Tan card binding with title on the spine. Age considered, this is in fine condition. Boxed in a protective case this is a unique book which amongst other matters touches upon early 16 th century European settlement in the
Americas.

New Amsterdam (Dutch: Nieuw Amsterdam, pronounced [ˌniu.ɑmstərˈdɑm]) was a 17th-century Dutch settlement established at the southern tip of Manhattan Island that served as the seat of the colonial government in New Netherland. The initial trading factory gave rise to the settlement around Fort Amsterdam. The fort was situated on the strategic
southern tip of the island of Manhattan and was meant to defend the fur trade operations of the Dutch West India Company in the North River (Hudson River). In 1624, it became a provincial extension of the Dutch Republic and was designated as the capital of the province in 1625. New Amsterdam became a city when it received municipal rights on February 2, 1653.

By 1655, the population of New Netherland had grown to 2,000 people, with 1,500 living in New Amsterdam. By 1664, the population of New Netherland had risen to almost 9,000 people, 2,500 of whom lived in New Amsterdam, 1,000 lived near Fort Orange, and the remainder in other towns and villages. In 1664, the English took over New Amsterdam and renamed it New York after the Duke of York (later James II & VII). After the Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665–67, England and the United Provinces of the Netherlands agreed to the status quo in the Treaty of Breda. The English kept the island of Manhattan, the Dutch giving up their claim to the town and the rest of the colony, while the English formally abandoned Surinam in South America, and the island of Run in the East Indies to the Dutch, confirming their control of the valuable Spice Islands. What was once New Amsterdam became New York City’s downtown, today known as Lower Manhattan.

Governors Island was initially much smaller than it is today. It had many inlets along its shoreline, and groves of hardwood trees, from which the island’s native name is derived. There is insufficient evidence as to whether Governors Island contained any permanent Lenape settlements, or was used mainly for hunting and gathering. In 1524, the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano was perhaps the first European to observe what was then called Paggank. One hundred years later, in May 1624, Noten Eylandt was the landing place of the first settlers in New Netherland. They departed
from Amsterdam in the Dutch Republic with the ship Nieu Nederlandt under the command of Cornelius Jacobsen May and disembarked on the island with thirty families in order to take possession of the New Netherland
territory. For this reason, the New York State Senate and Assembly recognize Governors Island as the birthplace of the state of New York, and also certify the island as the place on which the planting of the “legal-political guarantee of tolerance onto the North American continent” took place.
In 1633, the fifth director of New Netherland, Wouter van Twiller, arrived with a 104-man regiment on Noten Eylandt, and later commandeered the island for his personal use. He secured his farm by drawing up a deed on June 16, 1637, which was signed by two Lenape leaders, Cacapeteyno and Pewihas, on behalf of their community at Keshaechquereren, situated in present-day New Jersey. Van Twiller cultivated a farm on the island, even building a windmill on the land, until he returned to the Netherlands in 1642. The windmill was demolished possibly by 1648, when colonial governor Peter Stuyvesant burned it down after seeing it in inoperable condition. Following this, Noten Eylandt is said to have been used as a recreation ground by the Dutch between 1652 and 1664. There is little other documentation on the use of the island during the Dutch colonial period, other than the fact that it has remained in public ownership since van Twiller left New Netherland.
New Netherland was conditionally ceded to the English in 1664, and the English renamed the settlement New York in June 1665. By 1674, the British had total control of the island. At this point, the eastern shore of the island was separated from Brooklyn by a shallow channel that could be easily traversed at low tide. This became known as Buttermilk Channel,
since farm women would use the channel to travel to Manhattan island in boats and sell buttermilk. By 1680, Nutten Island contained a single house and pasture to be used by colonial governors for raising sheep, cattle, and
horses. The British started calling Nutten Island “Governor’s Island” (with an apostrophe) in 1698 and reserved the island for the exclusive use of colonial governors. Four years later, when Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury took office as New York colonial governor, he built a mansion on Governor’s Island, though evidence of this mansion no longer exists. Later, governor William Cosby used the island as a preserve to breed and hunt pheasants.
Other governors leased out the island for profit, and for a short period around 1710, Governor’s Island was designated as a quarantine station for Palatine (German) refugees arriving from England on their way to Germantown on the Hudson. Otherwise, Governor’s Island mostly remained untouched until the American Revolutionary War started in 1775.

Janus Dousa (Latinized from Jan van der Does), Lord of Noordwyck (6 December 1545 – 8 October 1604), was a Dutch statesman, jurist, historian, poet and philologist, and the first Librarian of Leiden University Library. In 1569 Dousa published his first collection of poems (epigrams, satires, elegies, etc.). A new collection appeared in 1575. This collection contains (among other poems) five Odae Lugdunenses on the siege of Leiden. In 1584 a volume of epodes was issued. In 1585 Dousa wrote the Odae Britannicae. 1586 saw the release of a new book of elegies.
In 1599 and 1601 Dousa’s historiographical works appeared. In 1603 a poetic volume called Echo and a collection of three odes was released. Some more works were issued posthumously. Apart from these literary works Dousa published collections of text-critical remarks on and editions of classical authors: Sallust, Horace, Catullus, Tibullus, Petronius, Plautus, Propertius.
Dousa’s historiographical labour is especially relevant. In 1585, when Dousa was 40 years old, he became the first Librarian at Leiden University Library with a special commission to write a history of Holland. At that moment however, he had been pursuing historical studies for several years. If one is to trust Heinsius’ eulogy, Dousa had been studying history since the moment he returned from France. Letters from the years 1582 and 1583 prove that Dousa had at least been deepening his knowledge of the history of Holland since 1577. In the letter from 1582 one even comes across a specimen of his Annales written in hexameters. In 1584 Dousa edited the work of Adrianus Barlandus, a historiographer from Zeeland.
His first accomplishment after his commission in 1585 was the posthumous publication of the work of Hadrianus Junius in 1588. However, his political activities prevented him from finishing his own history within a few years. In 1593 two Epistulae apologeticae were published in which Dousa apologized for the fact that the commissioned work had still not appeared. However, the States of Holland had to wait for their history even longer when Dousa’s eldest son died in 1597. Sorrow kept Dousa from finishing his work until 1599. In this year the metrical Annales were published. Finally, the commissioned prose history (Bataviae Hollandiaeque Annales) was published in 1601. Dousa was rewarded by the States of Holland with a golden chain, a medal, and exemption from the obligation to appear in the Supreme Court. In 1604 Dousa intended to edit the works of the historians Johannes de Beka and Willem Heda, but on October 8 of the same year he died of the plague before he was able to realize this plan.