/ 'A-^ A. ^'^ -• . '^i f K^:l I lEx ICtbrta SEYMOUR DURST "l ' "Fort nUmv ^m/ferdam' o^ <^iter, Neptune, or Hercules (which heathenish abominations I have no doubt occasion the misfortunes and shipAvreck of many a noble vessel), — he, I say, on the contrary, did laudably erect for a head a goodly image of St. Nichoh\s, equipped with a low, broad-brimmed hat, a huge pair of Flemish trunk hose, and a pipe that reached to the end of the bow- sprit. Thus gallantly furnished, the stauncli ship floated sideways, like a majestic goose, out of tlie harbor of the great city of Amsterdam, and all the bells that were not otherwise engaged rang a triple bobmajor on the joyful occasion. My great-great-grandfather remarks that the voyage was uncommonly prosperous, for, being under the especial care HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 87 of the ever-revered St. Nicholas, the Goede Vrouw seemed to be endowed with qualities unknown tc common vessels. Thus she made as much lecAvay as headway, could get along very nearly as fast with the wind ahead as when it was apoop, and was particularly great in a calm; in conse- quence of which singular advantages she made out to accom- plish her voyage in a very fev/ months, and came to anchor at the mouth of the Hudson a little to the east of Gibbet Island. Here, lifting up their eyes, they beheld, on what is at present called the Jersey shore, a small Indian village, pleasantly embowered in a grove of spreading elms, and the natives all collected on the beach gazing in stupid ad- miration at the Goede Vrouw. A boat was immediately despatched to enter into a treaty with them, and, approach- ing the shore, hailed them through a trumpet in the most friendly terms ; but so horribly confounded were these poor savages at the tremendous and uncouth sound of the Low Dutch language that they one and all took to their heels, and scampered over the Bergen hills ; nor did they stop until they had buried themselves, head and ears, in the marshes on the other side, where they all miserably per- ished to a man, and their bones, being collected and decently covered by the Tammany Society of that day, formed that singular mound called Rattlesnake Hill which rises out of the centre of the salt marshes a little to the east of the Newark causeway. Animated by this unlooked-for victory, our valiant heroes sprang ashore in triumph, took possession of the soil as con- querors in the name of their High Mightinesses the Lords States General, and, marching fearlessly forward, carried the village of Communipaw by storm, notwithstanding that it was vigorously defended by some half a score of old squaws and pappooses. On looking about them they were so transported with the excellencies of the place that they had very little doubt the blessed St. Nicholas had guided 88 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. them thither as the very spot whereon to settle their colony. The softness of the soil was wonderfully adapted to the driving of piles; the swarags and marshes around them afforded ample opportunities for the constructing of dykes and dams ; the shallowness of the shore was peculiarly favorable to the building of docks, — in a word, this spot abounded with all the requisites for the foundation of a great Dutch city. On making a faithful report, therefore, to the crew of the Goede Vrouw, they one and all de- termined that this was the destined end of their voyage. Accordingly they descended from the Goede Vrouw, men, women, and children, in goodly groups, as did the animals of yore from the ark, and formed themselves into a thriv- ing settlement, which they called by the Indian name COMMUNIPAW. As all the world is doubtless perfectly acquainted w^ith Communipaw, it may seem somewhat superfluous to treat of it in the present work ; but my readers will please to recollect that notwithstanding it is my chief desire to satisfy the present age, yet I write likewise for j^osterity, and have to consult the understanding and curiosity of some half a score of centuries yet to come ; by which time, perhaps, were it not for this invaluable history, the great Com- munipaw, like Babylon, Carthage, Nineveh, and other great cities, might be perfectly extinct — sunk and forgotten in its own mud, its inhabitants turned into oysters,* and even its situation a fertile subject of learned controversy and hard-headed investigation among indefatigable his- torians. Let me then piously rescue from oblivion the humble relics of a place which was the egg from whence was hatched the mighty city of New York ! Communipaw is at present but a small village, pleasantly situated, among rural scenery, on that beauteous part of the Jersey shore which was known in ancient legends by the * Men by inaction degenerate into oysters. — Kaimes. HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 89 name of Pavonia/-^ and commands a grand prospect of the superb bay of Kew Y^ork. It is within but half an hour's sail of the latter place, provided you have a fair wind, and may be distinctly seen from the city. Nay, it is a well- known fact, which I can testify from my own experience, that on a clear still summer evening you may hear, from the Battery of New Y^'ork, the obstreperous peals of broad- mouthed laughter of the Dutch negroes at Communipaw, who, like most other negroes, are famous for their risible powers. This is peculiarly the case on Sunday evenings, when, it is remarked by an ingenious and observant phil- osopher, who has made great discoveries in the neighbor- hood of this city, that they always laugh loudest; which he attributes to the circumstance of their having their holiday clothes on. These negroes, in fact, like the monks in the Dark Ages, engross all the knowledge of the place, and being infinitely more adventurous and more knowing than their masters, carry on all the foreign trade, making frequent voyages to town in canoes loaded with oysters, buttermilk, and cab- bages. They are great astrologers, predicting the different changes of weather almost as accurately as an almanac; they are moreover exquisite performers on three-stringed fiddles; in whistling they almost boast the far-famed powers of Orpheus's lyre, for not a horse or an ox in the place when at the plough or before the wagon will budge a foot until he hears the well-known whistle of his black driver and companion. And from their amazing skill at casting up accounts upon their fingers, they are regarded with as much veneration as were the disciples of Pythagoras of yore when initiated into the sacred quaternary of num- bers. As to the honest burghers of Communipaw, like wise men and sound philosophers they never look beyond their * r.avor.ia, in the ancient maps, is given to a tract of country ex- tending from about lloboken to Amboy 90 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. pipes, nor trouble their heads about any affairs out of their immediate neighborhood; so that they live in profound and enviable ignorance of a}l the troubles, anxieties, and revolutions of this distracted j^lanet. I am even told that many among them do verily believe that Holland, of which they have heard so much from tradition, is situated some- where on Long Island ; that Spikmg-devll and the Narrows are the two ends of the world ; that the country is still under the dominion of their High Mightinesses ; and that the city of New York still goes by the name of Nieuw Amsterdam. They meet every Saturday afternoon at the only tavern in the place, which bears as a sign a square- headed likeness of the Prince of Orange, where they smoke a silent pipe by way of promoting social conviviality, and invariably drink a mug of cider to the success of Admiral Van Tromp, wdio they imagine is still sweeping the British Channel with a broom at his mast-head. Comniunipaw, in short, is one of the numerous little vil- lages in the vicinity of this most beautiful of cities which are so many strongholds and fastnesses whither the primi- tive manners of our Dutch forefathers have retreated, and •where they are cherished with devout and scrupulous strictness. The dress of the original settlers is handed down inviolate from father to son ; the identical broad- brimmed hat, broad-skirted coat, and broad-bottomed breeches continue from generation to generation ; and sev- eral gigantic knee-buckles of massy silver are still in wear that made gallant display in the days of the patriarchs of Communipaw. The language likewise continues unadul- terated by barbarous innovations, and so critically correct is tlie village schoolmaster in his dialect that his reading of a Low Dutch psalm has much the same effect on the nerves as the fiUnir of a handsaw. CHAPTER III. IN WHICH IS SET FORTH THE TKUE ART OF MAKING A BARGAIN — TOGETHER WITH THE MIRACULOUS ESCAPE OF A GREAT METROPOLIS IN A FOG — AND THE BIOG- RAPHY OF CERTAIN HEROES OF COMMUNIPAW. Having, in the trifling digression which concUided the last chapter, discharged the filial duty which the city of New York owed to Communipaw as being the mother settle- ment, and having given a faithful picture of it as it stands at present, I return Vv^ith a sootliing sentiment of self-appro- bation to dwell upon its early history. The crew of the Gocde Vrouw being soon reinforced by fresh importations from Holland, the settlement went jollily on, increasing in magnitude and prosperity. The neighboring Indians in a short time became accustomed to the uncouth sound of the Dutch language, and an intercourse gradually took place between them and the new-comers. The Indians were much given to long talks, and the Dutch to long silence; in this particular, therefore, they accommodated each other completely. The chiefs would make long speeches about the big bull, the Wabash, and the Great Spirit, to which the others would listen very attentively, smoke their pipes, and grunt yah, myn^her — whereat the poor savages were won- drously delighted. They instructed the new settlers in tlie best art of curing and smoking tobacco, while the latter, in return, made them drunk with true Hollands, and then taught them the art of making bargains. A brisk trade for furs was soon opened : the Dutch traders were scrupulously honest in their dealings, and pur- chased by v.eight, establishing it as an invariable table of avoirdupois that the hand of a Dutchman weighed one 91 92 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. pound, and his foot two pounds. It is true the simple In- dians were often puzzled by the great disproportion between bulk and weight, for let them; place a bundle of furs, never so large, in one scale, and a Dutchman put his hand or foot in the other, the bundle was sure to kick the beam — never was a package of furs known to weigh more than two pounds in the market of Communipaw ! This is a singular fact, but I have it direct from my great-great-grandfather, who had risen to considerable im- portance in the colony, being promoted to the office of weigh-master on account of the uncommon heaviness of his foot. The Dutch possessions in this part of the globe began now to assume a very thriving appearance, and were com- prehended under the general title of Kieuw Nederlandts, on account, as the sage Vander Douck observes, of their great resemblance to the Dutch Netherlands ; which indeed was truly remarkable, excepting that the former were rugged and mountainous, and the latter level aud marshy. About this time the tranquillity of the Dutch colonists was doomed to suffer a temporary interruption. In 1614, Captain Sir Samuel Argal, sailing under a commission from Dale, gov- ernor of Virginia, visited the Dutch settlements on Hudson River and demanded their submission to the English Crown and Virginian dominion. To this arrogant demand, as they were in no condition to resist it, they submitted for the time, like discreet and reasonable men. It does not appear that the valiant Argal molested the settlement of Communipaw ; on the contrary, I am told that when his vessel first hove in sight the worthy burghers were seized with such a panic that they fell to smoking their pipes with astonishing vehemence ; insomuch that they quickly raised a cloud which, combining with the surrounding woods and marshes, completely enveloped and concealed their beloved village and overhung the fair regions of Pavonia, so that the terrible Captain Argal HISTORY OF NEW YOEK. 93 passed on, totally unsuspicious that a sturdy little Dutch settlement lay snugly couched in the mud under cover of all this pestilent vapor. In commemoration of this fortu- nate escape the worthy inhabitants have continued to smoke, almost ^vithout intermission, unto this very day, which is said to be the cause of the remarkable fog which often hangs over Communipaw of a clear afternoon. Upon the departure of the enemy our worthy ancestors took full six months to recover their wind and get over the consternation into which they had been thrown. They then called a council of safety to smoke over the state of the province. At this council presided one OlofTe Van Kortlandt, a personage who was held in great reverence among tlie sages of Communipaw for the variety and dark- ness of his knowledge. He had originally been one of a set of peripatetic pliilosophers Avho had passed much of their time sunning themselves on the side of the great canal of Amsterdam in Holland, enjoying, like Diogenes, a free and unincumbered estate in sunshine. His name Kort- landt (Shortland or Lackland) was supposed, like that of the illustrious Jean Sansterre, to indicate that he had no land ; but he insisted, on the contrary, that he had great landed estates somewhere in Terra Incognita, and he had come out to the New World to look after them. He was the first great land speculator that we read of in these parts. Like all land speculators, he was much given to dream- ing. Kever did anything extraordinary happen to Com- munipaw but he declared that he had previously dreamt it, being one of those infallible prophets who predict events after they have come to pass. This supernatural gift was as highly valued among the burghers of Pavonia as among the enlightened nations of antiquity. The wise Ulysses was more indebted to his sleeping than his waking mo- ments for his most subtle achievements, and seldom under- took any great exploit without first soundly sleeping upon 94 HISTORY OF KEW YORK. it; and the same may be said of Oloffe Van Kortlandt, Avho was lience aj^tly denominated Olofie the Dreamer. As yet his dreams and speculations had turned to little personal profit, and he was as much a lack-land as ever. Still, he carried a high head in the community ; if his sugar-loaf hat was rather the worse for wear, he set it off with a taller cock's-tail ; if his shirt was none of the cleanest, he pulled it out the more at the bosom ; and if the tail of it peeped out of a hole in his breeches, it at least proved that it really had a tail and Avas not mere ruffle. The worthy Van Kortlandt in the council in question urged the policy of emerging from the swamps of Commuuipaw and seeking some more eligible site for the seat of empire. Such, he said, was the advice of the good St. Nicholas, who had appeared to him in a dream the night before, and whom he had known by his broad hat, his long pipe, and the resemblance which he bore to the figure on the bow of the Goede Vrouw. Many have thought this dream was a mere invention of Oloffe Van Kortlandt, who, it is said, had ever regarded Communipaw with an evil eye because he had arrived there after all the land had been shared out, and who was anxious to change the seat of empire to some new place, where he might be present at the distribution of " tov.n lots." But we must not give heed to such insinuations, which are too apt to be advanced against those worthy gentlemen engaged in laying out towns and in other land speculations. For my own pait, I am disposed to place the same implicit faith in the vision of Oloffe the Dreamer that was manifested by the honest burghers of Communi- paw, who one and all agreed that an expedition should be forthwith fitted out to go on a voyage of discovery in quest of a new seat of empire. This perilous enterprise was to be conducted by Oloffe himself, who chose as lieutenants or coadjutors Mynheers Abraham Hardenbroeck, Jacobus Van Zandt, and Winant HISTOEY OF NEW YORK. 95 Ten Broeck — three indubitably great men, but of whose history, although I have made diligent inquiry, I can learn but little previous to their leaving Holland. Nor need this occasion much surprise, for adventurers, like prophets, though they make great noise abroad, have seldom much celebrity in their own countries ; but this much is certain, that the overflowings and offscourings of a country are in- variably composed of the richest parts of the soil. And here I cannot help remarking how convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin could they have the privilege of the heroes of yore, who, whenever their origin was involved in obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a god, and who never visited a foreign country but what tliey told some cock-and-bull stories about their being kings and princes at home. This venal trespass on the truth, though it has been occasionally })layed off by some pseudo marquis, baronet, and other illustrious foreigner in our land of good- natured credulity, has been completely discounteuanced in this skeptical, matter-of-fact age, and I even question whether any tender virgin, who was accidentally and un- accountably enriched with a bantling, would save her character at parlor firesides and evening tea-parties by ascribing the phenomenon to a swan, a shower of gold, or a river god. Had I the benefit of mythology and classic fable above alluded to, I should have furnished the first of the trio with a pedigree equal to that of the proudest hero of antiquity. His name. Van Zandt — tha,t is to say, from the sand, or, in common parlance, from the dirt — gave reason to suppose that, like Triptolemus, Themes, the Cyclops, and the Titans, he had sprung from Dame Terra, or the earth ! This sup- position is strongly corroborated by his size, for it is well known that all the progeny of mother earth were of a gigantic stature ; and Van Zandt, we are told, was a tall, raw-boned man, above six feet high, with an astonishingly 96 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. hard head. Nor is this origin of the illustrious Van Zandt a whit more imj^irobable or repugnant to belief than what is related and universally admitted of certain of our great- est, or rather richest men, who, we are told with the utmost gravity, did originally spring from a dunghill ! Of the second of the trio but faint accounts have reached to this time, which mention that he was a sturdy, obstinate, worrying, bustling little man, and, from being usually equipped in an old pair of buckskins, was familiarly dubbed Hardenbroeck ; that is to say. Hard in the Breech, or, as it was generally rendered, Tough Breeches. Ten Broeck completed this junto of adventurers. It is a singular but ludicrous flict — v>'hich, were I not scrupulous in recording the whole truth, I should almost be tempted to pass over in silence as incompatible with the gravity and dignity of history — that this worthy gentleman should like- wise have been nicknam.ed from what in modern times is considered the most ignoble part of the dress. But in truth the small-clothes seems to have been a very dignified gar- ment in the eyes of our venerated ancestors, in all proba- bility from its covering that part of the body which has been pronounced " the seat of honor." The name of Ten Broeck, or, as it was sometimes spelled, Tin Broeck, has been indifferently translated into Ten Breeches and Tin Breeches. Certain elegant and ingenious writers on the subject declare in fiivor of Tin, or rather Thin, Breeches ; whence they infer that the original bearer of it was a poor but merry rogue, whose galligaskins were none of the soundest, and who, peradventure, may have been the author of that truly philosophical stanza: "Then why should we quarrel for riches, Or any such glittering toys? A li'deii Paeteidg." There was certainly something in the very physiognomy of this document that might well inspire apprehension. The name of Alexander, however misspelt, has been war- like in every age, and though its fierceness is in some meas- ure softened by being coupled with the gentle cognomen of Partridge, still, like the color of scarlet, it bears an exceed- ing great resemblance to the sound of a trumpet. From the style of the letter, moreover, and the soMier-like igno- rance of orthography displayed by the noble Captain Alicx- sander Partridg in spelling his own name, we may picture to ourselves this mighty man of Rhodes, strong in arms, potent in the field, and as great a scholar as though he had been educated among that learned people of Thrace who, Aristotle assures us, could not count beyond the number four. The result of this great Yankee league was augmented audacity on the part of the moss-troopers of Connecticut, pushing their encroachments farther and farther into the territories of their High Mightinesses, eo that even the in- habitants of New Amsterdam began to draw short breath and to find themselves exceedingly cramped for elbow- room. Peter Stuyvesant was not a man to submit quietly to such intrusions ; his first impulse was to march at once to the frontier and kick these squatting Y'ankees out of the country ; but, bethinking himself in time that he was now a governor and legislator, the policy of the statesman for once cooled the fire of the old soldier and he determined to HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 247 try his hand at negotiation. A correspondence accordingly- ensued betAveen hira and the grand council of the league, and it was agreed that commissioners from either side should meet at Hartford to settle boundaries, adjust grievances, and establish a " perpetual and haj)py peace." The comnii=sionei*s on the part of the Manhattoes were chosen, according to immemorial usage of that venerable metropolis, from among the "wisest and weightiest" men of the community ; that is to say, men with the oldest heads and heaviest pockets. Among these sages the vet- eran navigator, Hans Reinier Oothout, who had made such extensive discoveries during the time of Oloffe the Dreamer, was looked up to as an oracle in all matters of the kind, and he was ready to produce the very spy -glass with which he first spied the mouth of the Connecticut River from his masthead ; and all the world knows that the discovery of the mouth of a river gives prior right to all the lands drained by its waters. It was with feelings of pride and exultation that the good people of the Manhattoes saw two of the richest and most ponderous burghers departing on this embassy — men whose word on 'Change was oracular, and in whose pres- ence no poor man ventured to appear without taking off his hat: when it was seen, too, that the veteran Reinier Oothout accompanied them with his spj'-glass under his arm, all the old men and old women predicted that men of such weiglit, with such evidence, would leave the Yankees no alternative but to pack up their tin kettles and wooden wares, put wife and children in a cart, and abandon all the lands of their High Mightinesses on which they had squatted. In truth, the commissioners sent to Hartford by the league seemed in nowise calculated to compete with men of such capacity. They were two lean Y'ankee lawyers, litigious-looking varlets, and evidently men of no sub- stance, since they had no rotundity in the belt and there 248 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. was no jingling of money in their pockets ; it is true, they had longer heads than the Dutchmen, but if the heads of the latter were flat at top, they were broad at bottom, and what was wanting in height of forehead was made up by a double chin. The negotiation turned as usual upon the good old corner- stone of original discovery, according to the principle that he who first sees a new country has an unquestionable right to it. This being admitted, the veteran Oothout at a concerted signal stepped forth in the assembly with the identical tarpauling spy-glass in his hand with which he had discovered the mouth of the Connecticut, while the worthy Dutch commissioners lolled back in their chairs, secretly chuckling at the idea of having for once got the weather-gage of the Yankees ; but what was their dismay when the latter produced a Nantucket Avhaler with a spy- glass twice as long, with which he discovered the whole coast quite down to the Manhattoes, and so crooked that he had spied with it up the whole course of the Connecti- cut River. This principle pushed home, therefore, the Yankees had a right to the whole country bordering on the sound ; nay, the city of New Amsterdam was a mere Dutch squatting-place on their territories. I forbear to dwell upon the confusion of the worthy Dutch commissioners at finding their main pillar of proof thus knocked from under them ; neither will I pretend to describe the consternation of the wise men at the Manhat- toes when they learnt how their commissioners had been out- trumped by the Y^ankees, and how the latter pretended to claim to the very gates of New Amsterdam. Long was the negotiation protracted and long was the public mind kept in a state of anxiety. There are two modes of settling boundary questions when the claims of the opposite parties are irreconcilable. One is by an appeal to arms, in which case the weakest party is apt to lose its right and get a broken head into the bargain ; the other HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 249 mode is by compromise or mutual concession ; that is to say, one party cedes half of its claims, and the other party half of its rights ; he who grasps most gets most, and the whole is pronounced an equitable division, " perfectly hon- orable to both parties." The latter mode was adopted in the present instance. The Yankees gave up claims to vast tracts of the Nieuw Nederlandts which they had never seen, and all right to the island of Manna-hata and the city of New Amsterdam, to which they had no right at all ; while the Dutch, in return, agreed that the Yankees should retain possession of the frontier places where they had squatted and of both sides of the Connecticut River. When the news of this treaty arrived at New Amsterdam the whole city was in an uproar of exultation. The old women rejoiced that there was to be no war, the old men that their cabbage-gardens were safe from invasion, while the political sages pronounced the treaty a great triumph over the Yankees, considering how much they had claimed and how little they had been " fobbed off with." And now my worthy reader is doubtless, like the great and good Peter, congratulating himself with the idea that his feelings will no longer be harassed by afflicting details of stolen horses, broken heads, impounded hogs, and all the other catalogue of heartrending cruelties that disgraced these border wars. But if he should indulge in such ex- pectations, it is a proof that he is but little versed in the paradoxical ways of cabinets ; to convince him of which I solicit his serious attention to my next chapter, wherein I will show that Peter Stuyvesant has already committed a great error in politics, and by effecting a peace has mate- rially hazarded the tranquillity of the province. CHAPTER IV. CONTAINING DIVERS SPECULATIONS ON WAR AND NEGO- TIATIONS — SHOWING THAT A TREATY OF PEACE IS A GREAT NATIONAL EVIL. It was the opinion of that poetical philosopher, Lucretius, that war was the original state of man, whom he described as being primitively a savage beast of prey engaged in a constant state of hostility with his own species, and that this ferocious spirit was tamed and ameliorated by society. The same opinion has been advocated by Hobbes,* nor have there been wanting many other philosophers to ad- mit and defend it. For my part, though prodigiously fond of tliese valuable speculations, so complimentary to human nature, yet in this instance I am inclined to take the proposition by halves, believing with Horace f that though war may have been originally the favorite amusement and industrious employment of our progenitors, yet, like many other excel- lent habits, so far from being ameliorated, it has been cul- tivated and confirmed by refinement and civilization, and increases in exact proportion as we approach towards that state of perfection which is the ne plus ultra of modern phihjsophy. The first conflict between man and man was the mere exertion of physical force, unaided by auxiliary weapons * Hobbes's Leviathan, Part i. cli. 13. f Quum prorepserunt primis aninialia terris, Miituum ac turpe pecus, glandem atqiie cubilia propter, Unguibna et pugnis, dein fustibns, atqwe ita porro Pugnabant armis, quae post fabricaverat usns. IIoR. Sat. L. i. S. 3. 