40 DUTCH AND ENGLISH ON THE HUDSON

tract comprising what are now the counties of
Albany and Rensselaer with part of Columbia.
Of this tract, called Rensselaerswyck, Van Rens-
selaer was named patroon, and five other men,
Godyn, Blommaert, De Laet, Bissels, and Mous-
sart, whom he had been forced to conciliate by
taking into partnership, were named codirectors.
Later the claims of these five associates were
bought out by the Van Rensselaer family.

In 1630 the first group of emigrants for this new
colony sailed on the ship Eendragt and reached
Fort Orange at the beginning of June. How crude
was the settlement which they established we may
judge from the report made some years later by
Father Jogues, a Jesuit missionary, who visited
Rensselaerswyck in 1643. He speaks of a miser-
able little fort built of logs and having four or five
pieces of Breteuil cannon. He describes also the
colony as composed of about a hundred persons,
"who reside in some twenty-five or thirty houses
built along the river as each found most con-
venient." The patroon3 s agent was established in
the principal house, while in another, which served
also as a church, was domiciled the domine, the
Reverend Johannes Megapolensis, Jr. The houses
he describes as built of boards and roofed with