28 DUTCH AND ENGLISH ON THE HUDSON

These resources were indeed abundant. The
climate was temperate, with a long season of crops
and harvests. Grape-vines produced an abundant
supply of wines. The forests contained a vast
variety of animals. Innumerable birds made the
wilderness vocal. Turkeys and wild fowl offered
a variety of food. The rivers produced fish of
every kind and oysters which the letters of the
colonists describe as a foot long, though this is
somewhat staggering to the credulity of a later
age. De Vries, one of the patroons, or proprietors,
whose imagination was certainly of a lively type,
tells us that he had seen a New Netherlander kill
eighty-four thrushes or maize-birds at one shot.
He adds that he has noticed crabs of excellent
flavor on the flat shores of the bay. "Their
claws," he says naively, "are of the color of our
Prince's flag, orange, white and blue, so that the
crabs show clearly enough that we ought to peo-
ple the country and that it belongs to us." When
the very crabs thus beckoned to empire, how
could the Netherlanders fail to respond to their
invitation?

The newly discovered river soon began to be
alive with sail, high-pooped vessels from over sea,
and smaller die booten (Anglicized into "flyboats "),