250 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 251 — his arm was his buckler, his fist was his mace, and a broken head the catastrophe of his encounters. The battle of unassisted strength was succeeded by the more rugged one of stones and clubs, and war assumed a sanguinaiy aspect. As man advanced in refinement, as his faculties expanded, and as his sensibilities became more exquisite, he grew rapidly more ingenious and experienced in the art of raurderin^r his fellow-beinn^s. He invented a thousand devices to defend and to assault : the helmet, the cuirass, and the buckler, the sword, the dart, and the javelin, pre- pared him to elude the wound as well as to launch the blow. Still urging on, in the career of philanthropic in- vention, he enlarges and heightens his powers of defence and injury: the Aries, the Scorpio, the Balista, and the Catapulta give a horror and sublimity to war and mag- nify its glory by increasing its desolation. Still insatiable, though armed with machinery that seemed to reach the limits of destructive invention, and to yield a power of injury commensurate even with the desires of revenge, still deeper researches must be made in the diabolical arcana. AVith furious zeal he dives into the bowels of the earth ; he toils midst poisonous minerals and deadly salts: the sublime discovery of gunpowder blazes upon the world, and finally the dreadful art of fighting l)y proc- lamation seems to endow the demon of war with ubiquity and omnipotence! This, indeed, is grand ! this, indeed, marks the powers of mind, and bespeaks that divine endowment of reason which distinguishes us from the animals, our inferiors. The unenlightened brutes content themselves with the native force which Providence has assigned them. The angry bull butts with his horns, as did his progenitors before him ; the lion, the leopard, and the tiger seek only with their talons and their fangs to gratify their sanguinary fury ; and even the subtle serpent darts the same venom and uses the same wiles as did his sire before the flood. 252 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. Man alone, blessed with the inventive mind, goes on from discovery to discovery, enlarges and multiplies his powers of destruction, arrogates the tremendous weapons of Deity itself, and tasks creation to assist him in murdering his brother-worm ! In proportion as the art of war has increased in im- provement has the art of preserving peace advanced in equal ratio ; and as we have discovered in this age of won- ders and inventions that proclamation is the most formid- able engine in war, so have w^e discovered the no less ingenious mode of maintaining peace by perpetual nego- tiations. A treaty — or, to speak more correctly, a negotiation — therefore, according to the acceptation of experienced states- men learned in these matters, is no longer an attempt to accommodate differences, to ascertain rights, and to estab- lish an equitable exchange of kind offices ; but a contest of skill between two powers w^hich shall overreach and take in the other. It is a cunning endeavor to obtain by peace- ful manoeuvre and the chicanery of cabinets those advan- tages which a nation would otherwise have wrested by force of arms ; in the same manner as a conscientious high- w^ayman reforms and becomes a quiet and praiseworthy citizen, contenting himself with cheating his neighbor out of that property he w^ould formerly have seized with open violence. In fact, the only time when two nations can be said to be in a state of perfect amity is when a negotiation is open and a treaty pending. Then, when there are no stipula- tions entered into, no bonds to restrain the will, no specific limits to awaken the captious jealousy of right implanted in our nature ; when each party has some advantage to hope and expect from the other, — then it is that the two nations are wonderfully gracious and friendly, their minis- ters professing the highest mutual regard, exchanging billets-doux, making fine speeches, and indulging in all HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 253 those little diplomatic flirtatious, coquetries, and fondlings that do so marvellously tickle the good humor of the re- spective nations. Thus it may paradoxically be said that there is never so good an understanding between two na- tions as when there is a little misunderstanding, and that so long as they are on no terms at all they are on the best terms in the world ! I do not by any means pretend to claim the merit of having made the above discovery. It has, in fact, long been secretly acted upon by certain enlightened cabinets, and is, together with divers other notable theories, pri- vately copied out of the common-place book of an illus- trious gentleman who has been member of Congress and enjoyed the unlimited confidence of heads of departments. To this principle may be ascribed the wonderful ingenuity shown of late years in protracting and interrupting nego- tiations. l£ence the cunning measure of appointing as ambassador some political pettifogger skilled in delays, so- phisms, and misapprehensions, and dextrous in the art of baffling argument, or some blundering statesman whose er- rors and misconstructions may be a plea for refusing to ratify his engagements. And hence, too, that most notable expedient, so popular with our government, of sending out a brace of ambassadors, between whom, having each an in- dividual will to consult, character to establish, and interest to promote, you may as well look for unanimity and con- cord as between two lovers with one mistress, two dogs with one bone, or two naked rogues with one pair of breeches. This disagreement, therefore, is continually breeding delays and impediments, in consequence of wliich the negotia- tion goes on swimmingly, inasmuch as there is no prospect of its ever coming to a close. Nothing is lost by these de- lays and obstacles but time ; and in a negotiation, accord- ing to the theory I have exposed, all time lost is in reality so much time gained. With what delightful paradoxes does modern political economy abound! 254 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. Now, all that I have here advanced is so notoriously true that I almost blush to take \ip the time of my readers with treating of matters which must many a time have stared them in the face. But the proposition to which I would most earnestly call their attention is this, that though a negotiation be the most harmonizing of all national trans- actions, yet a treaty of peace is a great political evil and one of the most fruitful sources of war. I have rarely seen an instance of any special contract between individuals that did not produce jealousies, bick- erings, and often downright ruptures between them, nor did I ever know of a treaty between two nations that did not occasion continual misunderstandings. Plow many worthy country neighbors have I known who, after living in peace and good fellowship for years, have been thrown into a state of distrust, cavilling, and animosity by some ill-starred agreement about fences, runs of water, and stray cattle ! And how many well-meaning nations, who would otherwise have remained in the most amicable disposition towards each other, have been brought to swords' points about the infringement or misconstruction of some treaty which in an evil hour they had concluded by way of mak- ing their amity more sure ! Treaties at best are but complied with so long as interest requires their fulfilment ; consequently, they are virtually binding on the weaker party only, or, in plain truth, they are not binding at all. No nation will wantonly go to war with another if it has nothing to gain thereby, and there- fore needs no treaty to restrain it from violence ; and if it have anything to gain, I much question, from what I have ■witnessed of the righteous conduct of nations, whether any treaty could be made so strong that it could not thrust the sword through — nay, I would hold, ten to one, the treaty itself would be the very source to which resort would be had to find a pretext for hostilities. Thus, therefore, I conclude that though it is the best of HISTORY OF NEW YOPwK. 255 all policies for a nation to keep up a constant negotiation with its neighbors, yet it is the summit of folly for it ever to be beguiled into a treaty ; for then comes on non-fulfil- ment and infraction, then remonstrance, then altercation, then retaliation, then recrimination, and finally open war. In a word, negotiation is like courtship — a time of sweet words, gallant speeches, soft looks, and endearing caresses, but the marriage ceremony is the signal for hostilities. If my painstaking reader be not somewhat perplexed by the ratiocination of the foregoing passage, he will perceive at-a glance that the Great Peter in concluding a treaty with his Eastern neighbors was guilty of lamentable error in policy. In fact, to this unlucky agreement may be traced a world of bickerings and heart-burnings between the par- ties about fancied or pretended infringements of treaty stipulations; in all which the Yankees were prone to in- demnify themselves by a " dig into the sides" of the New Netherlands. But, in sooth, these border feuds, albeit they gave great annoyance to the good burghers of Manna-hata, were so pitiful in their nature that a grave historian like myself, who grudges the time spent in anything less than the revolutions of states and fall of em})ires, would deem them unworthy of being inscribed on his page. The reader is therefore to take it for granted — though I scorn to waste in the detail that time which my furrowed brow and trem- bling hand inform me is invaluable — that all the while the Great Peter was occupied in those tremendous and bloody contests which I shall shortly rehearse there was a con- tinued series of little, dirty, snivelling scourings, broils, and maraudings kept up on the eastern frontiers by the moss-troopers of Gmnecticut. But, like that mirror of chivalry, the sage and valorous Don Quixote, I leave these petty contests for some future Sancho Panza of an historian, while I reserve my prowess and my pen for achievements of higher dignity ; for at this moment I hear a direful and portentous note issuing from the bosom of the great council 256 HISTOKY OF NEW YORK. of the league and resounding throughout the regions of the East, menacing the fame and fortunes of Peter Stuyvesant. I call, therefore, upon the reader to leave behind him all the paltry brawls of the Connecticut borders, and to press forward with me to the relief of our favorite hero, who I foresee will be woefully beset by the implacable Yankees in the next chapter. CHAPTER V. HOW PETER STUYVESANT WAS GRIEVOUSLY BELIED BY THE GREAT COUNCIL OF THE LEAGUE; AND HOW HE SENT ANTONY THE TRUMPETER TO TAKE TO THE COUN- CIL A PIECE OF HIS MIND. That the reader may be aware of the peril at this mo- ment menacing Peter Stuyvesant and his capital, I must remind him of the old charge advanced in the council of the league in the time of William the Testy, that the Neder- landters were carrying on a trade " damnable and injurious to the colonists" in furnishing the savages with "guns, powthef, and shott." This, as I then suggested, was a crafty device of the Yankee confederacy to have a snug cause of war in petto, in case any favorable opportunity should present of attempting tlie conquest of the New Netherlands, the great object of Yankee ambition. Accordingly, we now find, when every other ground of complaint had apparently been removed by treaty, this ne- farious charge revived with tenfold virulence, and hurled like a thunderbolt at the very head of Peter Stuyvesant ; happily his head, like that of the great bull of the Wabash, was proof against such missiles. To be explicit, we are told that in the year 1651 the great confederacy of the East accused the immaculate Peter, the soul of honor and heart of steel, of secretly endeavoring by gifts and promises to instigate the Narrohegansett, Mo- haque, and Pequot Indians to surprise and massacre the Yankee settlements. " For," as the grand council ob- served, " the Indians round about for divers hundred miles cercute seeme to have drunk deepe of an intoxicating cupp, 17 257 258 HISTORY OF KEW YOEK. att or from tlie Maiihattoes against the English, whoe have sought their good, botn in bodily and spirituall re- spects." This charge they pretended to support by the evidence of divers Indians, ^vllo v/ere probably moved by that spirit of truth which is said to reside in the bottle, and who swore to the fact as sturdily as though they had been so many Christian troopers. Though descended from a family which suffered much injury from the losel Yankees of those times — my great- grandfather having had a yoke of oxen and his best pacer stolen, and having received a pair of black eyes and a bloody nose in one of these border wars, and my grand- father, when a very little boy tending pigs, having been kidnapped and severely flogged by a long-sided Connecti- cut schoolmaster — yet I should have passed over all these wrongs with forgiveness and oblivion ; I could even have suffered them to have broken Everet Ducking's head ; to have kicked the doughty Jacobus Van Curlet and his ragged regiment out of doors ; to have carried every hog into captivity and depopulated every hen-roost on the face of the earth with perfect impunity ; but this wanton attack upon one of the most gallant and irreproachable heroes of modern times is too much even for me to digest, and has overset with a single puff the i)atience of the historian and the forbearance of the Dutchman. O reader, it was false ! I swear to it thee, it was false ! If thou hast any respect to my word — if the undeviating character for veracity which I have endeavored to main- tain throughout this work has its due weight with thee, thou v/ilt not give thy faith to this tale of slander ; for I pledge my honor and my immortal fame to thee that the gallant Peter Stuyvesant was not only innocent of this foul conspiracy, but would have suffered his right arm or even his wooden leg to consume with slow and everlasting flames rather than attempt to destroy his enemies in any HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 259 other way tlian open, generous warfare. Beshrew those caitiff scouts that conspired to sully his honest name by such an imputation! Peter Stuyvesant, though haply he may never have heard of a knight-errant, had as true a heart of chivalry as ever beat at the Bound Table of King Arthur. In the honest bosom of this heroic Dutchman dwelt the seven noble virtues of knighthood, flourishing among his hardy qualities like wild flowers among rocks. He was, in truth, a hero of chivalry struck off by Nature at a single heat, and though little care may have been taken to refine her workmanship, he stood forth a miracle of her skill. In all his dealings he was headstrong perhaps, but open and aboveboard ; if there was anything in the whole world he most loathed and despised, it was cunning and secret wile ; " Straightforward !" was his motto, and he would at any time rather run his hard head against a stone wall than attempt to get round it. Such was Peter Stuyvesant, and if my admiration of him has on this occasion transported my style beyond the sober gravity which becomes the philosophic recorder of historic events, I must plead as an apology that, though a little gray-headed Dutchman, arrived almost at the downhill of life, I still retain a lingering spark of that fire which kindles in the eye of youth when contemplating the virtues of ancient worthies. Blessed, thrice and nine times blessed, be the good St. Nicholas if I have indeed escaped that apathy which chills the sympathies of age and paralyzes every glow of enthusiasm. The first measure of Peter Stuyvesant on hearing of this slanderous charge would have been worthy of a man who had studied for years in the chivalrous library of Don Quixote. Drawing his sword and laying it across the table to put him in proper tune, he took pen in hand and indited a proud and lofty letter to the council of the league, reproaching them v/ith giving ear to the slanders of heathen 260 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. savages against a Christian, a eoldier, and a cavalier ; declar- ing that whoever charged him with the plot in question lied in his throat ; to prove which he offered to meet the presi- dent of the council or any of his compeers, or their cham- pion, Captain Alicxsander Partridg, that mighty man of Rhodes, in single combat, wherein he trusted to vindicate his honor by the prov/ess of his arm. This missive was entrusted to his trumpeter and squire, Antony Van Corlear, that man of emergencies, with orders to travel night and day, sparing neither whip nor spur, seeing that he carried the vindication of his patron's fame in his saddle-bags. The loyal Antony accomplished his mission with great speed and considerable loss of leather. He delivered his missive with becoming ceremony, accompanying it with a flourish of defiance on his trumpet to the whole council, ending with a significant and nasal twang full in the face of Captain Partridg, who nearly jumped out of his skin in an ecstasy of astonishment. The grand council was composed of men too cool and practical to be put readily in a heat or to indulge in knight-errantry, and above all to run a tilt with such a fiery hero as Peter the Headstrong. They knew the advantage, however, to have always a snug, justifiable cause of war in reserve with a neighbor who had territories worth invad- ing ; so they devised a reply to Peter Stuy vesant calculated to keep up the " raw " which they had established. On receiving this answer, Antony Van Corlear remounted the Flanders mare which he always rode, and trotted mer- rily back to the Manhattoes, solacing himself by the way according to his wont — twanging his trumpet like a very devil, so that the sweet valleys and banks of the Connec- ticut resounded v;ith the warlike melody, bringing all the folks to the windows as he passed through Hartford and Pyquag and Middletown and all the other border towns, ogling and winking at the women, and making aerial wind- HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 261 mills from the end of his nose at their husbands, and stop- ping occasionally in the villages to eat pumpkin pies, dance at country frolics, and bundle with the Yankee lasses, whom he rejoiced exceedingly with his soul-stirring instrument. I CHAPTER VI. HOW PETER STUYVESANT DEMANDED A COURT OF HONOR AND OF THE COURT OF HONOR AWARDED TO HIM. The reply of the graDd council to Peter Stuyvesant was couched in the coolest and most diplomatic language. They assured him that " his confident denials of the barbarous plot alleged against him would weigh little against the tes- timony of divers sober and respectable Indians ;" that " his guilt was proved to their perfect satisfaction," so that they must still require and seek due satisfaction and secvrlti/ ; ending with, " So we rest, sir — Yours in ways of righteous- ness." I forbear to say how the lion-hearted Peter roared and ramped at finding himself more and more entangled in the meshes thus artfully drawn round him by the knowing Yankees. Impatient, however, of suffering so gross an aspersion to rest upon his honest name, he sent a second messenger to the council, reiterating his denial of the treachery imputed to him, and oflfering to submit his con- duct to the scrutiny of a court of honor. His ofl^er was readily accepted, and now he looked forward with con- fidence to an august tribunal to be assembled at the Man- hattoes, formed of high-minded cavaliers, perad venture governors and commanders of the confederate plantations, where the matter might be investigated by his peers in a manner befitting his rank and dignity. "While he was awaiting the arrival of such high function- aries, behold, one sunshiny afternoon there rode into the great gate of the Manhattoes two lean, hungry-looking Yankees, mounted on Narragausett pacers, with saddle-bags 2G2 i HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 263 under their bottoms and green satchels under their arms, who looked marvellously like two pettifogging attorneys beating the hoof from one county court to another in quest of lawsuits; and, in sooth, though they may have passed under different names at the time, I have reason to suspect they were the identical varlets who had negotiated the worthy Dutch commissioners out of the Connecticut River. It was a rule with these indefatigable missionaries never to let the grass grow under their feet. Scarce had they, therefore, alighted at the inn and deposited their saddle- bags than they made their way to the residence of the governor. They found him, according to custom, smoking his afternoon pipe on the " stoop," or bench at the porch of his house, and announced themselves at once as commis- sioners sent by the grand council of the East to investigate the truth of certain charges advanced against him. The good Peter took his pipe from his moutli and gazed at them for a moment in mute astonishment. By way of expediting business they were proceeding on the spot to put some preliminary questions, asking him, peradventure, whether he pleaded guilty or not guilty, considering him something in the light of a culprit at tlie bar, when they w^ere brought to a pause by seeing him lay down his pipe and begin to fumble with his walking-staff. For a moment those present would not have given half a crown for both the crowns of the commissioners; but Peter Stuyvesant repressed his mighty wrath and stayed his hand ; he scanned the varlets from head to foot, satchels and all, with a look of ineffable scorn ; then strode into the house, slammed the door after him, and commanded that they should never again be admitted to his presence. The knowing commissioners winked to each other, and made a certificate on the spot that the governor had refused to answer their interrogatories or to submit to their exami- nation. They then proceeded to rummage about the city for 264 HISTOEY OF NEW YORK. two or three days in quest of what they called evidence, perplexing Indians and old -vVomen with their cross-ques- tioning until they had stuffed their satchels and saddle- bags with all kinds of apocryphal tales, rumors, and calum- nies: with these they mounted their Narragansett pacers and travelled back to the grand council. Neither did the proud-hearted Peter trouble himself to hinder their re- searches nor impede their departure ; he was too mindful of their sacred character as envoys ; but I warrant me had they played the same tricks with William the Testy, he would have had them tucked up by the waistband and treated to an aerial gambol on his patent gallows. i CHAPTER VII. now "DRUM' ecclesiastic" was beaten throughout CONNECTICUT FOR A CRUSADE AGAINST THE NEW NETH- ERLANDS, AND HOW PETER STUYVESANT TOOK MEAS- URES TO FORTIFY HIS CAPITAL. The grand council of the East held a solemn meeting on the return of their envoys. As no advocate appeared in behalf of Peter Stuyvesant, everything went against him. His haughty refusal to submit to the questioning of the commissioners was construed into a consciousness of guilt. The contents of the satchels and saddle-bags were poured forth before the council and appeared a mountain of evi- dence. A pale bilious orator took the floor and declaimed for hours and in belligerent terms. He was one of those furious zealots who blow the bellows of faction until the whole furnace of politics is red-hot with sparks and cin- ders. What was it to him if he should set the house on fire, so that he might boil his pot by the blaze? He was from the borders of Connecticut ; his constituents lived by- marauding their Dutch neighbors, and were the greatest poachers in Christendom, excepting the Scotch border no- bles. His eloquence had its effect, and it was determined to set on foot an expedition against the Xieuw Neder- landts. It was necessary, however, to prepare the public mind for this measure. Accordingly, the arguments of the orator were echoed from the pulpit for several succeeding Sun- days, and a crusade was preached up against Peter Stuy- vesant and his devoted city. This is the first we hear of the " drum ecclesiastic " beat- 265 266 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. ing up for recruits in worldlj^ warfare in our country. It has since been called into frequent use. A cunning poli- tician often lurks under the clerical robe ; things spiritual and things temporal are strangely jumbled together, like drugs on an apothecary's shelf ; and instead of a peaceful sermon the simple seeker after righteousness has often a po- litical pamphlet thrust down his throat, labelled with a pious text from Scripture. And now nothing was talked of but an expedition against the Manhattoes. It pleased the populace, who had a vehe- ment prejudice against the Dutch, considering them a vastly inferior race, who had sought the New AVorld for the lucre of gain, not the liberty of conscience ; who were mere heretics and infidels, inasmuch as they refused to believe in witches and sea-serpents, and had faith in the virtues of horse-shoes nailed to the door; ate pork with- out molasses; held pumpkins in contempt; and were in perpetual breach of the eleventh commandment of all true Y'ankees, " Thou shalt have codfish dinners on Sat- urdays." No sooner did Peter Stuyvesant get wind of the storm that was brewing in the East than he set to work to pre- pare for it. He was not one of those economical rulers who postpone