Document: Journal of New Netherland 1647. Written in the Years 1641, 1642, 1643, 1644, 1645, and 1646. Image 010

and as the Lords Directors gave free passage from Holland thither, that also caused some to come. On the other hand, the English came also from both Virginia and New England. Firstly, many servants, whose time with their masters had expired, on account of the good opportunity to plant tobacco here, afterwards families and finally entire colonies, forced to quit that place both to enjoy freedom of conscience and to escape from the insupportable government of New England and because many more commodities were easier to be obtained here than there, so that in place of seven farms and two or three plantations which were here, one saw thirty farms, as well cultivated and stocked with cattle as in Europe, and a hundred plantations which in two or three [years] would have become well-arranged farms. For after the tobacco was out of the ground, corn was thrown in there without ploughing. In winter men were busy preparing new lands. Five English colonies which by contract had [settled] under us on equal terms