the great monarch, who, in his schemes for the honour of Sweden, always united with them the well-being of humanity.
After the king's death this plan was carried out under the direction of Oxenstjerna. Land was purchased along the southern banks of the Delaware, and peopled by Swedish emigrants. The colony called itself New Sweden, and enjoyed a period of prosperity and increasing importance, engaged in agriculture and other peaceful employment, during which it erected the fortress of Christiana, as a defence against the Dutch who inhabited the northern banks of the river. The number of Swedes did not exceed seven hundred, and when contests arose with the more powerful colony of New Netherland, and the Sweden Governor Rising attacked the Dutch fortress Casimir, the Dutch avenged themselves by surprising the Swedish colony with an overwhelming force, and they submitted. The Swedish arms in Europe had by this time ceased to inspire respect on the other side the Atlantic, and spite of their protests the Swedes were brought under the jurisdiction of the Dutch. The connection with the mother-country ceased by degrees. And after the death of the last Swedish clergyman who emigrated hither—Collin—and who died at a great age, the Swedish congregation and church have been under the care of an American clergyman. Mr. Clay, the present minister, invited me to meet at his house all the descendants of the earliest Swedish settlers whom he knew. It was a company of from fifty to sixty, and I shook hands with many agreeable persons, but who had nothing Swedish about them, excepting their family names, of which I recognised many. But no traditions of their emigration hither remained; language, appearance, all had entirely merged into that of the now prevailing Anglo-Saxon race. The church clock alone had something truly Swedish about it, something of the