the expense of fortifying until the enemy is at the door. There is nothing, he would say, that keeps off enemies and crows more than the smell of gunpowder. He proceeded, therefore, with all diligence to put the province and its metropolis in a posture of defence. Among the remnants which remained from the days of William the Testy were the militia laws, by which the inhabitants were obliged to turn out twice a year with such military equipments as it pleased God, and were put under the command of tailors and man-milliners, who, though on ordinary occasions they might have been the meekest, most pippin-hearted little men in the world, were very devils at parades, when they had cocked hats on their heads and i HISTOKY OF NEAV YORK. 267 swords by their sides. Under the instructions of these periodical warriors the peaceful burgliers of the Manhat- toes were schooled in iron war, and became so hardy in the process of time that they could march through sun and rain, from one end of the town to the other, without flinch- ing ; and so intrepid and adroit that they could face to the right, wheel to the left, and lire without winking or blinking. Peter Stuyvesant, like all old soldiers who have seen service and smelt gunpowder, had no great respect for militia troops; however, he determined to give them a trial, and accordingly called for a general muster, inspec- tion, and review. But, O Mars and Bellona ! what a turn- ing out was here! Here came old Roelant Cuckaburt, with a short blunderbuss on his shoulder and a long horse- man's sword trailing by his side ; and Barent Dirkson, with something that looked like a copper kettle turned up- side down on his head, and a couple of old horse-pistols in his belt ; and Dirk Volkertson, with a long duck fowling- piece without any ramrod ; and a host more, armed hig- gledly-piggledly — with swords, hatchets, snickersnees, crowbars, broomsticks, and what not ; the officers distin- guished from the rest by having their slouched hats cocked up with pins and surmounted with cock-tail feathers. The sturdy Peter eyed this nondescript host with some such rueful aspect as a man would eye the devil, and de- termined to give his feather-bed soldiers a seasoning. He accordingly put them through their manual exercise over and over again ; trudged them backwards and forwards about the streets of New Amsterdam until their short legs ached and their fat sides sweated again ; and finally en- camped them in the evening on the summit of a hill with- out the city to give them a taste of camp-life, intending the next day to renew the toils and perils of the field. But so it came to pass that in the night there fell a great and heavy rain, and melted away the army, so that in the 268 HISTOKY OF NEW YOEK. morning, when Gaffer Phoebus shed his first beams upon the camp, scare a warrior ren^ained excepting Peter Stuy- vesant and his trumpeter Van Corlear. This awful desolation of a whole army would have ap- palled a commander of less nerve ; but it served to confirm Peter's waut of confidence in the militia system, which he thenceforward used to call, in joke — for he sometimes in- dulged in a joke — William the Testy's broken reed. He now took into his service a goodly number of burly, broad- shouldered, broad-bottomed Dutchmen, whom he paid in good silver and gold, and of whom he boasted that whether they could stand fire or not, they were at least water-proof He fortified the city, too, with pickets and pallisadoes extending across the island from river to river, and, above all, cast up mud-batteries or redoubts on the point of the island where it divided the beautiful bosom of the bay. These latter redoubts in process of time came to be pleas- antly overrun by a carpet of grass and clover and over- shadowed by widespreading elms and sycamores, among the branches of which the birds would build their nests and re- joice the ear with their melodious notes. Under these trees, too, the old burghers would smoke their afternoon pipe, contemplating the golden sun as he sank in the west, an emblem of the tranquil end toward which they were de- clining. Here, too, would the young men and maidens of the town take their evening stroll, watching the silver moon- beams as they trembled along the calm bosom of the bay or lit up the sail of some gliding bark, and peradventure in- terchanging the soft vows of honest affection ; for to evening strolls in this favored spot were traced most of the mar- riages in New Amsterdam. Such was the origin of that renowned promenade. The Battery, which, though ostensibly devoted to the stern purposes of war, has ever been consecrated to the sweet de- lights of peace — the scene of many a gambol in happy HISTOEY OF NEW YOKK. 269 childhood — of many a tender assignation in riper years — of many a soothing walk in declining age — the healthful .] resort of the feeble invalid — the Sunday refreshment of the | dusty tradesman — in fine, the ornament and delight of New ' York and the pride of the lovely island of Manna-hata. i CHAPTER VIII. HOW THE YANKEE CRUSADE AGAINST THE NEW NETHER- LANDS WAS BAFFLED BY THE SUDDEN OUTBREAK OF WITCHCRAFT AMONG THE PEOPLE OF THE EAST. Having thus provided for the temporary security of New Amsterdam and guarded it against any sudden sur- prise, the gallant Peter took a hearty pinch of snuff, and, snapping his fingers, set the great council of Amjihictyons and their champion, the redoubtable Alicxsander Partridg, at defiance. In the mean time, the moss-troopers of Con- necticut, the warriors of New Haven and Hartford and Pyquag, otherwise called Weathersfield, famous for its onions and its witches, and of all the other border towns, were in a prodigious turmoil, furbishing up their rusty weapons, shouting aloud for war, and anticipating easy conquests and glorious rummaging of the fat little Dutch villages. In the midst of these warlike preparations, however, they received the chilling news that the colony of Massa- chusetts refused to back them in this righteous war. It seems that the gallant conduct of Peter Stuyvesant, the generous warmth of his vindication, and the chivalrous spirit of his defiance, though lost upon the grand council of the league, had carried conviction to the general court of Massachusetts, which nobly refused to believe him guilty of the villainous plot laid at his door.* The defection of so important a colony paralyzed the councils of the league ; some such dissension arose among * Hazard's State Papers. 270 HISTORY OF NEW YOKK. 271 its members as prevailed of yore in the camp of the brawl- ing warriors of Greece, and in the end the crusade against the Manhattoes was abandoned. It is said that the moss-troopers of Connecticut were sorely disappointed ; but well for them that their belliger- ent cravings were not gratified, for, by my faith, whatever mio-ht have been the ultimate result of a conflict with all the powers of the East, in the interim the stomachful heroes of Pyquag would have been choked with their own onions, and all the border towns of Connecticut would have had such a scouring from the lion-hearted Peter and his robustious myrmidons that I warrant me they would not have had the stomach to squat on the land or invade the hen-roost of a Nederlandter for a century to come. But it was not merely the refusal of Massachusetts to join in their unholy crusade that confounded the councils of the leao-ue, for about this time broke out in the New Eno;- land provinces the awful plague of witchcraft, which spread like pestilence through the laud. Such a howling abomi- nation could not be suffered to remain long unnoticed ; it soon excited the fiery indignation of those guardians of the commonwealth who whilom had evinced such active benev- olence in the conversion of Quakers and Anabaptists. The grand council of the league publicly set their fiices against the crime, and bloody laws were enacted against all "sol- emn conversing or compacting Avith the divil by the way of conjuracion or the like." * Strict search too was made after witches, who were easily detected by devil's pinches, by being able to weep but three tears, and those out of the left eye, and by having a most suspicious predilection for black cats and broomsticks ! What is particularly worthy of admiration is, that this terrible art, Avhich has baffled the studies and researches of philosophers, astrologers, theurgists, and other sages, was chiefly confined to the most ignorant, decrepit, and ugly old women in the com- * New Plymouth record. i 272 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. munity, with scarce more brains than the broomsticks they rode upon. When once an alarm is sounded the public, who dearly love to be in a panic, are always ready to keep it up. Raise but the cry of yellow fever, and immediately every head- ache, indigestion, and overflowing of the bile is pronounced the terrible epidemic ; cry out mad dog, and every unlucky cur in the street is in jeopardy ; so in the present instance, whoever was troubled with a colic or lumbago was sure to be bewitched, and woe to any unlucky old woman living in the neighborhood ! It is incredible the number of offences that vrere detected, " for every one of which," says the reverend Cotton Mather, in that excellent work, the History of New England, " we have such a sufficient evidence that no reasonable man in this whole country ever did question them ; and it will he unreasonable to do it in any other.'* * Indeed, that authentic and judicious historian, John Josse- lyn, Gent., furnishes us with unquestionable facts on this subject. " There are none," observes he, " that beg in this country, but there be witches too many — bottle-bellied witches and others, that produce many strange appari- tions, if you will believe report of a shallop at sea manned with women — and of a ship and great red horse standing by the main-mast ; the ship being in a small cove to the eastward vanished of a sudden," etc. The number of delinquents, however, and their magical devices, were not more remarkable than their diabolical obstinacy. Though exhorted in the most solemn, persua- sive, and affectionate manner to confess themselves guilty and be burnt for the good of religion and the entertain- ment of the public, yet did they most pertinaciously per- sist in asserting their innocence. Such incredible obstinacy was in itself deserving of immediate punishment, and was sufficient proof, if proof were necessary, that they were in * Mather's Hist. New Eng. B. 6. ch. 7. HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 273 league with the devil, who is perverseness itself. But their judges were just and merciful, and were determined to pun- ish none that were not convicted on the best of testimony ; not that they needed any evidence to satisfy their own minds, for, like true and experienced judges, their minds v;ere per- fectly made up, and they were thoroughly satisfied of the guilt of the prisoners before they proceeded to try them ; but still, something v/as necessary to convince the commu- nity at large — to quiet those prying quidnuncs who should come after them ; in short, the world must be satisfied. Oh the world ! the world ! — all the world knows the world of trouble the world is eternally occasioning ! The worthy judges, therefore, were driven to the necessity of sifting, detecting, and making evident as noonday matters which were at the commencement all clearly understood and firm- ly decided upon in their own pericranium.s ; so that it may truly be said that the witches were burnt to gratify the populace of the day, but were tried for the satisfaction of the whole world that should come after them ! Finding therefore, that neither exhortation, sound rea- son, nor friendly entreaty had any avail on tliese hardened offenders, they resorted to the more urgent arguments of torture; and having thus absolutely wrung the truth from their stubborn lips, they condemned them to undergo the roasting due unto the heinous crimes they had confessed. Some even carried their perverseness so far as to expire under the torture, protesting their innocence to the last ; but these were looked upon as thoroughly and absolutely possessed by the devil, and the pious bystanders only la- mented that they had not lived a little longer to have per- ished in the flames. In the city of Ephesus we are told that the plague was expelled by stoning a ragged old beggar to death whom Apollonius pointed out as being the evil spirit that caused it, and who actually showed himself to be a demon by changing into a shagged dog. In like manner and by 18 274 HISTOEY OF NEW YORK. measures equally sagacious a salutary check was given to this growing evil. The witches were all burnt, banished, or panic-struck, and in a little while there was not an ugly old woman to be found throughout New England ; which is doubtless one reason why all the young women there are so handsome. Those honest folk who had suffered from their incantations gradually recovered — excepting such as had been afflicted with twitches and aches, which, however, assumed the less alarming aspects of rheumatisms, sciatics, and lumbagoes — and the good people of New England, abandoning the study of the occult sciences, turned their attention to the more profitable hocus-pocus of trade, and soon became expert in the legerdemain art of turning a pen- ny. Still, however, a tinge of the old leaven is discernible even unto this day in their characters : witches occasionally start up among them in different disguises, as physicians, civilians, and divines. The people at large show a keen- ness, a cleverness, and a profundity of wisdom that savors strongly of witchcraft ; and it has been remarked that whenever any stones fall from the moon the greater part of them is sure to tumble into New England. i CHAPTER IX. WHICH RECORDS THE RISE AND REXOWN OF A MILITARY COMMANDER, SHOWING THAT A MAN, LIKE A BLADDER, MAY BE PUFFED UP TO GREATNESS BY MERE WIND ; TO- GETHER WITH THE CATASTROPHE OF A VETERAN AND HIS QUEUE. When treating of these tempestuous times the unknown writer of the Stuyvesant manuscript breaks out into an apostrophe in praise of the good St. Nichohis, to whose protecting care he ascribes the dissensions which broke out in the council of the league and the direful witchcraft which filled all Yankee land as with Egyptian darkness. A portentous gloom, says he, hung lowering over the fair valleys of the East : the pleasant banks of the Connecticut no longer echoed to the sounds of rustic gayety ; grisly phantoms glided about each wild brook and silent glen ; fearful apparitions were seen in the air; strange voices were heard in solitary places ; and the border towns were so occupied in detecting and punisliing losel witches that, for a time, all talk of war was suspended, and New Amster- dam and its inhabitants seemed to be totally forgotten. I must not conceal the fact that at one time there was some danger of this plague of w^itchcraft extending into the New Netherlands, and certain witches mounted on broomsticks are said to have been seen whisking in the air over some of the Dutch villages near the borders ; but the worthy Nederlandters took the precaution to nail horseshoes to their doors, which it is well known are effectual barriers against all diabolical vermin of the kind. Many of those horseshoes may be seen at this very day on ancient man- 275 276 HISTOEY OF NEW YORK. sions and barns remaining fronithe days of the patriarchs; nay, the custom is still kept up among some of our legitimate Dutch yeomanry, who inherit from their forefathers a desire to keep witches and Yankees out of the country. And now the great Peter, having no immediate hostility to apprehend from the East, turned his face with charac- teristic vigilance to his southern frontiers. The attentive reader will recollect that certain freebooting Swedes had become very troublesome in this quarter in the latter part of the reign of William the Testy, setting at naught the proclamations of that veritable potentate, and putting his admiral, the intrepid Jan Jansen Alpendam, to a perfect nonplus. To check the incursions of these Swedes, Peter Stuyvesant now ordered a force to that frontier, giving the command of it to General Jacobus Van PofTenburgh, an officer who had risen to great importance during the reign of Wilhelmus Kieft. He had, if histories speak true, been second in command to the doughty Van Curlet when he and his warriors were inhumanly kicked out of Fort Goed Hoop by the Yankees. In that memorable affair Van Pof- fenburjrh is said to have received more kicks in a certain honorable part than any of his comrades, in consequence of which, on the resignation of Van Curlet, he had been promoted to his place, being considered a hero who had seen service and suffered in his country's cause. It is tropically observed by honest old Socrates that heaven infuses into some men at their birth a portion of intellectual gold; into others of intellectual silver; while others are intellectually furnished with iron and brass. Of the last class was General Van Poffenburgh, and it would seem as if Dame Nature, who will sometimes be partial, had given him brass enough for a dozen ordinary braziers. All this he had contrived to pass off upon AVilliam the Testy for genuine gold, and the little governor would sit for hours and listen to his gunpowder stories of exploits, ■which left those of Tirante the White, Don Belianis of HISTOEY OF NEW YORK. 277 Greece, or St. George and the Dragon quite in the back- ground. Having been promoted by William Kicft to the command of his whole disposable forces, he gave importance to his station by the grandiloquence of his bulletins, always styling himself commander-in-chief of the armies of the New Netherlands, though, in sober truth, these armies were nothing more than a handful of hen-stealing, bottle-bruis- ing ragamuffins. In person he was not very tall, but exceedingly round ; neither did his bulk proceed from his being fat, bat windy, being blown up by a prodigious conviction of his own im- portance until he resembled one of those bags of wind given by Eolus, in an incredible fit of generosity, to that vagabond warrior, Ulysses. His windy endowments had long excited the admiration of Antony Van Corlear, who is said to have hinted more than once to William the Testy that in making Van Poffenburgh a general he had spoiled an admirable trumpeter. As it is the practice in ancient story to give the reader a description of the arms and equipments of every noted war- rior, I will bestow a word upon the dress of this redoubt- able commander. It comported with his character, being so crossed and slashed and embroidered with lace and tinsel that he seemed to have as much brass without as Nature had stored away within. He was swathed too in a crimson sash, of the size and texture of a fishing-net, doubtless to keep his swelling heart from bursting through his ribs. His face glowed with furnace heat from between a huge pair of well -powdered Avhiskers, and his valorous soul seemed ready to bounce out of a pair of large, glassy, blink- ing eyes, projecting like those of a lobster. I swear to thee, worthy reader, if history and tradition belie not this warrior, I would give all the money in my pocket to have seen him accoutred cap-£l-pie — booted to the middle, sashed to the chin, collared to the ears, whiskered to the teeth, crowned with an overshadowing cocked hat, 278 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. and girded with a leathern bMt ten inches broad, from which trailed a falchion of a length that I dare not men- tion. Thus equipped, he strutted about, as bitter-looking a man of war as the far-famed More of Morehall when he sallied forth to slay the Dragon of Wantley. For what says the ballad? " Had you but seen him in this dress. How fierce he looked and how big. You would have thought hiui for to be Some Egyptian porcupig. He frighted all — cats, dogs and all, Each cow, each horse, and each hog; For fear they did flee, for they took him to be Some strange outlandish hedgehog." * I must confess this general, with all his outward valor and ventosity, was not exactly an officer to Peter Stuy- vesant's taste, but he stood foremost in the army list of William the Testy, and it is probable the good Peter, who was conscientious in his dealings with all men, and had his military notions of precedence, thought it but fair to give him a chance of proving his right to his dignities. To this copper captain, therefore, was confided the com- mand of the troops destined to protect the southern fron- tier ; and scarce had he departed for his station than bul- letins began to arrive from him describing his undaunted march through savage deserts, over insurmountable moun- tains, across impassable rivers, and through impenetrable forests, conquering vast tracts of uninhabited country, and encountering more perils than did Xenophon in his far- famed retreat with his ten thousand Grecians. Peter Stuyvesant read all these grandiloquent despatches with a dubious screwing of the mouth and shaking of the head ; but Antony Van Corlear repeated these contents in the streets and market-places with an appropriate flourish * Ballad of Dragon of Wantley. HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 279 upon his trumpet, and the windy victories of the general resounded through the streets of New Amsterdam. On arriving at the southern frontier, Van Poffenburgh proceeded to erect a fortress or stronghohi on the South or Delaware River. At first he bethought him to call it Fort Stuyvesant, in honor of the governor, a lowly kind of hom- age prevalent in our country among speculators, military commanders, and office-seekers of all kinds, by which our maps come to be studded with the names of political patrons and temporary great men ; in the present instance Van Poffenburgh carried his homage to the most lowly degree, giving his fortress the name of Fort Casimir, in honor, it is said, of a favorite pair of brimstone trunk breeches of His Excellency. As this fort will be found to give rise to important events, it may be worth while to notice that it was afterwards called Nieuw Amstel, and was the germ of the present flourishing town of New Castle, or, more properly speaking, No Castle, there being nothing of the kind on the premises. His fortress being finished, it would have done any man's heart good to behold the swelling dignity with which the general would stride in and out a dozen times a day, sur- veying it in front and in rear, on this side and on that ; how he would strut backwards and forwards, in full regi- mentals, on the top of the ramparts, like a vainglorious cock-pigeon swelling and vaporing on the top of a dove-cote. There is a kind of valorous spleen which, like wind, is apt to grow unruly in the stomachs of newly-made soldiers, compelling them to box-lobby brawls and broken-headed quarrels unless there can be found some more harmless way to give it vent. It is recorded in the delectable romance of Pierce Forest that a young knight, being dubbed by King Alexander, did incontinently gallop into an adjacent forest and belabor the trees with such might and main that he not merely eased off" the sudden effervescence of his valor, but convinced the whole court that he was the most potent 280 HISTORY OF NEW YOEK. and courageous cavalier on the face of the earth. In like manner the commander of Fdrt Casimir, when he found his martial spirit waxing too hot within him, would sally- forth into the fields and lay about him most lustily with his sabre, decapitating cabbages by platoons, hewing down lofty- sunflowers, which he termed gigantic Swedes, and if, per- chance, he espied a colony of big-bellied pumpkins quietly- basking in the sun, "Ah ! caitiff Yankees !" would he roar, "have I caught ye at last?" So saying, with one sweep of his sword he would cleave the unhappy vegetables from their chins to their waistbands ; by which warlike havoc, his choler being in some sort allayed, he would return into the fortress wath the full conviction that he w'as a very- miracle of military prov/ess. He was a disciplinarian, too, of the first order. Woe to any unlucky soldier who did not hold up his head and turn out his toes when on parade, or who did not salute the general in proper style as he passed ! Having one day, in his Bible researches, encountered the history of Absalom and his melancholy end, the general bethought him that in a country abounding with forests his soldiers were in constant risk of a like catastrophe ; he therefore, in an evil hour, issued orders for cropping the hair of both officers and men throughout the garrison. Now, so it happened that among his officers was a sturdy- veteran named Keldermeester, who had cherished, through a long life, a mop of hair not a little resembling the shag of a Kewfoundland dog, terminating in a queue like the handle of a frying-pan, and queued so tightly to his head that his eyes and mouth generally stood ajar and his eye- brows were drawn up to the top of his forehead. It may naturally be supposed that the possessor of so goodly an appendage would resist with abhorrence an order condemn- ing it to the shears. On hearing the general orders he dis- charged a tempest of veteran, soldier-like oaths and dun- der and blixums, swore he would break any man's head I HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 281 who attempted to meddle with his tail, quelled it stiffer than ever, and whisked it about the garrison as fiercely as the tail of a crocodile. The eelskin queue of old Keldermeester became instantly an affair of the utmost importance. The commander-in- chief was too enlightened an officer not to perceive that the discipline of the garrison, the subordination and good order of the armies of the Xieuw !N'ederlandts, the consequent safety of the whole province, and ultimately the dignity and prosperity of their High Mightinesses the Lords States General, imperiously demanded the docking of that stub- born queue. He decreed, therefore, that old Keldermees- ter should be publicly shorn of his glories in presence of the whole garrison : the old man as resolutely stood on the defensive, whereupon he was arrested and tried by a court- martial for mutiny, desertion, and all the other list of of- fences noticed in the articles of v;ar, ending with a " vide- licet, in wearing an eelskin queue, three feet long, contrary to orders." Then came on arraignments, and trials, and plead- ings, and the whole garrison was in a ferment about this un- fortunate queue. As it is well known that the commander of a frontier post has the power of acting pretty much after his own will, there is little doubt but that the veteran would have been hanged or shot at least, had he not luckily fallen ill of a fever through mere chagrin and mor- tification, and deserted from all earthly command, with his beloved looks unviolated. His obstinacy remained un- shaken to the very last moment, when he directed that he should be carried to his grave with his eelskin queue sticking out of a hole in his coffin. This magnanimous afiair obtained the general great credit as a disciplinarian ; but it is hinted that he was ever afterwards subject to bad dreams and fearful visitations in the night, when