peoples, not merely as they are now, but also as they were at various outstanding moments of the past. His next business is to master the main facts about the natural conditions to which each people is subjected--the climate, the conformation of land and sea, the animals and plants. From here it is but a step to the economic life--the food-supply, the clothing, the dwelling-places, the principal occupations, the implements of labour. A selected list of books of travel must be consulted. No less important is it to work steadily through the show-cases of a good ethnological museum. Nor will it suffice to have surveyed the world by regions. The communications between regions--the migrations and conquests, the trading and the borrowing of customs--must be traced and accounted for. Finally, on the basis of their distribution, which the learner must chart out for himself on blank maps of the world, the chief varieties of the useful arts and appliances of man can be followed from stage to stage of their development.
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