height of the navigation of the Grande River. As it appears, they selected a site for the building on the long, low island lying in the bay, on the west side of the river, near the present southern limits of the city of Albany. The walls of the castle and its protecting earthworks were almost completed when a great freshet inundated the island and damaged the structure so much that the French abandoned the occupation of the island. Jean Alphonse evidently refers to the abortive undertaking, when describing the situation of the Indian village at the mouth of the Grande River, he says: "North of it there is a bay, in which is a small island that is often subject to storms, [those causing freshets,] and cannot be inhabited." The island bore the name of Castle Island for more than a century thereafter, but it is now known as Van Rensselaer's Island. The fact that the French had ascended the Grande River to the height of its navigation to trade with the Indians long before Henry Hudson explored it, is corroborated by still stronger testimony than that already presented. One of the earliest maps representing the territory of Nieu Nederlandt (New Netherland), or that part of New France which the French had called La Terre d' Anormée Berge, is the figurative chart presented to their high mightinesses, the Lords States General of the United Netherlands, on the eleventh of October, 1614, by a number of Dutch merchants, praying for a special license to navigate and traffic within the limits of this part of North America. Upon this map, made in 1614, are inscribed "curious notes and memoranda concerning the natives of the country, which the well-informed discoverer of the chart inti 'A copy of this chart in the general library of the State of New York, at Albany, is entitled: "The Original Carte Figurative, of which the above is an accurate fac-simile, was found on the 26th of June, 1841, in the Locket-kas, of the States General, in the Royal archives at the Hague." |