the grizzly spectrum of old Keldermeester would stand sentinel by his bed.side, erect as a pump, his enormous queue strutting out like the handle. BOOK VI. CONTAINING THE SECOND PART OF THE EEIGN OF PETER THE HEADSTRONG, AND HIS GALLANT ACHIEVEMENTS ON THE DELAWARE. CHAPTER I. IN WHICH IS EXHIBITED A WARLIKE PORTRAIT OF THE GREAT PETER — OF THE WINDY CONTEST OF GENERAL VAN POFFENBURGH AND GENERAL PRINTZ, AND OF THE MOSQUITO WAR ON THE DELAWARE. Hitherto, most venerable and courteous reader, have I shown thee the administration of the valorous Stuyvesant under the mild moonshine of peace, or rather the grim tranquillity of awful expectation ; but now the war-drum rumbles from afar, the brazen trumpet brays its thrilling note, and the rude clash of hostile arms speaks fearful prophecies of coming troubles. The gallant warrior starts from soft repose, from golden visions, and voluptuous ease, where in the dulcet, " piping time of peace" he sought sweet solace after all his toils. No more, in beauty's siren lap reclined, he weaves fair garlands for his lady's brows ; no more entv/ines with flowers his shining sword, nor through the livelong lazy summer's day chants forth his lovesick soul in madrigals. To manhood roused, he spurns the amorous flute ; doffs from his brawny back the robe of peace and clothes his pampered limbs in panoply of steel. O'er his dark brow, where late the myrtle waved, where wanton roses breathed enervate love, he rears the beaming casque and nodding plume ; grasps the bright shield and 282 i HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 283 shakes the ponderous lance, or mounts with eager pride his fiery steed and burns for deeds of glorious chivalry! But soft, worthy reader! I would not have you imagine that any preux chevalier, thus hideously begirt with iron, existed in the city of New Amsterdam. This is but a lofty and gigantic mode in which we heroic writers always talk of war, thereby to give it a noble and imposing aspect, equipping our warriors with bucklers, helms, and lances, and such-like outlandish and obsolete weapons, the like of which perchance they had never seen or heard of; in the same manner that a cunning statuary arrays a modern general or an admiral in the accoutrements of a Caisar or an Alexander. The simple truth, then, of all this oratori- cal flourish is this, that the valiant Peter Stuyvesant all of a sudden found it necessary to scour his rusty blade, which too long had rusted in its scabbard, and prepare himself to undergo those hardy toils of war in which his mighty soul so much delighted. Methinks I at this moment behold him in my imagina- tion — or rather, I behold his goodly portrait, which still hangs up in the family mansion of the Stuyvesants — ar- rayed in all the terrors of a true Dutch general. His regimental coat of German blue, gorgeously decorated with a goodly show of large brass buttons, reaching from his waistband to his chin : the voluminous skirts turned up at the corners and separating gallantly behind, so as to dis- play the seat of a sumptuous pair of brimstone-colored trunk-breeches — a graceful style still prevalent among the warriors of our day, and which is in conformity to the cus- tom of ancient heroes, who scorned to defend themselves in rear ; his face rendered exceeding terrible and warlike by a pair of black mustachios; his hair strutting out on each side in stiffly-pomatumed ear-locks, and descending in a rat- tail queue below his waist ; a shining stock of black leather supporting his chin, and a little but fierce cocked hat stuck with a gallant and fiery air over his left eye. Such was the 284 HISTOKY OF NEW YORK. chivalric port of Peter the Headstrong ; and wlien he made a sudden halt, planted himself firmly on his solid supporter, with his wooden leg inlaid with silver a little in advance in order to strengthen his position, his right hand grasping a gold-headed cane, his left resting upon the pommel of his sword, his head dressing spiritedly to the right, with a most appalling and hard-favored frown upon his brow, — he pre- sented altogether one of the most commanding, bitter-look- ing, and soldier-like figures that ever strutted upon canvas. Proceed we now to inquire the cause of this warlike preparation. In the preceding chapter we have spoken of the founding of Fort Casimir, and of the merciless warfare waged by its commander upon cabbages, sunflowers, and pumpkins for want of better occasion to flesh his sword ! Now, it came to pass that higher up the Delaware, at his stronghold of Tinnekonk, resided one Jan Printz, who styled himself gov- ernor of Kew Sweden. If history belie not this redoubt- able Swede, he was a rival worthy of the windy and inflated commander of Fort Casimir, for Master David Pieterzen de Vrie, in his excellent book of voyages, describes him as " weighing upwards of four hundred pounds," a huge feeder and bowser in proportion, taking three potations pottle-deep at every meal. He had a garrison after his own heart at Tinnekonk, guzzling, deep-drinking swashbucklers, who made the wild woods ring with their carousals. No sooner did this robustious commander hear of the erection of Fort Casimir than he sent a message to Van PofFenburgh, warning him off' the laud as being within the bounds of his jurisdiction. To this General Van Poffenburgh replied that the land belonged to their High Mightinesses, having been regularly purchased of the natives as discoverers from the Manhat- toes, as witness the breeches of their land measurcrer. Ten Broeck. To this the governor rejoined that the land had pre- i HISTOEY OF NEW YOKK. 285 vioiisly been sold by the Indians to the Swedes, and conse- quently was under the petticoat government of her Swedish majesty, Christina; and woe be to any mortal that wore breeches who should dare to meddle even with the hem of her sacred garment. I forbear to dilate upon the war of words which was kept up for some time by these windy commanders : Van Poffenburgh, however, had served under William the Testy, and was a veteran in this kind of warfare. Gov- ernor Printz, fijiding he ^Yas not to be dislodged by these long shots, now determined upon coming to closer quarters. Accordingly, he descended the river in great force and fume, and erected a rival fortress just one Swedish mile below Fort Casimir, to which he gave the name of Hel- senburg. And now commenced a tremendous rivalry between these two doughty commanders, striving to outstrut and outswell each other like a couple of belligerent turkeycocks. There was a contest who should run up the tallest flagstaif and display the broadest flag ; all day long there was a furious rolling of drums and twanging of trumpets on either for- tress, and whichever had the wind in its favor would keep up a continual firing of cannon to taunt its antagonist with the smell of gunpowder. On all these points of windy warfare the antagonists were well matched ; but so it happened that the Swedish fortress being lowxr down the river, all the Dutch vessels bound to Fort Casimir with supplies had to pass it. Governor Printz at once took advantage of this circumstance, and compelled them to lovv^er their flags as they passed under the guns of his battery. This W' as a deadly wound to the Dutch pride of General Van Poffenburgh, and sorely would he swell when from the ramparts of Fort Casimir he beheld the flag of their High Mightinesses struck to the rival fortress. To heiohten his vexation, Governor Printz, who, as has been shown, was 286 HISTOEY OF NEW YORK. a huge trencherman, took tl^e liberty of having the first rummage of every Dutch merchant-ship, and securing to himself and his guzzling garrison all the little round Dutch cheeses, all the Dutch herrings, the gingerbread, the sweet- meats, the curious stone jugs of gin, and all the other Dutch luxuries on their way for the solace of Fort Casimir. It is possible he may have paid to the Dutch skippers the full value of their commodities, but what consolation was this to Jacobus Van Poffenburgh and his garrison, who thus found their favorite supplies cut off an'd diverted into the larders of the hostile camp ? For some time this ^ar of the cupboard was carried on to the great festivity and jollification of the Swedes, while the warriors of Fort Casimir found their hearts, or rather their stomachs, daily failing them. At length the summer heats and summer showers set in, and now, lo and behold, a great mira- cle was wrought for the relief of the Nederlandtcrs not a little resembling one of the plagues of Egypt; for it came to pass that a great cloud of mosquitoes arose out of the marshy borders of the river and settled upon the fortress of Helsenburg, being doubtless attracted by the scent of the fresh blood of these Swedish gormandizers. Nay, it is said that the body of Jan Printz alone, ^vhich was as big and as full of blood as that of a prize ox, was sufficient to attract the mosquitoes from every part of the country. For some time the garrison endeavored to hold out, but it was all in vain ; the mosquitoes penetrated into every chink and crevice and gave them no rest day nor night ; and as to Governor Jan Printz, he moved about as in a cloud, -with mosquito music in his ears and mosquito stings to the very end of his nose. Finally the garrison was fairly driven out of the fortress and obliged to retreat to Tinnekonk ; nay, it is said that the mosquitoes followed Jan Printz even thither, and absolutely drove him out of the country ; certain it is, he embarked for Sweden shortly HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 287 afterwards, and Jan Claudius Risingh was sent to govern New Sweden in his stead. Such was the famous mosquito war on the Delaware, of which General Van Poffenburgh would fain have been the hero; but the devout people of the Nieuw Nederlandts always ascribed the discomfiture of the Swedes to the mi- raculous intervention of St. Nicholas. As to the fortress of Helsenburg, it fell to ruin, but the story of its strange destruction was perpetuated by the Swedisli name of Myg- gen-borg — that is to say, Mosquito Castle.* * Acrelius's History N. Sweden. For some notice of this miracu- lous discomfiture of the Swedes, see N. Y. Hist. Col., new series, vol. 1, p. 412. I CHAPTER 11. OF JAN RISINGH, inS GIANTLY PERSON AND CRAFTY DEEDS ; AND OF THE CATASTROPHE AT FORT CASIMIR. Jan Claudius Risingh, who succeeded to the command of New Sweden, looms largely in ancient records as a gigan- tic Swede, who, had he not been rather knock-kneed and splay-footed, might have served for the model of a Samson or a Hercules. He was no less rapacious than mighty, and withal as crafty as he was rapacious, so that there is very little doubt that had he lived some four or five centuries since he would have figured as one of those wicked giants who took a cruel pleasure in pocketing beautiful princesses and distressed damsels when gadding about the world, and locking them up in enchanted castles without a toilet, a change of linen, or any other convenience ; in consequence of which enormities they fell under the high displeasure of chivalry, and all true, loyal, and gallant knights were instructed to attack and slay outright any miscreant they might happen to find above six feet high ; which is doubtless one reason why the race of large men is nearly extinct, and the generations of latter ages are so exceed- ingly small. Governor Risingh, notwithstanding his giantly condition, was, as I have hinted, a man of craft. He was not a man to ruffle the vanity of General Van Poffenburgh or to rub his self-conceit against the grain. On the contrary, as he sailed up the Delaware he paused before Fort Casimir, dis- played his flag, and fired a royal salute before dropping anchor. The salute would doubtless have been returned had not the guns been dismounted ; as it was, a veteran 288 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 289 sentinel who had been napping at his post, and had suf- fered his match to go out, returned the compliment by dis- charging his musket with the spark of a pipe borrowed from a comrade. Governor Risingh accepted this as a courteous reply, and treated the fortress to a second salute, well knowing its commander was apt to be marvellously delighted v.Ith these little ceremonials, considering them so many acts of homage j)aid to his greatness. He then prepared to land with a military retinue of thirty men, a prodigious pageant in the wilderness. And now took place a terrible rummage and racket in Fort Casimir to receive such a visitor in proper style, and to make an imposing appearance. The main guard was turned out as soon as possible, equipped to the best advan- tage in the fevv suits of regimentals which had to do duty by turns with the whole garrison. One tall, lank fellow appeared in a little man's coat, with the buttons between his shoulders, the skirts scarce covei'ing his bottom, his hands hanging like spades out of the sleeves, and the coat linked in front by worsted loops made out of a pair of red garters. Another had a cocked hat stuck on the back of his head and decorated with a bunch of cocks'-tails ; a third had a pair of rusty gaiters hanging about his heels ; while a fourth, a little duck-legged fellow, was equipped in a pair of the general's cast-off breeches, which he held up with one hand while he grasped his firelock wdth the other. The rest were accoutred in similar style, excepting three ragamufhns without shirts and with but a pair and a half of breeches between them ; wherefore they were sent to the black hole to keep them out of sight, that they might not disgrace the fortress. Kis men being thus gallantly arrayed — those who lacked muskets shouldering spades and pickaxes, and every man being ordered to tuck in his shirt-tail and pull up his brogues — General Van PofFenburgh first took a sturdy draught of foaming ale, which, like the magnanimous More 19 290 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. of Morehall,* was his invariable practice on all great occa- sions ; this done, he put himself at their head and issued forth from his castle, like a mighty giant just refreshed with wine. But when the two heroes met, then began a scene of warlike parade that beggars all description. The shrewd Risingh, who had grown gray much before his time, in consequence of his craftiness, saw at one glance the rul- ing passion of the great Van Poffenburgh, and humored him in all his valorous fantasies. Their detachments were accordingly drawn up in front of each other ; they carried arms and they presented arms; they gave the standing salute and the passing salute ; they rolled their drums, they flourished their fifes, and they waved their colors ; they faced to the left and they faced to the right and they faced to the right about ; they wheeled forward, and they wheeled backward, and they wheeled into echelon; they marched and they countermarched, by grand divisions, by single divisions, and by subdivisions, by pla- toons, by sections, and by files ; in quick time, in slov/ time, and in no time at all ; for, having gone through all the evolutions of two great armies, including the eighteen manoeuvres of Dundas, having exhausted all that they could recollect or imagine of military tactics, including sundry strange and irregular evolutions the like of which were never seen before nor since excepting among certain of our newly-raised militia, the two commanders and their respective troops came at length to a dead halt, completely exhausted by the toils of war. Never did two valiant train-band captains or two buskined theatric heroes in the renowned tragedies of Pizarro, Tom Thumb, or any other heroical and fighting tragedy marshal their gallows-looking, * " as soon as he rose, To make bim strong and mighty, He drank by tbe tale six pots of ale. And a quart of aqua vitae." Dragon of Wantley. HISTOKY OF NEW YOEK. 291 duck-legged, heavy-heeled myrmidons with more glory and self-admiration. These military compliments being finished, General Van Poffenburgh escorted his illustrious visitor, with great cere- mony, into the fort, attended him throughout the fortifica- tions, showed him the horn-works, crown-works, half-moons, and various other outworks, or rather the places where they ought to be erected, and where they might be erected if he pleased, plainly demonstrating that it was a place of " great capability," and though at present but a little redoubt, yet that it was evidently a formidable fortress in embryo. This survey over, he next had the whole garrison put under arms, exercised, and reviewed, and concluded by ordering the three bridewell birds to be hauled out of the black hole, brought up to the halberds, and soundly flogged, for the amusement of his visitor and to convince him that he was a great disciplinarian. The cunning Kisingh, while he pretended to be struck dumb outright with the puissance of the great Van Poffen- burgh, took silent note of the incompetency of his garrison, of which he gave a wink to his trusty followers, who tipped each other the wink and laughed most obstreperously — in their sleeves. The inspection, review, and flogging being concluded, the party adjourned to the table; for among his other great qualities the general was remarkably addicted to huge carousals, and in one afternoon's campaign would leave more dead men on the field than he ever did in the whole course of his military career. Many bulletins of these bloodless victories do still remain on record, and the whole province was once thrown in amaze by the return of one of his campaigns, wherein it was stated that though, like Captain Bobadil, he had only twenty men to back him, yet in the short space of six months he had conquered and utterly annihilated sixty oxen, ninety hogs, one hun- dred sheep, ten thousand cabbages, one thousand bushels 292 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. of potatoes, one hundrecJ and fifty kilderkins of small beer, two thousand seven hundred and thirty-five pipes, seventy-eight pounds of sugar-plums, and forty bars of iron, besides sundry small meats, game, poultry, and gar- den-stuff — an achievement unparalleled since the days of Pantagruel and his all-devouring army, and which showed, that it was only necessary to let Van Poffenburgh and his garrison loose in an enemy's country, and in a little while they would breed a famine and starve all the inhabitants. No sooner, therefore, had the general received intima- tion of the visit of Governor Risingh than he ordered a great dinner to be prepared, and privately sent out a de- tachment of his most experienced veterans to rob all the hen-roosts in the neighborhood and lay the pig-sties under contribution — a service which they discharged with such zeal and prom.ptitude that the garrison table groaned under the weight of their spoils. I wish, with all my heart, my readers could see the val- iant Van Poffenburgh as he presided at the head of the banquet ; it was a sight worth beholding. There he sat, in his greatest glory, surrounded by his soldiers, like that fa- mous wine-bibber, Alexander, whose thirsty virtues he did most ably imitate — telling astounding stories of his hair- breadth adventures and heroic exploits ; at which, though all his auditors knew them to be incontinent lies and out- rageous gasconadoes, yet did they cast up their eyes in admiration and utter many interjections of astonishment. Kor could the general pronounce anything that bore the remotest resemblance to a joke but the stout Eisingh would strike his brawny fist upon the table till every glass rattled again, throw himself back in the chair, utter gigantic peals of laughter, and swear most horribly it was the best joke he ever heard in his life. Thus all was rout and revelry and hideous carousal within Fort Casimir, and so lustily did Van Poffenburgh ply the bottle that in less than four short hours he made himself and his whole garrison, v.ho HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 293 all sedulously emulated the deeds of their chieftain, dead drunk with singing songs, quaffing bumpers, and drinking patriotic toasts, none of which but was as long as a Welsh pedigree or a plea in chancery. No sooner did things come to this pass than Kisingh and his Swedes, who had cunningly kept themselves sober, rose on their entertainers, tied them neck and heels, and took formal possession of the fort and all its dependencies in the name of Queen Christina of Sweden, administering at the same time an oath of allegiance to all the Dutch soldiers who could be made sober enough to swallow it. Kisingh then put the fortifications in order, appointed his discreet and vigilant friend Suen Schiite, otherwise called Skytte, a tall, wind-dried, water-drinking Swede, to the command, and departed, bearing with him this truly amiable garrison and its puissant commander ; who, when brought to him- self by a sound drubbing, bore no little resemblance to a " deboshed fish " or bloated sea-monster caught upon dry land. The transportation of the garrison w^as done to prevent the transmission of intelligence to New Amsterdam ; for, much as the cunning Risingh exulted in his stratagem, yet did he dread the vengeance of the sturdy Peter Stuyvesant, w^hose name spread as much terror in the neighborhood as did whilom that of the unconquerable Scauderbeg among his scurvy enemies the Turks. CHAPTER HI. SHOWING HOW PROFOUND SECRETS ARE OFTEN BROUGHT TO light; WITH THE TROCEEDINGS OF PETER THE HEADSTRONG WHEN HE HEARD OF THE MISFORTUNES OF GENERAL VAN POFFENBURGH. Whoever first described common Fam.e or Eumor as belonging to the sager sex was a very owl for shrevv'duess. She has, in truth, certain feminine qualities to an astonish- ing degree, particularly that benevolent anxiety to take care of the affairs of others which keeps her continually hunting after secrets and gadding about proclaiming them. AVhatever is done openly and in the face of the world she takes but transient notice of; but whenever a transaction is done in a corner and attempted to be shrouded in mys- tery, then her goddess-ship is at her wits' end to find it cut, and takes a most mischievous and lady-like pleasure in publishing it to the world. It is this truly feminine propensity which induces her continually to be prying into the cabinets of princes, listen- ing at the keyholes of senate-chambers, and peering through chinks and crannies when our worthy Congress are sitting with closed doors deliberating between a dozen excellent modes of ruining the nation. It is this which makes her so baneful to all wary statesmen and intriguing command- ers — such a stumbling-block to private negotiations and secret expeditions, betraying them by means and instru- ments which never would have been thought of by any but a female head. Thus it was in the case of the affair of Fort Casimir. No doubt the cunning Risingh imagined that by securing 294 HISTORY OF NEW YOEK. 295 the garrison he should for a long time prevent the history of its fate from reaching the ears of the gallant Stuy vesant ; but his exploit was blown to the world when he least ex- pected, and by one of the last beings he would ever have suspected of enlistiug as trumpeter to the wide-mouthed deity. This was one Dirk Schuiler (or Skulker), a kind of hanger-on to the garrison, who seemed to belong to nobody and in a manner to be self-outlawed. He was one of those vagabond cosmopolites who shark about the world as if they had no right or business in it, and who infest the skirts of society like poachers and interlopers. Every garrison and country village has one or more scapegoats of this kind, whose life is a kind of enigma, whose existence is without motive, who comes from the Lord knows where, who lives the Lord knows how, and who seems created for no other earthly purpose but to keep up the ancient and honorable order of idleness. This vagrant philosopher was supposed to have some Indian blood in his veins, Avhich was mani- fested by a certain Indian complexion and cast of counte- nance, but more especially by his propensities and habits. He was a tall, lank fellow, swift of foot and long-winded. He was generally equipped in a half-Indian dress, with belt, leggings, and moccasins. His hair hung in straight gallows locks about his ears, and added not a little to his sharking demeanor. It is an old remark that persons of Indian mixture are half civilized, half savage, and half devil — a third half being provided for their particular convenience. It is for similar reasons, and probably with equal truth, that the backwoodsmen of Kentucky are styled half man, half horse, and half alligator by the settlers on the Mis- sissippi, and held accordingly in great respect and abhor- rence. The above character may have presented itself to the garrison as applicable to Dirk Schuiler, whom they famil- iarly dubbed Gallows Dirk. Certain it is, he acknowledged 298 HISTORY OF NEW YOEK. allegiance to no one — was ^n utter enemy to work, holding it in no manner of estimation, but lounging about the fort, depending uj^on chance for a subsistence, getting drunk whenever he could get liquor, aud stealing whatever he could lay his hands on. Every day or two he was sure to get a sound rib-roasting for some of his misdemeanors ; " which, however, as it broke no bones, he made very light of, and scrupled not to repeat the offence whenever another opportunity presented. Sometimes, in consequence of some flagrant villainy, he would abscond from the garrison and be absent for a month at a time, skulking about the woods and swamps with a long fowling-piece on liis shoulder, lying in ambush for game, or squatting himself down on the edge of a pond catching fish for hours together, and bearing no little resemblance to that notable bird of the crane family ycleped the mudpoke. When he thought his crimes had been forgotten or forgiven he would sneak back to the fort with a bundle of skins or a load of poultry, which, perchance, he had stolen, and would exchange them for liquor, with which having well soaked his carcase, he would lie in the sun and enjoy all the luxurious indolence of that swinish philosopher Diogenes. He was the terror of all the farmyards in the country, into which he made fearful inroads ; and sometimes he would make his sudden appearance in the garrison at daybreak with the whole neighborhood at his heels, like the scoundrel thief of a fox detected in his maraudings and hunted to his hole. Such was this Dirk Schuiler, and from the total indifference he showed to the world and its concerns, and from his truly Indian stoicism and taciturnity, no one would ever have dreamt that he would have been the publisher of the treachery of Kisingh. When the carousal was going on which proved so fatal to the brave Poffenburgh and his watchful garrison. Dirk skulked about from room to room, being a kind of privi- leged vagrant or useless hound whom nobody noticed. HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 297 But, though a fellow of few words, yet, like your taciturn people, his eyes and ears were always open, and in the course of his prowlings he overheard the whole plot of the Swedes. Dirk immediately settled in his own mind how he should turn the matter to his own advantage. He played the perfect jack-of-both-sides — that is