Albany, the capital city of the state of New York. It was settled by the Dutch in the year 1617. The first settlers were Huguenots from Belgium. At the transfer to the English in 1664 it was named for the Duke of Albany, who afterwards became James II. In 1797 it became the permanent capital of the state. In 1900 the population was 94,151. The state capitol, built of Maine granite at a cost of $25,000,000, is one of the most expensive buildings of the kind in the Union. The city owes its commercial prosperity to a commanding position. It is at the head of deep water navigation in the Hudson, and is the eastern terminus of the Erie Canal. It is also at the intersection of important north and south with east and west railway lines. In 1614, the year after the first Dutch traders had established their operations on Manhattan Island, they built a trading house, which they called Fort Nassau, on Castle Island, in the Hudson River, a little below the site of the present city of Albany. Three years later this small fort was carried away by a flood and the island abandoned. In 1623 a more important fortification, named Fort Orange, was erected on the site afterwards covered by the business part of Albany. That year, about eighteen families settled themselves at Fort Orange, under Adriaen Joris, who "staid with them all winter," after sending his ship home to Holland in charge of his son. As soon as the colonists had built themselves "some huts of bark" around the fort, the Mahikanders or River Indians (Mohegans), the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas, with the Mahawawa or Ottawawa Indians, "came and made covenants of friendship...and desired that they might come and have a constant free trade with them, which was concluded upon."-J. R. Brodhead, History of the State of New York.