Adriaen Van der Donck was perhaps the most universally respected Dutch colonist in New-Netherlands, what is today the lower half of the state of New York. Van der Donck was a lawyer for the Rensselaer family, who dominated the upper Hudson River; he was a liaison with the Mohawk and Mahican Indians, who traded with the Dutch; and he was a successful farmer who married an English colonist. In 1649 he returned to the United Provinces— the Netherlands—to discuss colonial matters with the royal government of Prince William of Orange. These included the Dutch West Indies Company, which managed the colony, and its governor Peter Stuyvesant’s mismanagement of it. While he was in Holland, he wrote a book advertising the wealth of the Dutch colony in North America to encourage more settlers to make the voyage across the Atlantic. His Description of the New-Netherlands, published in 1655, was full of insightful information about the northeastern part of North America at the time.