to say, he made a prize of everything that came in his reach, robbed both parties, stuck the copper-bound cocked hat of the puissant Van Poffenburgh on his head, whipped a huge pair of Risingh's jack-boots under his arms, and took to his heels just before the catastrophe and confusion at the garrison. Finding himself completely dislodged from his haunt in this quarter, he directed his flight towards his native place. New Amsterdam, whence he had formerly been obliged to abscond precipitately in consequence of misfor- tune in business ; that is to say, having been detected in the act of sheep-stealing. After wandering many days in the woods, toiling through swamps, fording brooks, swim- ming various rivers, and encountering a world of hardships that would have killed any other being but an Indian, a backwoodsman, or the devil, he at length arrived, half- famished and lank as a starved weasel, at Comraunipaw, where he stole a canoe and paddled over to New Amster- dam. Immediately on landing he repaired to Governor Stuyvesant, and in more words than he had ever spoken before in the whole course of his life gave an account of the disastrous affair. On receiving these direful tidings the valiant Peter started from his seat, dashed the pipe he was smoking against the back of the chimney, thrust a prodigious quid of tobacco into his left cheek, pulled up his galligaskins, and strode up and down the room, humming, as was cus- tomary with him when in a passion, a hideous north-west ditty. But, as I have before shown, he was not a man to vent his spleen in idle vaporing. His first measure, after the paroxysm of wrath had subdued, was to stump up 298 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. stairs to a huge wooden chest which served as his armory, from whence he drew forth tliat identical suit of regi- mentals described in the preceding chapter. In these por- tentous habiliments he arrayed himself, like Achilles in the armor of Vulcan, maintaining all the while an appall- ing silence, knitting his brows, and drawing his breath through his clenched teeth. Being hastily equipped, he strode down into the parlor and jerked down liis trusty sword from over the fireplace, where it was usually sus- pended ; but before he girded it on his thigh he drew it from its scabbard, and as his eye coursed along the rusty blade, a grim smile stole over his iron visage : it was the first smile that had visited his countenance for five long weeks, but every one who beheld it prophesied that there would soon be warm work in the province. Thus armed at all points, with grisly war depicted in each feature, his very cocked hat assuming an air of un- common defiance, he instantly put himself upon the alert, and despatched Antony Van Corlear hither and thither, this way and that way, through all the muddy streets and crooked lanes of the city, summoning by sound of trumpet his trusty peers to assemble in instant council. This done, by way of expediting matters, according to the custom of people in a hurry, he kept in continual bustle, shifting from chair to chair, popping his head out of every window, and stumping up and down stairs with his wooden leg in such brisk and incessant motion that, as we are informed by an authentic historian of the times, the continual clatter bore no small resemblance to the music of a cooper hoop- ing a flour-barrel. A summons so peremptory and from a man of the gover- nor's mettle was not to be trifled with : the sages forthwith repaired to the council-chamber, seated themselves with the utmost tranquillity, and, lighting their long pipes, gazed with unruffled composure on His Excellency and his regi- mentals, being, as all counsellors should be, not easily flus- HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 299 tered nor taken by surprise. The governor, looking around for a moment with a lofty and soldier-like air, and resting one hand on the pommel of his sword and flinging the other forth in a free and spirited manner, addressed them in a short but soul-stirring harangue. I am extremely sorry that I have not the advantages of Livy, Thucydides, Phitarch, and others of my predecessors, who were furnished, as I am told, with the speeches of all their heroes, taken down in short-hand by the most accurate stenographers of the time, whereby they were enabled won- derfully to enrich their histories and delight their readers with sublime strains of eloquence. Not having such im- portant auxiliaries, I cannot possibly pronounce what was the tenor of Governor Stuyvesant's speech. I am bold, however, to say, from the tenor of his character, that he did not wrap his rugged subject in silks and ermines and other sickly trickeries of phrase, but spoke forth like a man of nerve and vigor, who scorned to shrink in words from those dangers which he stood ready to encounter in very deed. This much is certain, that he concluded by announcing his determination to lead on his troops in person and rout these *costard-monger Swedes from their usurped quarters at Fort Casimir. To this hardy resolution such of his council as were awake gave their usual signal of concurrence ; and as to the rest, who had fallen asleep about the middle of the harangue (their " usual custom in the afternoon "), they made not the least objection. -And now was seen in the fair city of New Amsterdam a prodigious bustle and preparation for iron war. E-ecruit- ing-parties marched hither and thither, calling lustily upon all the scrubs, the runagates, and tatterdemalions of the Manhattoes and its vicinity, who had any ambition of six- pence a day and immortal fame into the bargain, to enlist in the cause of glory ; for I would have you note that your warlike heroes who trudge in the rear of conquerors are generally of that illustrious class of gentlemen who are 300 HISTOKY OF NEW YOEK. equal candidates for the army or the bridewell, the hal- berds or the whipping-post — for whom Dame Fortune has cast an even die whether they shall make their exit by the sword or the halter, and whose deaths shall, at all events, be a lofty example to their countrymen. But, notwithstanding all this martial rout and invita- tion, the ranks of honor were but scantily supplied, so averse were the peaceful burghers of Kew Amsterdam from enlisting in foreign broils or stirring beyond that home which rounded all their earthly ideas. Upon be- holding this, the great Peter, whose noble heart was all on fire Avith v/ar and sweet revenge, determined to wait no longer for the tardy assistance of these oily citizens, but to muster up his merry men of the Hudson, who, brought up among woods and wilds and savage beasts, like our yeomen of Kentucky, delighted in nothing so much as desperate adventures and perilous expeditions through the wilder- ness. Thus resolving, he ordered his trusty squire Antony Van Corlear to have his state galley prepared and duly victualled ; which being performed, he attended public service at the great church of St. Nicholas, like a true and pious governor, and then, leaving peremptory orders with his council to have the chivalry of the Manhattoes marshalled out and appointed against his return, departed upon his recruiting voyage up the waters of the Hudson. CHAPTER IV. CONTAINING PETER STUYVESANT's VOYAGE UP THE HUD- SON, AND THE WONDERS AND DELIGHTS OF THAT RE- NOWNED RIVER. Now did the soft breezes of the south steal sweetly over the face of nature, tempering the panting heats of summer into genial and prolific warmth, when that miracle of hardi- hood and chivalric virtue, the dauntless Peter Stuyvesant, spread his canvas to the wind and departed from the fair island of Manna-hata. The galley in which he embarked was sumptuously adorned with pendants and streamers of gorgeous dyes, which fluttered gayly in the wind or drooped their ends into the bosom of the stream. The bow and poop of this majestic vessel were gallantly bedight, after the rarest Dutch fashion, with figures of little pursy Cupids with periwigs on their heads and bearing in their hands garlands of flowers, the like of which are not to be found in any book of botany, being the matchless flowers wliich flourished in the Golden Age, and exist no longer, unless it be in the imaginations of ingenious carvers of wood and discolorers of canvas. Thus, rarely decorated in style befitting the puissant potentate of the Manhattoes, did the galley of Peter Stuyvesant launch forth upon the bosom of the lordly Hudson, which as it rolled its broad waves to the ocean seemed to pause for a while and swell with pride, as if conscious of the illustrious burden it sustained. But trust me, gentlefolk, far other was the scene pre- sented to the contemplation of the crew from that which may be witnessed at this degenerate day. Yfildness and 301 302 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. savage majesty reigned on the borders of this mighty river ; the hand of cultivation had not as yet laid low the dark forest and tamed the features of the landscape, nor had the frequent sail of commerce broken in upon the profound and awful solitude of ages. Here and there might be seen a rude wigwam perched among the cliffs of the mountains, with its curling column of smoke mounting in the trans- parent atmosphere, but so loftily situated that the whoop- ings of the savage children, gamboling on the margin of the dizzy heights, fell almost as faintly on the ear as do the notes of the lark when lost in the azure vault of heaven. Now and then from the beetling brow of some precipice the wild deer would look timidly down upon the splendid pageant as it passed below, and then, tossing his antlers in the air, would bound away into the thickets of the forest. Through such scenes did the stately vessel of Peter Stuyvesant pass. Now did they skirt the bases of the rocky heights of Jersey, which spring up like everlasting walls, reaching from the waves unto the heavens, and Avere fashioned, if tradition may be believed, in times long past by the mighty spirit Manctho to protect his favorite abodes from the unhallowed eyes of mortals. Now did they career it gayly across the vast expanse of Tappan Bay, whose wide-extended shores present a variety of delectable scenery — here the bold promontory, crowned with embowering trees, advancing into the bay; there the long woodland slope, sweeping up from the shore in rich luxuriance and termi- nating in the upland precipice ; while at a distance a long waving line of rocky heights threw their gigantic shades across the water. Now would they pass where some modest little interval, opening among these stupendous scenes, yet retreating as it were for protection into the embraces of the neighboring mountains, displayed a rural paradise fraught with sweet and pastoral beauties — the velvet-tufted lawn, the bushy copse, the tinkling rivulet, stealing through the fresh and vivid verdure, on whose banks was situated some HISTOKY OF NEW YOEK. 303 little Indian village or peradventure the rude cabin of some solitary hunter. The different periods of the revolving day seemed each, with cunning magic, to diffuse a dificreut charm over the scene. Now would the jovial sun break gloriously from the east, blazing from the summits of the hills and sparkling the landscape with a thousand dewy gems, while along the borders of the river were seen heavy masses of mist, which, like midnight caitiffs disturbed at his approach, made a sluggish retreat, rolling in sullen reluctance up the moun- tains. At such times all was brightness and life and gayety ; the atmosphere was of an iudescribable pureness and transparency ; the birds broke forth in wanton madri- gals, and the freshening breezes wafted the vessel merrily on her course. But when the sun sunk amid a flood of glory in the west, mantling the heavens and the earth with a thousand gorgeous dyes, then all was calm and silent and magnificent. The late swelling sail hung lifelessly against the mast ; the seaman, with folded arms, leaned against the shrouds, lost in that involuntary musing which the sober grandeur of Nature commands in the rudest of her chil- dren. The vast bosom of the Hudson was like an unruffled mirror, reflecting the golden splendor of the heavens, ex- cepting tjiat now and then a bark canoe w'ould steal across its surface filled with painted savages, whose gay feathers glared brightly as perchance a lingering ray of the setting sun gleamed upon them from the western mountains. But when the hour of twilight spread its majestic mists around, then did the face of Nature assume a thousand fugitive charms w^hich to the worthy heart that seeks en- joyment in the glorious works of its Maker are inexpres- sibly captivating. The melloAV dubious light that prevailed just served to tinge with illusive colors the softened fea- tures of the scenery. The deceived but delighted eye sought vainly to discern in the broad masses of shade the fiej)arating line between the land and water or to distin- 304 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. ^ guish the fading objects that seemed sinking into chaos. Now did the busy Fancy supply the feebleness of vision, producing with industrious craft a fairy creation of her own. Under her plastic wand the barren rocks frowned upon the watery waste in the semblance of lofty towers and high embattled castles ; trees assumed the direful forms of mighty giants ; and the inaccessible summits of the moun- tains seemed peopled with a thousand shadowy beings. Now broke forth from the shores the notes of an in- numerable variety of insects, which filled the air with a strange but not inharmonious concert, while ever and anon was heard the melancholy plaint of the whip-poor-will, who, perched on some lone tree, wearied the ear of night with his incessant meanings. The mind, soothed into a hal- lowed melancholy, listened with pensive stillness to catch and distinguish each sound that vaguely echoed from the shore — now and then startled perchance by the whoop of some straggling savage or by the dreary howl of a wolf stealing forth upon his nightly prowlings. Thus happily did they pursue their course until they en- tered upon those awful defiles denominated The High- lands, where it would seem that the gigantic Titans had erst waged their impious war with heaven, piling up cliffs on cliffs and hurling vast masses of rock in wild confusion. But in sooth very different is the history of these cloud- capt mountains. These in ancient days, before the Hudson poured its waters from the lakes, formed one vast prison, within whose rocky bosom the omnipotent Manetho con- fined the rebellious spirits who repined at his control. Here, bound in adamantine chains or jamxmed in rifted pines or crushed by ponderous rocks, they groaned for many an age. At length the conquering Hudson, in its career towards the ocean, burst open their prison-house, rolling its tide triumphantly through the stupendous ruins. Still, however, do many of them lurk about their old abodes; and these it is, according to venerable legends, HISTORY OF NEW YOEK. 305 that cause the echoes which resound throughout these aw- ful solitudes, which are nothing but their angry clamors when any noise disturbs the profoundness of their repose. For when the elements are agitated by tempest, when the winds are up and the thunder rolls, then horrible are the yelling and howling of these troubled spirits, making the mountains to rebellow with their hideous uproar; for at such times it is said that they think the great Manetho is returning once more to plunge them in gloomy caverns and renew their intolerable captivity. But all these fair and glorious scenes were lost upon the gallant . Stuyvesant ; naught occupied his mind but thoughts of iron war and proud anticipations of hardy deeds of arms. Neither did his honest crevv^ trouble their heads with any romantic speculations of the kind. The pilot at the helm quietly smoked his pipe, thinking of nothing, either past, present, or to come ; those of his com- rades who were not industriously smoking under the hatches were listening with open mouths to Antony Van Corlear, who, seated on the windlass, was relating to them the marvellous history of those myriads of fireflies that sparkled like gems and spangles upon the dusky robe of night. These, according to tradition, were originally a race of p'estilent sempiternous beldames who peopled these parts long before the memory of man, being of that abom- inated race emphatically called brimsiGnes, and who, for their innumerable sins against the children of men, and to furnish an awful warning to the beauteous sex, were doomed to in- fest the earth in the shape of these tlireatening and terri- ble little bugs, enduring the internal torments of that fire which they formerly carried in their hearts and breathed forth in their words, but now are sentenced to bear about for ever— in their tails ! And now I am going to tell a fact w^hich I doubt much my readers will hesitate to believe ; but if they do, they are welcome not to believe a Y»'Ord in this whole history, 306 HISTOEY OF NEW YORK. for nothing which it contains is more true. It must be known, then, that the nose of Antony the Trumpeter was of a very lusty size, strutting boldly from his countenance like a mountain of Golconda, being sumptuously bedecked with rubies and other precious stones — the true regalia of a king of good fellows which jolly Bacchus grants to * all who bowse it heartily at the flagon. Now, thus it hap- pened that bright and early in the morning the good Antony, having washed his burly visage, was leaning over the quarter railing of the galley, contemplating it in the glassy wave below. Just at this moment the illustrious sun, breaking in all his splendor from behind a high blufl* of the Highlands, did dart one of his most potent beams full upon the refulgent nose of the sounder of brass, the reflection of which shot straightway down, hissing hot, into the water and killed a mighty sturgeon that was sporting beside the vessel ! This huge monster, being with infinite labor hoisted on board, furnished a luxurious repast to all the crew, being accounted of excellent flavor, excepting about the wound, where it smacked a little of brimstone; and this, on my veracity, was the first time that ever stur- geon was eaten in these parts by Christian people.* When this astonishing miracle came to be made known to Peter Stuyvesant, and that he tasted of the unknown fish, he, as may well be supposed, marvelled exceedingly, and as a monument thereof he gave the name of Antony's Kose to a stout promontory in the neighborhood, and it has continued to be called Antony's Nose ever since that time. But hold: whither am I wandering? By the mass, if I attempt to accompany the good Peter Stuyvesant on this voyage, I shall never make an end ; for never was there a voyage so fraught with marvellous incidents, nor a river so * The learned Hans Megapolonsis, treating of the country about Albany in a letter which was written some time after the settlement thereof, says: '' There is in the river great plenty of sturgeon, which we Christians do not make use of, but the Indians eat them greedily." HISTOEY OF NEW YOKK. 307 abounding with transcendent beauties worthy of being sev- erally recorded. Even now I have it on the point of my pen to relate how his crew were most horribly frightened, on going on shore above the Highlands, by a gang of merry roystering devils frisking and curveting on a flat rock which projected into the river, and which is called the DuyveVs Dans-Kamer to this very day. But no ! Diedrich Knick- erbocker, it becomes thee not to idle thus in thy historic wayfaring. Recollect that while dwelling with the fond garrulity of age over tliese fairy scenes, endeared to thee by the recol- lections of thy youth and the charms of a thousand legend- ary tales which beguiled the simple ear of thy childhood, — recollect that thou art trifling with those fleeting moments which should be devoted to loftier themes. Is not Time, relentless Time ! shaking with palsied hand his almost ex- hausted hour-glass before thee? Hasten then to pursue thy weary task, lest the last sands be run ere thou hast finished thy history of the Manhattoes. Let us, then, commit the dauntless Peter, his brave gal- ley, and his loyal crew to the protection of the blessed St. Nicholas, who, I have no doubt, will prosper him in his voyage, while we await his return at the great city of New Amsterdam. CHAPTER V. DESCRIBING THE POWERFUL ARMY THAT ASSEMBLED AT THE CITY OF NEW AMSTERDAM — TOGETHER WITH THE INTERVIEW BETWEEN PETER THE HEADSTRONG AND GENERAL VON POFFENBURGH, AND PETER's SENTIMENTS TOUCHING UNFORTUNATE GREAT MEN. AYhile thus the enterprising Peter was coasting, with flow- ing sail, up the shores of the lordly Hudson and arousing all the phlegmatic little Dutch settlements upon its borders, a great and puissant concourse of warriors was assembling at the city of New Amsterdam. And here that invaluable fragment of antiquity, the Stuyvesant manuscript, is more than commonly particular ; by which means I am enabled to record the illustrious host that encamped itself in the public square in front of the fort, at present denominated the Bowling Green. In the centre, then, was pitched the tent of the men of bat- tle of the Manhattoes, who being the inmates of the metrop- olis composed the life-guards of the governor. These were commanded by the valiant Stoffel Brinkerhoof, who whilom had acquired such immortal fame at Oyster Bay ; they dis- played as a standard a beaver rampant on a field of orange, being the arms of the province, and denoting the persevering industry and the amphibious origin of the Nederlandters.* On their right hand might be seen the vassals of that re- nowned Mynheer, Michael Paw,t who lorded it over the * This was likewise tlie great seal of the New Netherlands, as may still be seen in ancient records. t Besides wliat is related in the Stuyvesant MS. I have found men- tion made of this illustrious ^Datroon in another manuscript, which 308 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 309 fair regions of ancient Pavonia and the lands away south, even unto the Navesiuk Mountains,* and was moreover patroon of Gibbet Island. His standard was borne by his trusty squire, Cornelius Van Vorst, consisting of a huge oyster recumbent upon a sea-green field, being the armorial bearings of his favorite metropolis, Communipaw. He brought to the camp a stout force of warriors, heavily armed, being each clad in ten pair of linsey-woolsey breeches, and overshadowed by broad-brimmed beavers, with short pipes twisted in their hatbands. These were the men who vegetated in the mud along the shores of Pavonia, being of the race of genuine copperheads, and v^'ere fabled to have sprung from oysters. At a little distance was encamped the tribe of warriors who came from the neighborhood of Hell-gate. These were commanded by the Suy Dams and the Van Dams,' incontinent hard swearers, as their names betoken ; they were terrible-looking fellows, clad in broad-skirted gaber- dines, of that curious colored cloth called thunder and lightning, and bore as a standard three devil's darning- needles volant in a flame-colored field. Plard by was the tent of the men of battle from the marshy borders of the AYaale-Boghtf and the country thereabouts ; these were of a sour aspect, by reason that they lived on crabs, which abound in these parts. They snys: " De He?r for the squire) Michael Paw, a Dutch subject, about 10th Aug. 1630, by deed purchased Staten Island. N. B. The same Michael Paw bad what tbe Dutch call a colouie at Pavonia, on the Jersey shore. op{)osite New York, and iiis overseer in 1636 was nan\ed Corns. Yan Yorst — a person of the same name in 1769 owned Pav/les Hook and a large farm at Pavonia, and is a lineal descendant from Van Vorst." " So called from the Navesink tribe of Indians that inhabited these parts: at present they are erroneously denominated the Never- sink or Keversunk Mountains. t Since corrupted into the Wallabouf, the bay where the Navy Yard is situated. 