Subsequently the two rivals quarrelled, and in 1641 D’Aulnay obtained an order from the king deposing De la Tour, but the latter refused obedience and sent an envoy to Boston in November, 1641, to solicit aid.  This envoy was kindly treated, and some of the Puritan merchants despatched a pinnace to trade with De la Tour; but they met with D’Aulnay at Pemaquid, who threatened to make prize of any vessel which he caught engaged in the fur trade in Acadia.[13]

The Dutch claim to America was comparatively recent, as it was not until 1597 that voyages were undertaken from Holland to the continent.  In 1602 the Dutch East India Company was chartered, and in 1609 sent out Henry Hudson, an Englishman by birth, to seek a way to India by the northeast.  After sailing to Nova Zembla, where fogs and fields of ice closed against him the strait of Veigatz, he changed his course for Newfoundland and coasted southward to Chesapeake Bay.  Returning on his path he entered the Hudson in September, 1609, and stayed four weeks exploring the river and trafficking with the natives.[14]

The reports brought by him to Europe of a newly discovered country abounding in fur-bearing animals created much interest, and in 1612 some merchants in Holland sent Christiansen and Blok to the island of Manhattan, where they built a little fort, which, it is stated, Argall attacked in 1613.  Losing his ship by fire, Blok built a yacht of sixteen tons at Manhattan, and with this small craft was the first explorer (1614) of the Connecticut River.  He also visited Narragansett Bay, and gave to its shores the name of Roode Eiland (now Rhode Island).

After his return home the merchants obtained from the States-General a charter for three years’ monopoly of the trade of New Netherland, as the present New York was now first formally called.  It was defined as extending between New France and Virginia, from the fortieth to the forty-fifth degree of north latitude.[15] After this New Netherland continued to be resorted to by Dutch traders, though no regular settlement was formed for some years.

In 1619 Thomas Dermer visited the Hudson and brought news to England of the operations of the Dutch and the value of the fur trade.  Thereupon Captain Samuel Argall, with many English planters, prepared to make a settlement on the Hudson, and when the Dutch government, in June, 1621, chartered the Dutch West India Company, the English court, on Argall’s complaint, protested against Dutch intrusion within what was considered the limits of Virginia.  The States-General at first evaded a reply, but finally declared that they had never authorized any settlement on the Hudson.[16] The charter,[17] in fact, gave the company only an exclusive right to trade for twenty-four years on the coasts of Africa and America.