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WHEN industry was made honorable in Holland, the feudal system began to decay. It was a system embracing large land-owners, whose tenants were military men who controlled all labor and bore allegiance to the lordly proprietor. In the new era which had gradually dawned in Holland, the owner of the soil was no longer the head of a band of armed depredators who were his dependants, but the careful proprietor of broad acres, and devoted …

…made his purchase of the Indians extending from Hoboken to the Raritan River, and latinizing his name, called it Pavonia. In this purchase was included the settlement of some Dutch at Bergen. Other settlements were attempted, but none became permanent until about forty years afterward. Cape May, which Captain Heyes bought of the Indians--a territory sixteen miles square--remained an uncultivated wilderness all that time yielding the products of its salt meadows to the browsing deer.