310 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. were the first instituters of that honorable order of knight- hood called Fly-market shirks, and if tradition speak true did likewise introduce the far-famed step in dancing called " double trouble." They were commanded by the fearless Jacobus Varra Vanger, and had, moreover, a jolly band of Breuckelen* ferry-men, who performed a brave concerto on' conch-shells. But I refrain from pursuing this minute description, which goes on to describe the Avarriors of Bloemen-dael, and Wee-hawk, and Hoboken, and sundry other places well known in history and song ; for now do the notes of martial music alarm the people of New Amsterdam, sound- ing afar from beyond the walls of the city. But this alarm was in a little while relieved, for lo, from the midst of a vast cloud of dust they recognized the brimstone-colored breeches and splendid silver leg of Peter Stuyvesant, glar- ing in the sunbeams, and beheld him approaching at the head of a formidable army which he had mustered along the banks of the Hudson. And here the excellent but anonymous writer of the Stuyvesant manuscript breaks out into a brave and glorious description of the forces as they defiled through the principal gate of the city, that stood by the head of Wall street. First of all came the Van Bummels, who inhabit the pleasant borders of the Bronx : these were short fat men, wearing exceeding large trunk-breeches, and were renowned for feats of the trencher ; they were the first inventors of suppawn or mush and milk. Close in their rear marched the Van Vlotens of Kaatskill, horrible quaffers of new cider and arrant braggarts in their liquor. After them came the Van Pelts of Groodt Esopus, dextrous horse- men, mounted upon goodly switch-tailed steeds of the Eso- pus breed ; these were mighty hunters of minks and musk- rats, whence came the word Peltry. Then the Van Nests of Kinderhoeck, valiant robbers of birds' nests, as their * Now spelt Brooklyn. HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 311 name denotes ; to these, if report may be believed, are we indebted for the invention of slap-jacks or buckwheat cakes. Then the Van Higginbottoms of Wapping's Creek ; these came armed with ferules and birchen rods, being a race of schoolmasters, who first discovered the marvellous sympa- thy between the seat of honor and the seat of intellect, and that the shortest, way to get knov/ledge into the head was to hammer it into the bottom. Then the Van Grolls of Antony's Nose, who carried their liquor in fair round little pottles, by reason they could not bowse it out of their canteens, having such rare long noses. Then the Garden- iers of Hudson and thereabouts, distinguished by many triumphant feats, such as robbing watermelon-patches, smoking rabbits out their holes, and the like, and by be- ing great lovers of roasted pigs' tails ; these were the ancestors of the renowned Congressman of that name. Then the Van Hoesens of Sing-Sing, great choristers and players upon the jewsharp ; these marched two and two, singing the great song of St. Nicholas. Then the Couen- hovens of Sleepy Hollow ; these gave birth to a jolly race of publicans, who first discovered the magic artifice of conjuring a quart of wine into a pint bottle. Then the Van Kortlandts, who lived on the wild banks of the Croton, and were great killers of wild ducks, being much spoken of for their skill in shooting with the long bow. Then the Van Bunschotens of Nyack and Kakiat, who were the first that did ever kick with the left foot ; they were gallant bushwhackers and hunters of raccoons by moonlight. Then the Van Winkles of Haerlem, potent suckers of eggs, and noted for running of horses and run- ning up of scores at taverns ; they were the first that ever winked with both eyes at once. Lastly came the Knick- erbockers of the great town of Scaghtikoke, where the folk lay stones upon the houses in windy weather, lest they should be blown away. These derive their name, as some say, from Knicker, to shake, and Beker, a goblet, indicat- 312 HISTOKY OF KEW YORK. ing thereby that they were sturdy tosspots of yore ; but, in truth, it was derived from Kyiicker, to nod, and Boehen, books, plainly meaning that they were great nodders or dozers over books : from them did descend the writer of this history. Such was the legion of sturdy bushbeaters that poured in at the grand gate of New Amsterdam ; the Stuyvcsant manuscript indeed S2:)eaks of many more, v/hose names I omit to mention, seeing that it behooves me to hasten to matters of greater moment. Nothing could surpass the joy and martial pride of the lion-hearted Peter as he reviewed this mighty host of warriors, and he determined no longer to defer the gratification of his much-wished-for revenge upon the scoundrel Swedes at Fort Casimir. But before I hasten to record those unmatchable events, which will be found in the sequel of this faithful history, let me pause to notice the fate of Jacobus Van Poffenburgh, the discomfited commander-in-chief of the armies of the New Netherlands. Such is the inherent uncharitableness of human nature that scarcely did the news become pub- lic of his deplorable discomfiture at Fort Casimir than a thousand scurvy rumors were set afloat in New Amster- dam, wherein it was insinuated that he had in reality a treacherous understanding with the Swedish commander — that he had long been in the practice of privately commu- nicating with the Swedes, together with divers hints about "secret-service money." To all which deadly charges I do not give a jot more credit than I think they deserve. Certain it is, that the general vindicated his character by the most vehement oaths and protestations, and put every man out of the ranks of honor who dared to doubt his integrity. Moreover, on returning to New Amsterdam he paraded up and down the streets with a crew of hard swearers at his heels, sturdy bottle-companions whom he gorged and fattened, and who were ready to bolster him through all the courts of justice — heroes of his own kid- HISTOKY OF NEW YORK. 313 ney, fierce-whiskered, broad-shouldered, Colbrand-looking swaggerers, not one of whom but looked as though he could eat up an ox and pick his teeth with the horns. These life-guard men quarrelled all his quarrels, were ready- to fight all his battles, and scowled at every man that turned up his nose at the general as though they would de- vour him alive. Their conversation was interspersed with oaths like minute-guns, and every bombastic rhodomontade was rounded oft' by a thundering execration, like a pa- triotic toast honored Vvith a discharge of artillery. All these valorous vaporings had a considerable effect in convincing certain profound sages, who began to think the general a hero of unmatchable loftiness and magnan- imity of soul ; particularly as he was continually protest- ino* on the honor of a soldier — a marvellously hij^h-soundin": asseveration. Nay, one of the members of the council went so far as to propose they should immortalize him by an im- perishable statue of plaster of Paris. But the vigilant Peter the Headstrong was not thus to be deceived. Sending privately for the commander-in- chief of all the armies, and having heard all his story, gar- nished with the customary pious oaths, protestations, and ejaculations, " Harkee, comrade," cried he, " though by your own account you are the most brave, upright, and honorable man in the whole province, yet do you lie under the misfortune of being damnably traduced and immeasur- ably despised. Now, though it is certainly hard to punish a man for his misfortunes, and though it is very possible you are totally innocent of the crimes laid to your charge, yet as Heaven, doubtless for some wise purpose, sees fit at present to withhold all proofs of your innocence, far be it from me to counteract its sovereign will. Besides, I cannot consent to venture my armies with a commander whom they despise, nor to trust the welfare of my people to a champion whom they distrust. . Retire, therefore, my friend, from the irksome toils and cares of public life with this 314 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. comforting reflection — that if guilty, you are but. enjoying your just reward, and if innocent, you are not the first great and good man who has most wrongfully been slan- dered and maltreated in this wicked world, doubtless to be better treated in a better world, w^here there shall be neither error, calumny, nor persecution. In the mean time' let me never see your face again, for I have a horrible antipathy to the countenances of unfortunate great men like yourself." CHAPTER VI. IN WHICH THE AUTHOR DISCOURSES VERY INGENUOUSLY OF HIMSELF — AFTER WHICH IS TO BE FOUND MUCH INTERESTING HISTORY ABOUT PETER THE HEADSTRONG AND HIS FOLLOWERS. As my readers and myself are about entering on as many- perils as ever a confederacy of meddlesome knights-errant wilfully ran their heads into, it is meet that, like those hardy adventurers, vre should join hands, bury all dijffer- ences, and swear to stand by one another in weal or woe to the end of the enterprise. My readers must doubtless per- ceive how completely I have altered my tone and deport- ment since we first set out together. I Avarrant they then thought me a crabbed, cynical, impertinent little son of a Dutchman, for I scarcely ever gave them a civil word, nor so much as touched my beaver when I had occasion to ad- dress them. But as we jogged along together on the high- road of my history I gradually began to relax, to grow more courteous, and occasionally to enter into familiar dis- course, until at length I came to conceive a most social, companionable kind of regard for them. This is just my way : I am always a little cold and reserved at first, par- ticularly to people whom I neither know nor care for, and am only to be completely won by long intimacy. Besides, why should I have been sociable to the crowd of how-d'ye-do acquaintances that flocked around me at my first appearance ? Many were merely attracted by a new face, and, having stared me full in the title-page, walked off without saying a word, while others lingered yawningly through the preface, and, having gratified their short-lived 315 316 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. curiosity, soon dropped off one by one. But more especially to try their mettle, I had recourse to an expedient similar to one which we are told was used by that peerless flower of chivalry. King Arthur, who, before he admitted any knight to his intimacy, first required that he should show himself superior to danger or hardships by encountering unheard-of mishaps, slaying some dozen giants, vanquish- ing wicked enchanters, not to sa,y a word of dwarfs, hippo- griffs, and fiery dragons. On a similar principle did I cunningly lead my readers at the first sally into two or three knotty chapters, where they were most woefully be- labored and buffeted by a host of pagan philosophers and infidel writers. Though naturally a very grave man, yet could I scarce refrain from smiling outright at seeing the utter confusion and dismay of my valiant cavaliers. Some dropped down dead (asleep) on the field ; others threw down my book in the middle of the first chapter, took to their heels, and never ceased scampering until they had fairly run it out of sight, when they stopped to take breath, to tell their friends what troubles they had undergone, and to warn all others from venturing on so thankless an expe- dition. Every page thinned my ranks more and more, and of the vast multitude that first set out, but a comparatively few made shift to survive, in exceedingly battered condi- tion, through the five introductory chapters. "What, then ! Would you have had me take such sun- shine, faint-hearted recreants to my bosom at our first acquaintance? No, no; I reserved ray friendship for those who deserved it — for those v/ho undauntedly bore me com- pany in despite of difiiculties, dangers, and fatigues. And now, as to those who adhere to me at present, I take them affectionately by the hand. Worthy and thrice-beloved readers! brave and well-tried comrades! who have faith- fully followed my footsteps through all my wanderings ! I salute you from my heart — I pledge myself to stand by you to the last, and to conduct you (so Heaven speed this HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 317 trusty weapon which I now hold between my fingers) triumphantly to the end of this our stupendous under- taking. But, hark ! while we are thus talking the city of New Amsterdam is in a bustle. The host of warriors encamped in the Bowling Green are striking their tents, the brazen trumpet of Antony Van Corlear makes the welkin to re- sound with portentous clangor, the drums beat, the standards of the Manhattoes, of Hell-gate, and of Michael Paw wave proudly in the air. And now behold where the mariners are busily employed hoisting the sails of yon topsail schooner and those clump-built sloops which are to waft the army of the Nederlandters to gather immortal honors on the Del- aware ! The entire population of the city, man, woman, and child, turned out to behold the chivalry of New Amsterdam as it paraded the streets previous to embarkation. Many a hand- kerchief was waved out of the windows ; many a fair nose was blown in melodious sorrow on the mournful occasion. The grief of the fair dames and beauteous damsels of Gra- nada could not have been more vociferous on the banish- ment of the gallant tribe of Abencerrages than was that of the kind-hearted fair ones of New Amsterdam on the departure of their intrepid warriors. Every lovesick maiden fondly crammed the pockets of her hero with gingerbread and doughnuts ; many a copper ring was ex- changed and crooked sixpence broken in pledge of eternal constancy ; and there remain extant to this day some love- verses written on that occasion, sufficiently crabbed and incomprehensible to confound the whole universe. But it was a moving sight to see the buxom lasses, how they hung about the doughty Antony Van Corlear, for he was a jolly, rosy-faced, lusty bachelor, fond of his joke, and withal a desperate rogue among the women. Fain would they have kept him to comfort them while the army "was away ; for, besides what I have said of him, it is no 318 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. V more than justice to add that he was a kind-hearted soul, noted for his benevolent attentions in comforting discon- solate wives during the absence of their husbands ; and this made him to be very much regarded by the honest burghers of the city. But nothing could keep the val- iant Antony from following the heels of the old governor,' whom he loved as he did his very soul ; so, embracing all the young vrouws and giving every one of them that had good teeth and rosy lips a dozen hearty smacks, he depart- ed loaded with their kind wishes. Nor was the departure of the gallant Peter among the least causes of public distress. Though the old governor was by no means indulgent to the follies and wayward- ness of his subjects, yet somehow or other he had become strangely popular among the people. There is something so captivating in personal bravery that with the common mass of mankind it takes the lead of most other merits. The simple folk of New Amsterdam looked upon Peter Stuyvesant as a prodigy of valor. His wooden leg, that trophy of his martial encounters, was regarded with rev- erence and admiration. Every old burgher had a budget of miraculous stories to tell about the exploits of Hardkoppig Piet, wherewith he regaled his children of a long winter night, and on which he dwelt v/ith as much delight and exaggeration as do our honest country yeomen on the hardy adventures of old General Putnam (or, as he is familiarly termed, Old Put) during our glorious Revolution. Not an individual but verily believed the old governor was a match for Beelzebub himself; and there was even a story told, with great mystery and under the rose, of his having shot the devil with a silver bullet one dark stormy night as he was sailing in a canoe through Hell-gate; but this I do not record as being an absolute fact. Perish the man who would let fall a drop to discolor the pure stream of history ! Certain it is not an old woman in New Amsterdam but considered Peter Stuyvesant as a tower of strength, and HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 319 rested satisfied that the public welfare was secure so long as he was in the city. It is not surprising, then, that they looked upon his departure as a sore affliction. AVith heavy hearts they draggled at the heels of his troop as they marched down to the river-side to embark. The governor from the stern of his schooner gave a short but truly patri- archal address to his citizens, wherein he recommended them to comport like loyal and peaceable subjects — to go to church regularly on Sundays and to mind their business all the week besides ; that the women should be dutiful and affectionate to their husbands, looking after nobody's con- cerns but their own, eschewing all gossipings and morning gaddings, and carrying short tongues and long petticoats ; that the men should abstain from intermeddling in public concerns, intrusting the cares of government to the officers appointed to support them, staying at home like good citi- zens, making money for themselves, and getting children for the benefit of their country; that the burgomasters should look well to the public interest, not oppressing the poor nor indulging the rich, not tasking their ingenuity to devise new laws, but faithfully enforcing those which were already made; rather bending their attention to prevent evil than to punish it ; ever recollecting that civil magis- trates should consider themselves more as guardians of pub- lic morals than rat-catchers employed to entrap public delinquents. Finally, he exhorted them, one and all, high and low, rich and poor, to conduct themselves as well as they could, assuring them that if they faithfully and con- scientiously complied with this golden rule, there was no danger but that they would all conduct themselves well enough. This done, he gave them a paternal benediction, the sturdy Antony sounded a most loving farewell with his trumpet, the jolly crews put up a shout of triumph, and the invincible armada swept oflf proudly down the bay. The good people of New Amsterdam crowded down to the Battery, that blest resort from whence so many a tender 320 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. prayer lias been wafted, so many a fair hand waved, so many a tearful look been cast by lovesick damsel after the lessening bark bearing her adventurous swain to distant climes! Here the populace watched with straining eyes the gallant squadron as it slowly floated down the bay, and when the intervening land at the Narrows shut it from their sight, gradually dispersed with silent tongues and downcast countenances. A heavy gloom hung over the late bustling city: the honest burghers smoked their pipes in profound thoughtful- ness, casting many a wistful look to the weathercock on the church of St. Nicholas ; and all the old women, having no longer the presence of Peter Stuyvesant to hearten them, gathered their children home and barricaded the doors and windows every evening at sundov/n. In the mean while, the armada of the sturdy Peter 2:>ro- ceeded prosperously on its voyage, and after encountering about as many storms and waterspouts and whales and other horrors and phenomena as generally befall adven- turous landsmen in perilous voyages of the kind, and after undergoing a severe scouring from that deplorable and iinpitied malady called sea-sickness, the whole squadron ar- rived safely in the Delaware. Without so much as dropping anchor and giving his wearied ships time to breathe after laboring so long on the ocean, the intrepid Peter pursued his course up the Dela- ware and made a sudden appearance before Fort Casimir. Having summoned the astonished garrison by a terrific blast from the trumpet of the long-winded Van Corlear, he de- manded in a tone of thunder an instant surrender of the fort. To this demand Suen Skytte, the wind-dried commandant, re- plied in a shrill, whiffling voice, which by reason of his ex- treme spareness sounded like the wind whistling through a broken bellows, " that he had no very strong reason for refus- ing, except that the demand was particularly disagreeable, as he had been ordered to maintain his post to the last ex- HISTOEY OF NEW YORK. 321 tremity." He requested time, therefore, to consult with Governor Risingh, and proposed a truce for that purpose. The choleric Peter, indignant at having his rightful fort so treacherously taken from him and thus pertinaciously withheld, refused the proposed armistice, and swore by the pipe of St. Nicholas — which, like tlie sacred fire, was never extinguished — that unless the fort were surrendered in ten minutes he vrould incontinently storm the works, make all the garrison run the gauntlet, and split their scoundrel of a commander like a pickled shad. To give this menace the greater effect, he drew forth his trusty sword and shook it at them with such a fierce and vigorous motion that doubtless, if it had not been exceedingly rusty, it would have lightened terror into the eyes and hearts of the enemy. He then ordered his men to bring a broadside to bear upon the fort, consisting of two swivels, three muskets, a long duck fowling-piece, and two brace of horse-pistols. In the mean time, the sturdy Van Corlear marshalled all his forces and commenced his warlike operations. Distend- ing his cheeks like a very Boreas, he kept up a most hor- rific twanging of his trumpet, the lusty choristers of Sing-Sing broke forth into a hideous song of battle, the warriors of Breuckelen and the Wallabout blew a potent and astounding blast on their conch-shells, altogether form- ing as outrageous a concerto as though five thousand French fiddlers were displaying their skill in a modern overture. AVhether the formidable front of war thus suddenly pre- sented smote the garrison with sore dismay, or whether the concluding terms of the summons, which m.entioned that he should surrender "at discretion," were mistaken by Suen Skytte, who, though a Swede, was a very considerate, easy-tempered man, as a compliment to his discretion, I will not take upon me to say ; certain it is he found it im- possible to resist so courteous a demand. Accordingly, in the very nick of time, just as the cabin-boy had gone after 21 322 HISTOKY OF KEW YOKK. a coal of fire to discharge the swivel, a chamade was beat on the rampart by the only drum in the garrison, to the no small satisfaction of both parties ; who, notwithstanding their great stomach for fighting, had full as good an incli- nation to eat a quiet dinner as to exchange black eyes and bloody noses. Thus did this impregnable fortress once more return to the domination of their High Mightinesses ; Skytte and his garrison of twenty men were allowed to march out with the honors of war, and the victorious Peter, who was as gen- erous as brave, permitted tliem to keep possession of all their arras and ammunition, the same on inspection being found totally unfit for service, having long rusted in the magazine of the fortress, even before it was wrested by the Swedes from the windy Van Poffenburgh. But I must not omit to mention that the governor was so well pleased with the service of his faithful squire Van Corlear in the reduction of this great fortress that he made him on the spot lord of a goodly domain in the vicinity of New Amsterdam ; which goes by the name of Corl ear's Hook unto this very day. The unexampled liberality of Peter Stuyvesant towards the Swedes occasioned great surprise in the city of New Amsterdam ; nay, certain factious mdividuals, who had been enlightened by political meetings in the days of Wil- liam the Testy, but who had not dared to indulge their meddlesome habits under the eye of their present ruler, now, emboldened by his absence, gave vent to their censures in the street. lilurmurs were heard in the very council- chamber of New Amsterdam ; and there is no knowing whether they might not have broken out into downright speeches and invectives had not Peter Stuyvesant privately sent home his walking-staff, to be laid as a mace on the table of the council-chamber in the midst of his counsel- lors, who, like wise men, took the hint and for ever after held their peace. CHAPTER VII. SHOWING THE GREAT ADVANTAGE THAT THE AUTHOR HAS OVER HIS READER IN TIME OF BATTLE — TOGETHER WITH DIVERS PORTENTOUS MOVEMENTS, Y\'HICH BETOK- EN THAT SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN. Like as a mighty alderman, when at a corporation feast the first spoonful of turtle-soup salutes his palate, feels his appetite but tenfold quickened and redoubles his vigorous attacks upon the tureen, while his projecting eyes roll greedily round, devouring everything at table, so did the mettlesome Peter Stuyvesant feel that hunger for martial glory which raged within his bowels inflamed by the cap- ture of Fort Casimir, and nothing could allay it but the conquest of all New Sweden. No sooner, therefore, had he secured his conquest, than he stumped resolutely on, flushed with success, to gather fresh laurels at Fort Chris- tina/''^ This was the grand Swedish post, established on a small river (or, as it is improperly termed, creek) of the same name, and here that crafty governor Jan Risingh lay grimly drawn up, like a gray-bearded spider in the cita- del of his web. But before we hurry into the direful scenes which must attend the meeting of two such potent chieftains, it is advisable to pause for a moment and hold a kind of war- like council. Battles should not be rushed into precipi- tately by the historian and his readers, any more than by * At present a jBourisbing tov/n called Christiana, or Christeen, about thirlj-seven miles from Philadelphia, on the post-road to Baltimore. 323 324 niSTOEY OF NEW YOEK. the general and his soldiers. The great commanders of antiquity never engaged the enemy without previously pre- paring the minds of their followers by animating harangues, spiriting them up to heroic deeds, assuring them of the pro- tection of the gods, and inspiring them with a confidence in the prowess of their leaders. So the historian shouM awaken the attention and enlist the passions of his readers, and, having set them all on fire with the importance of his subject, he should put himself at their head, flourish his pen, and lead them on to the thickest of the fight. An illustrious example of this rule may be seen in that mirror of historians the immortal Thucydides. Having arrived at the breaking out of the Peloponnesian War, one of his commentators observes that " he sounds the charge in all the disposition and spirit of Homer. He catalogues the allies on both sides. He awakens our expectations and fast engages our attention. All mankind are concerned in the important point nov/ going to be decided. Endeavors are made to disclose futurity. Heaven itself is interested in the dispute. The earth totters and Nature seems to labor with the great event. This is his solemn, sublime manner of setting out. Thus he magnifies a war between two, as Rapin styles them, petty states, and thus artfully he supports a little subject by treating it in a great and noble method." In like manner, having conducted my readers into the very teeth of peril, having followed the adventurous Peter and his band into foreign regions, surrounded by foes and stunned by the horrid din of arms, at this important mo- ment, while darkness and doubt hang o'er each coming chapter, I hold it meet to harangue them and prepare them for the events that are to follow. And here I would premise one great advantage which, as historian, I possess over my reader ; and this it is : that though I cannot save the life of my favorite hero nor absolutely contradict the event of a battle (both which HISTORY OF NEW YOKK. 325 liberties, though often taken by the French writers of the present reign, I hold to be utterly unworthy of a scrupulous historian), yet I can now and then make him bestow on his enemy a sturdy back-stroke sufficient to fell a giant, though in honest truth he may never have done anything of the kind ; or I can drive his antagonist clear round and round the field, as did Homer make that fine fellow Hector scamper like a poltroon round the walls of Troy, for which, if ever they have encountered one another in the Elysian Fields, I'll warrant the prince of poets has had to make the most humble apology. I am aware that many conscientious readers will be ready to cry out " Foul play !" whenever I render a little assist- ance to my hero ; but I consider it one of those privileges exercised by historians of all ages, and one which has never been disputed. An historian is, in fact, as it were, bound in honor to stand by his hero ; the fame of the latter is in- trusted to his hands, and it is his duty to do the best by it he can. Never was there a general, an admiral, or any other commander who, in giving an account of any battle he had fought, did not sorely belabor the enemy ; and I have no doubt that had my heroes written the history of their own achievements they would have dealt much harder blows than any that I shall recount. Standing forth, there- fore, as the guardian of their fame, it behooves me to do them the same justice they would have done themselves; and if I happen to be a little hard upon the Swedes, I give free leave to any of their descendants who may write a his- tory of the State of Delaware to take fair retaliation and belabor Peter Stuyvesant as hard as they please. Therefore stand by for broken heads and bloody noses ! My pen hath long itched for a battle — siege after siege have I carried on without blows or bloodshed ; but now I have at length got a chance, and I vow to Heaven and St. Nich- olas that, let the chronicles of the times say what they please, neither Sallust, Livy, Tacitus, Polybius, nor any 326 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. other historian did ever record a fiercer fight that than in which my valiant chieftains are now about to engage. And you, O most excellent readers, whom for your faith- ful adherence I could cherish in the warmest corner of my heart, be not uneasy ; trust the fate of our favorite Stuy- vesant with me, for, by the rood, come what may, I'll stick by Hardkoppig Piet to the last. I'll make him drive about these losels vile as did the renowned Launcelot of the Lake a herd of recreant Cornish knights ; and if he does fall, let me never draw my pen to fight another battle in behalf of a brave man if I don't make these lubberly Swedes pay for it. No sooner had Peter Stuyvesant arrived before Fort Christina then he proceeded without delay to intrench him- self, and immediately on running his first jDarallel des- patched Antony Van Corlear to summon the fortress to surrender. Van Corlear was received with all due formal- ity, hoodwinked at the portal, and conducted through a pestiferous smell of salt fish and onions to the citadel, a substantial hut built of pine logs. His eyes were here uncovered, and he found himself in the august presence of Governor Risingh. This chieftain, as I have before noted, was a very giantly man, and was clad in a coarse blue coat strapped round the waist with a leathern belt, which caused the enormous skirts and pockets to set off with a very warlike sweep. His ponderous logs were cased in a pair of foxy-colored jack-boots, and he was straddling in the attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes before a bit of broken looking-glass, shaving himself with a villainously dull razor. This afflicting operation caused him to make a series of horrible grimaces, which heightened exceedingly the grisly terrors of his visage. On Antony Van Corlear's being announced the grim commander paused for a moment in the midst of one of his most hard-favored contortions, and after eyeing him askance over the shoulder, with a HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 327 kind of snarling grin on his countenance, resumed his labors at the glass. This iron harvest being reaped, he turned once more to the trumpeter and demanded the purport of his errand. Antony Van Corlear delivered in a few words, being a kind of short-hand speaker, a long message from His Excel- lency, recounting the whole history of the province, with a recapitulation of grievances and enumeration of claims, and concluding with a peremptory demand of instant sur- render ; which done, he turned aside, took his nose be- tween his thumb and finger, and blew a tremendous blast, not unlike the flourish of a trumpet of defiance, which it had doubtless learned from a long and intimate neighbor- hood with that melodious instrument. Governor Risingh heard him through, trumpet and all, but with infinite patience, leaning at times, as was his usual custom, on the pommel of his sword, and at times twirling a huge steel w\atch-chain or snapping his fingers. Van Corlear having finished, he bluntly replied that Peter Stuyvesant and his summons miglit go to the d 1, wliither he hoped to send him and his crew of ragamuffins before supper-time. Then unsheathing his brass-hilted sword and throwing away the scabbard, " 'Fore gad," quod he, " but I will not sheathe thee again until I make a scab- bard of the smoke-dried leathern hide of this runagate Dutchman." Then, having flung a fierce defiance in the teeth of his adversary by the lips of his messenger, the lat- ter was reconducted to the portal with all tlie ceremonious civility due to the trumpeter, s.quire, and ambassador of so great a commander, and, being again unblinded, was courteously dismissed with a tvreak of the nose to assist him in recollecting his message. No sooner did the gallant Peter receive this insolent reply than he let fly a tremendous volley of red-hot ex- ecrations, which would infallibly have battered down the fortifications and blown up the powder-magazine about the 328 niSTOEY OF NEW YORK. ears of the fiery Swede had not the ramparts been remark- ably strong and the magazine bomb-proof. Perceiving that the works withstood this terrific blast, and that it was utter- ly impossible (as it really was in those un philosophic days) to carry on a war with words, he ordered his merry men all to prepare for an immediate assault. But here a strange murmur broke out among his troops, beginnhig with the tribe of the Van Bummels, those valiant trenchermen of of the Bronx, and spreading from man to man, accompa- nied with certain mutinous looks and discontented mur- murs. For once in his life, and only for once, did the great Peter turn pale, for he verily thought his warriors were going to falter in this hour of perilous trial, and thus to tarnish for ever the fame of the province of !Mew Neth- lands. But soon did he discover, to his great joy, that in this suspicion he deeply wronged this most undaunted army ; for the cause of this agitation and uneasiness simply was that the hour of dinner was at hand, and it would have almost broken the hearts of these regular Dutch warriors to have broken in upon the invariable routine of their habits. Besides, it was an established rule among our ancestors always to fight upon a full stomach ; and to this may be doubtless attributed the circumstance that they came to be so renowned in arms. And now are the hearty men of the Manhattoes and their no less hearty comrades all lustily engaged under the trees, buffeting stoutly with the contents of their wallets, and taking such affectionate embraces of their canteens and pottles as though they verily believed they were to be the last. And as I foresee we shall have hot work in a page or two, I advise my readers to do the same, for which purpose I will bring this chapter to a close, giving them my word of honor that no advantage shall be taken of this armistice to surprise or in any wise molest the hon- est Ncderlandters while at their vigorous repast. CHAPTER YIII. CONTAINING THE MOST HORRIBLE BATTLE EVER RECORDED IN POETRY OR PROSE ; WITH THE ADMIRABLE EXPLOITS OF PETER THE HEADSTRONG. " Now had the Dutchmen snatched a huge repast," and, finding themselves wonderfully encouraged and animated thereby, prepared to take the field. Expectation, says the writer of the Stuyvesant manuscript — expectation now stood on stilts. The world forgot to turn round, or rather stood still, that it might witness the afiray, like a round-bellied alderman watching the combat of two chivalrous flics upon his jerkin. The eyes of all mankind, as usual in such cases, were turned upon Fort Christina. The sun, like a little man in a crowd at a puppet-show, scampered about the heavens, popping his head here and there, and endeav- oring to get a peep between the unmannerly clouds that obtruded themselves in his way. The historians filled their inkhorns ; the poets went without their dinners, either that they might buy paper and goose-quills or because they could not get anything to eat ; Antiquity scowled sulkily out of its grave to see itself outdone, while even Posterity stood mute, gazing in gaping ecstasy of retrospection on the eventful field. The immortal deities, who whilom had seen service at the " affair" of Troy, now mounted tlieir feather-bed clouds and sailed over the plain, or mingled among the combatants in different disguises, all itching to have a finger in the pie. Jupiter sent off his thunderbolt to a noted coppersmith to have it furbished up for the direful occasion. Venus vowed by her chastity to patronize the Swedes, and in semblance 329 330 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. of a blear-eyed trull paraded the battlements of Fort Christina, accompanied by Diana as a sergeant's widow of cracked reputation. The noted bully Mars stuck two horse-pistols into his belt, shouldered a rusty firelock, and gallantly swaggered at their elbow as a drunken corporal ; ■while Apollo trudged in their rear as a bandy-legged fifei*, playing most villainously out of tune. On the other side, the ox-eyed Juno, who had gained a pair of black eyes overnight in one of her curtain lectures with old Jupiter, displayed her haughty beauties on a bag- gage-wagon ; Minerva as a brawny gin-suttler tucked up her skirts, brandished her fists, and swore most heroically in exceeding bad Dutch (having but lately studied the language) by way of keeping up the spirits of the soldiers; while Vulcan halted as a club-footed blacksmith lately promoted to be a captain of militia. All was silent awe or bustling preparation : War reared his horrid front, gnashed loud his iron fangs, and shook his direful crest of bristling bayonets. And now the mighty chieftains marshalled out their hosts. Here stood stout Risingh, firm as a thousand rocks, incrusted with stockades, and intrenched to the chin in mud batteries. His valiant soldiery lined the breastwork in grim array, each having his mustachios fiercely greased and his hair pomatum.ed back, and queued so stifily that he grinned above the ramparts like a grisly death's head. There came on the intrepid Peter, his brows knit, his teeth set, his fists clenched, almost breathing forth volumes of smoke, so fierce wiis the fire that raged within his bosom. His faithful squire Van Corlear trudged valiantly at his heels, with his trumpet gorgeously bedecked with red and yellow ribbons, the remembrances of his fair mistresses at the Manhattoes. Then came waddling on the sturdy chiv- alry of the Hudson. There were the Van Wycks, and the Van Dycks, and the Ten Eycks ; the Van Nesses, the Van Tassels, the Van Grolls, the Van Hcssens, the Van J HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 331 Giesons, and the Van Blarcoms ; the Van Warts, the Van Winkles, the Van Dams ; the Van Pelts, the Van Rippers, and the Van Brunts. There were the Van Homes, the Van Hooks, the Van Bunschotens ; the Van Gelders, the Van Arsdales, and the Van Biimmels ; the Vander Belts, the Vander Hoofs, the Vander Voorts, the Vander Lyns, the Vander Pools, and the Vander Spiegles. There came the Hoffmans, the Hooghlands, the Hoppers, the Cloppers, the Ryckmans, the Dyckmans, the Hogebooms, the Rosebooras, the Oothouts, the Quackenbosses, the Roerbacks, the Gar- rebrantzes, the Bensons, the Brouwers, the Waldrons, the Onderdonks, the Varra Vangers, the Schermerhorns, the Stoutenburghs, the Brinkerhoffs, the Bontecous, the Knick- erbockei-s, the Hockstrassers, the Ten Breecheses, and the Tough Breecheses, with a host more of wortliies whose names are too crabbed to be written, or if they could be Avritten it would be impossible for man to utter, — all forti- fied with a mighty dinner, and, to use the words of a great Dutch poet, "Brimful of wrath and cabbage." For an instant the mighty Peter paused in the midst of his career, and, mounting on a stump, addresrsed his troops in eloquent Lov/ Dutch, exhorting them to fight like duy- vels, and assuring them that -if they conquered they should get plenty of booty ; if they fell they should be allowed the satisfaction, while dying, of reflecting that it was in the service of their country, and after they were dead of see- ing their names inscribed in the temple of renown, and handed down, in company with all the other great men of the year, for the admiration of posterity. Finally, he swore to them, on the word of a governor (and they knew him too well to doubt it for a moment), that if he caught any mother's son of them looking pale or playing craven, he would curry his hide till he made him run out of it like a snake in spring-time. Then, lugging out his trusty sabre, 332 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. V he brandished it three times over his head, ordered Van Corlear to sound a charge, and, shouting the words, " St. Nicholas and the Manhattoes!" courageously dashed for- wards. His warlike followers, who had employed the interval in lighting their pipes, instantly stuck them into their mouths, gave a furious puff, and charged gallantly under cover of the smoke. The Swedish garrison, ordered by the cunning Risingh not to fire until they could distinguish the whites of their assailants' eyes, stood in horrid silence on the covert-way until the eager Dutchmen had ascended the glacis. Then did they pour into them such a tremendous volley that the very hills quaked around, and were terrified even unto an incontinence of water, insomuch that certain springs burst forth from their sides which continue to run unto the present day. Not a Dutchman but would have bitten the dust beneath that dreadful fire had not the protecting Minerva kindly taken care that the Swedes should, one and all, observe their usual custom of shutting their eyes and turning away their heads at the moment of discharge. The Swedes followed up their fire by leaping the coun- terscarp and falling tooth and nail upon the foe with fu- rious outcries. And now might be seen prodigies of valor unmatched in history or song.' Here was the sturdy Stof- fel Brinkerhoif brandishing his quarter-stafi*, like the giant Blanderon his oak tree (for he scorned to carry any other weapon), and drumming a horrific tune upon the hard heads of the Swedish soldiery. There were the Van Kort- landts, posted at a distance, like the Locrian archers of yore, and plying it most potently with the long-bow, for which they were so justly renowned. On a rising knoll were gathered the valiant men of Sing-Sing, assisting mar- vellously in the fight by chanting the great song of St. Nicholas ; but as to the Gardeniers of Hudson, they were absent on a marauding-party, laying waste the neighboring watermelon- patches. HISTORY OF NEW YOKK. 333 In a different i)art of the field were the Van Grolls of Antony's Nose, struggling to get to the thickest of the fight, but horribly perplexed in a defile between two hills by reason of the length of their noses. So also the Van Bunschotens of Nyack and Kakiat, so renowned for kick- ing with the left foot, were brought to a stand for want of wind in consequence of the hearty dinner they had eaten, and would have been put to utter rout but for the arrival of a gallant corps of voltigeurs, composed of the Hoppers, who advanced nimbly to their assistance on one foot. Nor must I omit to mention the valiant achievements of Antony Van Corlear, who for a good quarter of an hour vv'aged stubborn fight v/ith a little pursy Swedish drumimer, whose hide he drummed most magnificently, and whom he would infallibly have annihilated on the spot but that he had come into the battle with no other weapon but his trumpet. But now the combat thickened. On came the mighty Jacobus Varra Vanger and the fighting men of the Wall- about; after them thundered the Van Pelts of Esopus, together with the Van Rippers and the Van Brunts, bear- ing down all before them ; then the Suy Dams and the Van Dams, pressing forward with many a blustering oath at the head of the warriors of Hell-gate, clad in their thunder-and-lightning gaberdines ; and lastly the standard- bearers and body-guards of Peter Stuyvesant, bearing the great beaver of the Manhattoes. And now commenced the horrid din, the desperate strug- gle, the maddening ferocity, the frantic desperation, the confusion and self-abandonment of war. Dutchman and Swede, commingled, tugged, panted, and blowed. The heav- ens were darkened with a tempest of missiles. Bang! went the guns — whack! went the broadswords — thump! went the cudgels — crash ! w^ent the musket-stocks — blows, kicks, cuffs, scratches, black eyes, and bloody noses swelling the horrors of the scene! Thick thwack, cut and hack, helter-skelter, higgledy-piggledy, hurly-burly, head over 334 HISTORY ^OF KEY/ YOEK. heels, rough and tumble ! Dunder and blixuni ! swore the Dutchmen ; Splitter and splutter ! cried the Swedes ; Storm the works! shouted Hardkoppig Pieter; Fire the mine! roared stout Risingh ; Tan ta-ra-ra-ra ! twanged the trum- pet of Antony Van Corlear, — until all voice and sound became unintelligible, grunts of pain, yells of fury, and shouts of triumph mingling in one hideous clamor. The earth shook as if struck with a paralytic stroke— trees shrunk aghast and withered at the sight — rocks burrowed in the ground like rabbits— and even Christina Creek turned from its course and ran up a hill in breathless terror ! Long hung the contest doubtful, for though a heavy shower of rain, sent by the " cloud-compelling Jove," in some measure cooled their ardor, as doth a bucket of water thrown on a group of fighting mastiffs, yet did they but pause for a moment, to return with tenfold fury to the charge. Just at this juncture a vast and dense column of smoke was seen slowly rolling toward the scene of battle. The combatants paused for a moment, gazing in mute as- tonishment, until the wind, dispelling the murky cloud, revealed the flaunting banner of Michael Paw, the patroon of Communipaw. That valiant chieftain came fearlessly on at the head of a phalanx of oyster-fed Pavonians and a corps de reserve of the Van Arsdales and Van Bummels, who had remained behind to digest the enormous dinner they had eaten. These now trudged manfully forward, smoking their pipes with outrageous vigor, so as to raise the awful cloud that has been mentioned ; but marching exceedingly slow, being short of leg and of great rotundity in the belt. And now the deities who watched over the fortunes of the Kederlandters having unthinkingly left the field and stepped into a neighboring tavern to refresh themselves with a pot of beer, a direful catastrophe had wellnigh en- sued. Scarce had the myrmidons of Michael Paw attained HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 335 the front of battle, when the Swedes, instructed by the cunning Risingh, levelled a shower of blows full at their tobacco-pipes. Astounded at this assault and dismayed at the havoc of tlieir pipes, these ponderous warriors gave way and like a drove of frightened elephants broke through the ranks of their own army. The little Hoppers were borne down in the surge; the sacred banner emblazoned with the gigantic oyster of Comraunipav/ was trampled in the dirt ; on blundered and thundered the heavy-sterned fugitives, the Swedes pressing on their rear and applying their feet a parte poste of the Van Arsdales and the Van Bummels with a vigor that prodigiously accelerated their movements, nor did the renowned Michael Paw himself fail to receive divers grievous and dishonorable visitations of shoe-leather. But what, O Muse! was the rage of Peter Stuyvesant when from afir he saw his army giving way ! In the transports of his wrath he sent forth a roar enough to shake the very hills. The men of the Manhattoos plucked up new courage at the sound, or, rather, they rallied at the voice of their leader, of whom they stood more in awe than of all the Swedes in Christendom. "Without waiting for their aid the daring Peter dashed sword in hand into the thickest of the foe. Then might be seen achievements worthy of the days of the giants. Wherever he went the enemy shrank before him ; the Swedes fled to right and left or were driven, like dogs, into their own ditch ; but as he pushed forward singly with headlong courage the foe closed behind and hung upon his rear. One aim.ed a blow full at his heart ; but the protecting power which watches over the great and good turned sside the hostile blade and directed it to a side-pocket, where reposed an enormous iron tobacco- box, endowed, like the shield of Achilles, with super- natural powers, doubtless from bearing the portrait of the blessed St. Nicholas. Peter Stuyvesant turned like an angry bear upon the foe, and seizing him as he fled by an immeasurable queue, " Ah, whoreson caterpillar !" roared 336 HISTOPvY OF NEW YORK. he, " here's what shall make worms' meat of thee !" So saying, lie whirled his sword and dealt a blow that would have decapitated tlie varlet, but that the pitying steel struck short and shaved the queue for ever from his crown. At this moment an arquebusier levelled his piece from a neighbor- ing mound with deadly aim; but the Avatchful Minerva, who had just stopped to tie up her garter, seeing the peril of her favorite hero, sent old Boreas with his bellows, who as the match descended to the pan gave a blast that blew the priming from the touch-hole. Thus waged the fight, when the stout Risingh, surve)dng the field from the top of a little ravelin, perceived his troops banged, beaten, and kicked by the invincible Peter. Draw- ing his falchion and uttering a thousand anathemas, he strode down to the scene of combat with some such thun- dering strides as Jupiter is said by Hesiod to- have taken when he strode down the spheres to hurl his thunderbolts at the Titans. When the rival heroes cam.e face to face each made a prodigious start in the style of a veteran stage champion. Then did they regard each other for a moment with the bitter aspect of two furious ram-cats on the point of a clapper-clawing. Then did they throw themselves into one attitude, then into another, striking their swords on the ground first on the right side, then on the left ; at last at it they went with incredible ferocity. "Words cannot tell the prodigies of strength and valor displayed in this dire- ful encounter — an encounter compared to which the far- famed battles of Ajax with Hector, of ^neas with Turnus, Orlando with Rodomont, Guy of Warwick with Colbrand the Dane, or of that renowned Welsh knight Sir Owen of the Mountains with the giant Guylon, were all gentle sports and holiday recreations. At length the valiant Peter, watching his opportunity, aimed a blow, enough to cleave his adversary to the very chine ; but Risingh, nimbly raising his sword, v^arded it oflT so narrowly that, glancing HISTOEY OF NEW YORK. 337 on one side, it shaved away a iiuge canteen in which he carried his liquor ; thence, pursuing its trenchant course, it severed off a deep coat-pocket stored with bread and cheese ; which provant, rolling among the armies, occa- sioned a fearful scrambling between the Swedes and Dutch- men, and made the general battle to wax ten times more furious tha,n ever. Enraged to see his military stores laid waste, the stout Risingh, collecting all his forces, aimed a mighty blow full at the hero's crest. In vain did his fierce little cocked hat oppose its course. The biting steel clove through the stub- born ram beaver, and would have cracked the crown of any one not endowed with supernatural hardness of head; but the brittle weapon shivered in pieces on the skull of Hardkoppig Piet, shedding a thousand sparks like beams of glory round his grizzly visage. The good Peter reeled with the blow, and, turning up his eyes, beheld a thousand suns, beside moons and stars, dancing about the firmament. At length, missing his foot- ing by reason of his wooden leg, down he came on his seat of honor with a crash which shook the surrounding hills, and might have wrecked his frame had he not been received into a cushion softer than velvet which Providence or Minerva or St. Nicholas or some kindly cow had benevo- lently prepared for his reception. The furious Risingh, in despite of the maxim, cherished by all true knights, that " fair play is a jewel," hastened to take advantage of the hero's fall ; but as he stooped to give a fatal blow, Peter Stuy vesant dealt him a thwack over the sconce with his wooden leg, which set a chime of bells ringing triple bob-majors in his cerebellum. The bewil- dered Swede staggered with the blow, and the wary Peter, seizing a pocket-pistol which lay hard by, discharged it full at the head of the reeling Risingh. Let not my reader mis- take : it was not a murderous weapon loaded with ]iowder and ball, but a little sturdy stone pottle charged to the 22 338 HISTORY QF NEW YORK. muzzle with a double dram of true Dutch courage, which the knowing Antony Van Corlear carried about him by- way of replenishing his valor, and which had dropped from his wallet during his furious encounter with the drum- mer. The hideous weapon sang through the air, and, true- to its course as was the fragment of a rock discharged at Hector by bully Ajax, encountered the head of the gigantic Swede with matchless violence. This heaven-directed blow decided the battle. The pon- derous pericranium of General Jan Risingh sank upon his breast, his knees tottered under him, a death-like torpor seized upon his frame, and he tumbled to the earth with such violence that old Pluto started with affright, lest he should have broken through the roof of his infernal palace. His fall was the signal of defeat and victory : the Swedes gave way, the Dutch pressed forward ; the former took to their heels, the latter hotly pursued. Some entered with them, pell-mell, through the sally-port ; others stormed the bastion, and others scrambled over the curtain. Thus in a little while the fortress of Fort Christina, v.hich, like another Troy, had stood a siege of full ten hours, was carried by assault without the loss of a single man on either side. Victory, in the likeness of a gigantic ox-fly, sat perched upon the cocked hat of the gallant Stuyvesant, and it was declared by all the writers whom he hired to write the liistory of his expedition that on this memorable day he gained a sufficient quantity of glory to immortalize a dozen of the greatest heroes in Christendom ! CHAPTER IX. IN WHICH THE AUTHOR AND THE READER, WHILE REPOS- ING AFTER THE BATTLE, FALL INTO A VERY GRAVE DISCOURSE — AFTER WHICH IS RECORDED THE CONDUCT OF PETER STUYVESANT AFTER HIS VICTORY. Thanks to St. IN^icholas, we have siifely finished this tremendous battle : let us sit down, my worthy reader, and cool ourselves, for I am in a prodigious sweat and agi- tation. Truly, this fighting of battles is hot work, and if your great commanders did but know what trouble they give their historians, they would not have the conscience to achieve so many horrible victories. But methinks I hear my reader complain that throughout this boasted bat- tle there is not the least slaughter, nor a single individual maimed, if we except the unhappy Swede who was shorn of his queue by the trenchant blade of Peter Stuyvesant ; all which, he observes, is a great outrage on probability and highly injurious to the interest of the narration. This is certainly an objection of no little moment, but it arises entirely from the obscurity enveloping the remote periods of time about which I have undertaken to write. Thus, though doubtless, from the importance of the object and the prowess of the parties concerned, there must have been terrible carnage and prodigies of valor displayed be- fore the walls of Christina, yet, notwithstanding that I have consulted every history, manuscript, and tradition touching this memorable though long-forgotten battle, I cannot find mention made of a single man killed or wounded in the whole aflPair. This is, without doubt, owing to the extreme modesty of our forefathers, who, unlike their descendants, were never 339 340 HISTOEY OF NEW YORK. V prone to vaunt of their acliievements ; but it is a virtue which places their historian in a most embarrassing pre- dicament, for, having promised my readers a hideous and unparalleled battle, and having worked them up into a war- like and bloodthirsty state of mind, to put them off without any havoc and slaughter would have been as bitter a dis- appointment as to summon a multitude of good people to attend an execution and then cruelly balk them by a reprieve. Had the Fates only allowed me some half a score of dead men, I had been content ; for I would have made them such heroes as abounded in the olden time, but whose race is now unfortunately extinct, any one of whom, if we may believe those authentic writers the poets, could drive great armies like sheep before him and conquer and deso- late whole cities by his single arm. But seeing that I had not a single life at ray disposal, all that was left me was to make the most I could of my battle by means of kicks and cuffs and bruises and such like igno- ble wounds. And here I cannot but compare my dilemma^ in some sort, to that of the divine Milton, who, having arrayed with sublime preparation his immortal hosts against each other, is sadly put to it how to manage them, and how he shall make the end of his battle answer to the beginning ; inasmuch as, being mere spirits, he cannot deal a mortal blow, nor even give a flesh wound to any of his combatants. For my part, the greatest difficulty I found was, when I had once put my warriors in a passion and let them loose into the midst of the enemy, to keep them from doing mis- chief. Many a time had I to restrain the sturdy Peter from cleaving a gigantic Swede to the very waistband, or spitting, half a dozen little fellows on his sword like so many sparrows. And when I had set some hundred of missiles flying in the air, I did not dare to suffer one of them to reach the ground, lest it should have put an end to some unlucky Dutchman. HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 341 The reader cannot conceive how mortifying it is to a writer thus in a manner to have his hands tied, and how many temptinj^ opportunities I had to wink at where I might have made as fine a death-blow as any recorded iii history or song. From my own experience I begin to doubt most potently of the authenticity of many of Homer's stories. I verily believe that when he had once launched one of his favorite heroes among a crowd of the enemy he cut down many an honest fellow without any authority for so doing, excepting that he presented a fair mark, and that often a poor fellow was sent to grim Pluto's domains merely because he had a name that would give a sounding turn to a period. But I disclaim all such unprincipled liberties: let me but have truth and the law on my side, and no man would fight harder than myself; but since the various records I have consulted did not warrant it, I had too much conscience to kill a single soldier. By St. Nicholas, but it would have been a pretty piece of business ! My enemies, the critics, who I foresee will be ready enough to lay any crime they can discover at my door, might have charged me with murder outright, and I should have esteemed myself lucky to escape with no harsher verdict than manslaughter ! And now, gentle reader, that we are tranquilly sitting down here, smoking our pipes, permit me to indulge in a melancholy reflection which at this moment passes across my mind. How vain, liow fleeting, how uncertain are all those gaudy bubbles after which we are panting and toiling in this woild of fair delusions! The wealth which the miser has amassed with so many weary days, so many sleepless nights, a spendthrift heir may squander away in joyless prodigality ; the noblest monuments which 2)ride has ever reared to perpetuate a name the hand of time will shortly tumble into ruins ; and even the brightest laurels, gained by feats of arms, may wither and be for ever blighted by the chilling neglect of mankind. " How many illus- 342 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. trioiis heroes," says the good Boetius, " who were once the pride and glory of the age, hath the silence of historians buried in eternal oblivion !" And this it was that induced the Spartans, when they went to battle, solemnly to sacrifice to the Muses, supplicating that their achievements might be worthily recorded. Had not Homer tuned his lofty lyre, observes the elegant Cicero, the valor of Achilles had re- mained unsung. And such too, after all the toils and perils he had braved, after all the gallant actions lie had achieved, — such too had nearly been the fate of the chivalric Peter Stuyvesant, but that I fortunately stepped in and en- graved his name on the indelible tablet of history, just as the caitiff Time was silently brushing it away for ever! The more I reflect, the more I am astonished at the important character of the historian. Pie is the sovereign censor to decide upon the renown or infomy of his fellow- men. He is the patron of kings and conquerors on whom it depends whether they shall live in after ages or be for- gotten as were their ancestors before them. The tyrant may oppress while the object of his tyranny exists, but the his- torian possesses superior might, for his power extends even beyond the grave. The shades of departed and long-for- gotten heroes anxiously bend down from above while he writes, watching each movement of his pen, whether it shall pass by their names with neglect or inscribe them on the deathlciss pages of renown. Even the drop of ink which hangs trembling on his pen, which he may either dash upon the floor or waste in idle scrawlings, that very drop, which to him is not worth the twentieth part of a farthing, may be of incalculable value to some departed worthy — may elevate half a score in one moment to immortality who would have given w^orlds, had they possessed them, to ensure the glorious meed. Let not my readers imagine, however, that I am indulg- ing in vainglorious boastings or am anxious to blazon forth the importance of my tribe. On the contrary, I shrink HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 343 when I reflect on the awful responsibility we historians assume : I shudder to think what direful commotions and calamities we occasion in the world. I swear to thee, honest reader, as I am a man, I weep at the very idea ! Why, let me ask, are so many illustrious men daily tearing themselves away from the embraces of their families, slight- ing the smiles of beauty, despising the allurements of for- tune, and exposing themselves to the miseries of war? AVhy are kings desolating empires and depopulating whole countries? In short, what induces all great men, of all ages and countries, to commit so many victories and mis- deeds, and inflict so many miseries upon mankind and upon themselves, but the mere hope that some historian will kindly take them into notice and admit them into a corner of his volume? For, in short, the mighty object of all their toils, their hardships, and privations is nothing but immortal fame ; and what is immortal fame? Why, half a page of dirty paper! Alas! alas! how humiliating the idea that tlie renown of so great a man as Peter Stuyvesant should depend upon the pen of so little a man as Diedrich Knickerbocker ! And now, having refreshed ourselves after the fatigues and perils of the field, it behooves us to return once more to the scene of conflict and inquire what were the results of this renowned conquest. The fortress of Christina, being the fair metropolis and in a manner the key to New Sweden, its capture was speedily followed by the entire subjugation of the province. This was not a little pro- moted by the gallant and courteous deportment of the chivalric Peter. Though a man terrible in battle, yet in the hour of victory was he endued with a spirit generous, merciful, and humane. He vaunted not over his enemies, nor did he make defeat more galling by unmanly insults ; for, like that mirror of knightly virtue, the renowned Pa- ladin Orlando, he was more anxious to do great actions than to talk of thera after they were done. He put no 344 HISTOKY OF NEW YORK. V man to dcatli, ordered no houses to be burnt down, per- mitted no ravages to be perpetrated on the property of the vanquished, and even gave one of his bravest officers a se- vere admonishment with his walking-staff for having been detected in the act of sacking a hen-roost. He moreover issued a proclamation inviting the inhab- itants to submit to the authority of their High Mightinesses, but declaring, with unexampled clemency, that whoever refused should be lodged at the public expense in a goodly castle provided for the purpose, and have an armed ret- inue to wait on them in the bargain. In consequence of these beneficent terms about thirty Swedes stepped man- fully forward and took the oath of allegiance, in reward for which they were graciously permitted to remain on the banks of the Delaware, where their descendants reside at this very day. I am told, however, by divers observant travellers that they have never been able to get over the chapfallen looks of their ancestors, but that they still do strangely transmit from father to son manifest marks of the sound drubbing given them by the sturdy Amsterdammers. The whole country of New Sweden, having thus yielded to the arms of the triumphant Peter, was reduced to a colony called South River, and placed under the superin- tendence of a lieutenant-governor, subject to the control of the supreme government of New Amsterdam. This great dignitary was called Mynheer "William Beekman, or rather jBec/w-man, who derived his surname, as did Ovidius Naso of yore, from the lordly dimensions of his nose, which pro- jected from the centre of his countenance like the beak of a parrot. He was the great progenitor of the tribe of the Beekmans, one of the most ancient and honorable families of the province, the members of which do gratefully commem- orate the origin of their dignity — not, as your noble fam- ilies in England would do, by having a glowing proboscis emblazoned in their escutcheon, but — by one and all wearing a right goodly nose stuck in the very middle of their faces. J HISTOKY OF NEW YOKE. 345 Thus was this perilous enterprise gloriously terminated, with the loss of only two men — Wolfert Van Home, a tall spare man, who was knocked overboard by the boom of a sloop in a flaw of wind ; and fat Brom Van Buramel, who was suddenly carried off by an indigestion ; both, however, w^ere immortalized as having bravely fallen in the service of their country. True it is, Peter Stuyvesant had one of his limbs terribly fractured in the act of storming the fortress, but as it was fortunately his wooden leg, the wound was promptly and eSectually healed. And now nothing remains to this branch of my history but to mention that this immaculate hero and his victorious army returned joyously to the Manhattoes, where they made a solemn and triumphant entry, bearing with them the conquered Risingh and the remnant of his battered crew who had refused allegiance ; for it appears that the gigantic Swede had only fallen into a swoon at the end of the battle, from which he was speedily restored by a whole- some tweak of the nose. These captive heroes were lodged, according to the prom- ise of the governor, at the public expense, in a fair and spacious castle, being the prison of state, of which Stoffel BrinkerhofF, the immortal conqueror of Oyster Bay, was appointed governor, and which has ever since remained in the possession of his descendants.* It was a pleasant and goodly sight to witness the joy of the people of New Amsterdam at beholding their warriors once more return from this war in the wilderness. The old women thronged round Antony Van Corlear, who gave the whole history of the campaign with matchless accuracy, saving that he took the credit of fighting the whole battle himself, and especially of vanquishing the stout Risingh ; * This castle, though very much altered and modernized, is still in being, and stands at the corner of Pearl street, facing Coentie's slip. 346 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. which he considered himself as clearly entitled to, seeing that it was effected by his own stone pottle. The schoolmasters throughout the town gave holiday to their little urchins, who followed in droves after the drums, with paper caps on their heads and sticks in their breeches,, thus taking the first lesson in the art of war. As to the sturdy rabble, they thronged at the heels of Peter Stuy- vesant wherever he went, waving their greasy hats in the air and shouting " Hardkoppig Piet for ever!" It was indeed a day of roaring rout and jubilee. A huge dinner was prepared at the stadthouse in honor of the con- querors, where were assembled in one glorious constellation the great and little luminaries of New Amsterdam. There were the lordly schout and his obsequious deputy; the burgomasters with their officious schepens at their elbows; the subaltern officers at the elbows of the schepens; and so on down to the lowest hanger-on of police, every tag hav- ing his rag at his side to finish his pipe, drink off his heel- taps, and laugh at his flights of immortal dulness. In short — for a city feast is a city feast all the world over, and has been a city feast ever since the creation — the din- ner went off much the same as do our great corporation junketings and Fourth-of-July banquets. Loads of fish, flesh, and fowl were devoured, oceans of liquor drunk, thou- sands of pipes smoked, and many a dull joke honored with much obstreperous fat-sided laughter. I must not omit to mention that to this far-famed victory Peter Stuyvesant was indebted for another of his many titles, for so hugely delighted were the honest burghers with his achievements that they unanimously honored him with the name of Pieter de Groodt — that is to say, Peter the Great, or, as it was translated into English by the people of Nev/ Amsterdam for the benefit of their New England visitors, Piet de Pig — an appellation which he maintained even unto the day of his death. BOOK VII. CONTAINING THE THIRD PART OF THE REIGN OF PETER THE HEADSTRONG— HIS TROUBLES WITH THE BRITISH NATION, AND THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE DUTCH DYNASTY. CHAPTER L HOW PETER STUYVESANT RELIEVED THE SOVEREIGN PEO- PLE FROM THE BURDEN OF TAKING CARE OF THE NATION ; WITH SUNDRY PARTICULARS OF HLS CONDUCT IN TIME OF PEACE, AND OF THE RISE OF A GREAT DUTCH ARISTOCRACY. The history of the reign of Peter Stuyvesant furnishes an edifying picture of the cares and vexations inseparable from sovereignty, and a solemn warning to all who are ambitious of attaining the seat of honor. Though return- ing in triumph and crowned with victory, his exultation was checked on observing the abuses which had sprung up in New Amsterdam during his short absence. His walk- ing-staff, which he had sent home to act as his vicegerent, had, it is true, kept his council-chamber in order, the coun- sellors eying it with av/e as it lay in grim i-epose upon the table, and smoking their pipes in silence ; but its control extended not out of doors. The populace, unfortunately, had had too much their own way under the slack though fitful reign of AViiliam the Testy ; and though upon the accession of Peter Stuy- vesant they had felt, with the instinctive perception which mobs as well as cattle possess, that the reins of govern- 347 348 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. ment had passed into stronger hands, yet could they not help fretting and chafing and champing upon the bit in restive silence. Scarcely, therefore, had he departed on his expedition against the Swedes than the old factions of AYilliam Kieft's, reign had again thrust their heads above water. Pot-house meetings were again held to " discuss the state of the nation," ■where cobblers, tinkers, and tailors, the self-dubbed " friends of the people," once more felt themselves inspired with the gift of legislation and undertook to lecture on every move- ment of government. Now, as Peter Stuyvesant had a singular inclination to govern the province by his individual Avill, his first move on his return was to put a stop to this gratuitous legisla- tion. Accordingly, one evening, when an inspired cobbler was holding forth to an assemblage of the kind, the intrepid Peter suddenly made his appearance, with his ominous walk- ing-staff in his hand and a countenance sufficient to petrify a millstone. The whole meeting was tlirovm into confu- gion ; the orator stood aghast, with open mouth and trem- bling knees, w^hile " horror ! tyranny ! liberty ! rights ! taxes! death! destruction!" and a host of other patriotic phrases were bolted forth before he hud time to close his lips. Peter took no notice of the skulking throng, but strode up to the brawling bully-ruffian, and, pulling out a huge silver watch, which might have served in times of yore as a town-clock, and which is still retained by his descendants as a family curiosity, requested tlie orator to mend it and set it going. The orator humbly confessed it was utterly out of his power, as he was unacquainted with the nature of its construction. " Nay, but," said Peter, " try your ingenuity, man : you see all the springs and wheels, and how easily the clumsiest hand may stop it and pull it to pieces ; and v/liy should it not be equally easy to regu- late as to stop it?" The orator declared that his trade was wholly difierent — that he was a poor cobbler, and had never HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 349 meddled with a watch in his life — that there were men skilled in the art whose business it was to attend to those matters, but for his part he should only mar the workman- ship and put the w^hole in confusion. " Why, harkee, mas- ter of mine," cried Peter, turning suddenly upon him with a countenance that almost petrified the patcher of shoes into a perfect lapstone, " dost thou pretend to meddle with the movements of government, to regulate and correct and patch and col'ble a complicated machine, the principles of which are above thy comprehension, and its simplest ope- rations too subtle for thy understanding, when thou canst not correct a trifling error in a common piece of mechan- ism, the whole mystery of which is open to thy inspection ? Hence with thee to the leather and stone which are emblems of thy head ; cobble thy shoes and confine thyself to the vocation for which Heaven has fitted thee ; but," elevating his voice until it made the welkin ring, " if ever I catch thee or any of thy tribe meddling again with afflxirs of government, by St. Nicholas but I'll have every mother's bastard of ye flayed alive, and your hides stretched for drum- heads, that ye may thenceforth make a noise to some purpose !" This threat and the tremendous voice in which it was uttered caused the whole multitude to quake with fear. The hair of the orator rose on his head like his own swine's bristles, and not a knight of the thimble present but his heart died within him, and he felt as though he could hn,ve verily escaped through the eye of a needle. The assembly dispersed in silent consternation ; the pseudo statesmen who had hitherto undertaken to regulate public aflairs were now fain to stay at home, hold their tongues, and take care of their families ; and party feuds died away to such a de- gree that many thriving keepers of taverns and dramshops were utterly ruined for want of business. But, though this measure produced the desired effect in putting an ex- tinguisher on the new lights just brightening up, yet did it tend to injure the popularity of the Great Peter with the 350 HISTORY pF NEW YORK. thinking part of the community ; that is to say, that part which think for others instead of for themselves, or, in other words, who attend to everybody's business but their own. These accused the old governor of being highly aristocratical ; and in truth there seems to have been somef ground for such an accusation, for he carried himself with a lofty soldier-like air, and was somewhat particular in his dress, appearing, when not in uniform, in rich apparel of the antique flaundrish cut, and was especially noted for having his sound leg (which was a very comely one) always arrayed in a red stocking and high-heeled shoe. Justice he often dispensed in the primitive patriarchal way seated on the " stoep " before his door under the shade of a great buttonwood tree ; but all visits of form and state were received with something of court ceremony in the best par- lor, where Antony the Trumpetor officiated as high cham- berlain. On public occasions he appeared with great pomp of equipage, and always rode to church in a yellow wagon with flaming red wheels. These symptoms of state and ceremony, as we have hint- ed, were much cavilled at by the thinking (and talking) part of the community. They had been accustomed to find easy access to their former governors, and in particu- lar had lived on terms of extreme intimacy with William the Testy, and they accused Peter Stuyvesant of assuming too much dignity and reserve and of wrapping himself in mystery. Others, however, have pretended to discover in all this a shrewd policy on the part of the old governor. It is certainly of the first importance, say they, that a country should be governed by wise men ; but then it is almost equally important that the people should think them wise, for this belief alone can produce willing subordina- tion. To keep up, however, this desirable confidence in rulers the people should be allowed to see as little of them as possible. It is the mystery which envelops great men that gives them half their greatness. There is a kind of HISTORY OF Is^EW YORK. 351 superstitious reverence for office which leads us to exagge- rate the merits of the occupant, and to suppose that he must be wiser than common men. He, however, who gains access to cabinets soon finds out by what foolishness the world is governed. He finds that there is quackery in legislation as in everything else — that rulers have their whims and errors as well as other men, and are not so won- derfully superior as he had imagined, since even he may occasionally confute them in argument. Thus awe subsides into confidence, confidence inspires familiarity, and famil- iarity produces contempt. Such was the case, say they, with William the Testy. By making himself too easy of access he enabled every scrub politician to measure wits with him, and to find out the true dimensions not only of his person, but of his mind ; and thus it was that by being familiarly scanned he was discovered to be a very little man. Peter Stuyvesant, on the contrary, say they, by con- ducting himself with dignity and loftiness, was looked up to with great reverence. As he never gave his reasons for anything he did, the public gave him credit for very pro- found ones ; every movement, however intrinsically unim- portant, was a matter of speculation ; and his very red stockings excited some respect, as being difierent from the stockings of other men. Another charge against Peter Stuyvesant was that he had a great leaning in favor of the patricians ; and indeed in his time rose many of those mighty Dutch families which have taken such vigorous root and branched out so luxuriantly in our State. Some, to be sure, w'ere of earlier date, such as the Van Kortlandts, the Van Zandts, the Ten Broecks, the Hardenbroecks, and others of Pavonian renown, who gloried in the title of " Discoverers," from having been engaged in the nautical expedition from Com- nmnipaw in which they so heroically braved the terrors of Hell-gate and Buttermilk Channel and discovered a site for New Amsterdam. 352 HISTORY vOF NEW YORK. Others claimed to themselves the appellation of Conquer- ors, from their gallant achievements in New Sweden and their victory over the Yankees at Oyster Bay. Such was that list of warlike worthies heretofore enumerated, begin- ning with the Van Wycks, the Van Dycks, and the Teri Eycks, and extending to the Rutgers, the Bensons, the BrinkerhofT^, and the Schermerhorns — a roll equal to the Doomsday Book of William the Conqueror, and establishing the heroic origin of many an ancient aristocrat! cal Dutch family. These, after all, are the only legitimate nobility and lords of the soil ; these are the real " beavers of the IManhattoes ;" and much does it grieve me in modern days to see them elbowed aside by foreign invaders, and more especially by those ingenious people, " the Sons of the Pil- grims," who out-bargain them in the market, out-speculate them on the exchange, out-top them in fortune, and run up mushroom palaces so high that the tallest Dutch family mansion has not wind enough left for its weathercock. In the proud days of Peter Stuyvesant, however, the good old Dutch aristocracy loomed out in all its grandeur. The burly burgher, in round-crowned flaundrish hat with brim of vast circumference, in portly gaberdine and bulb- ous multiplicity of breeches, sat on his " stoep" and smoked his pipe in lordly silence, nor did it ever enter his brain that the active, restless Yankee whom he saw through his half-shut eyes worrying about in dog-day heat, ever intent on the main chance, was one day to usurp control over these goodly Dutch domains. Already, however, the races regarded each other with disparaging eye. The Yankees sneeringly spoke of the round-crowned burghers of the Manhattoes as the " Copperheads ;" while the latter, glory- ing in their ov/n nether rotundity and observing the slack galligaskins of their rivals flapping like an empty sail against the mast, retorted upon them with the opprobrious appellation of " Platter-breeches." CHAPTER II. HOW PETER STUYVESANT LABORED TO CIVILIZE THE COM- MUNITY — HOW HE WAS A GREAT PROMOTER OF HOLI- DAYS — HOW HE INSTITUTED KISSING ON NEW YEAR's DAY — HOW HE DISTRIBUTED FIDDLES THROUGHOUT THE NEW NETHERLANDS — HOW HE VENTURED TO RE- FORM THE ladies' PETTICOATS, AND HOW HE CAUGHT A TARTAR. From what I have recounted in the foregoing chapter I would not have it imagined that the great Peter was a tyrannical potentate ruling with a rod of iron. On the contrary, where the dignity of office permitted he abounded in generosity and condescension. If he refused the brawl- ing multitude the right of misrule, he at least endeavored to rule them in righteousness. To spread abundance in the land he obliged the bakers to give thirteen loaves to the dozen — a golden rule which remains a monument of his beneficence. So far from indulging in unreasonable aus- terity, he delighted to see the poor and the laboring-man rejoice, and for this purpose he was a great promoter of holidays. Under his reign there was a great cracking of eggs at Paas or Easter; Whitsuntide or Pinxter also flourished in all its bloom ; and never were stockings better filled on the eve of the blessed St. Nicholas. New Year's Da,y, however, was his favorite festival, and was ushered in by the ringing of bells and firing of guns. On that genial day the fountains of hospitality were broken up, and the whole community was deluged with cherry brandy, true Hollands, and mulled cider ; every house was a temple to the jolly god ; and many a provident va^a- 23 353 354 HISTORY 6f new YORK. bond got drunk cut of pure economy, taking in liquor enough gratis to serve him half a year afterwards. The great assemblage, however, was at the governor's house, whither repaired all the burghers of New Amster- dam with their wives and daughters, pranked out in their' best attire. On this occasion the good Peter was devoutly observant of the pious Dutch rite of kissing the women- kind for a happy new year; and it is traditional that Antony the Trumpeter, who acted as gentleman usher, took toll of all who were young and handsome as they passed through the antechamber. This venerable custom, thus happily introduced, was followed with such zeal by high and low that on New Year's Day, during the reign of Peter Stuyvesant, New Amsterdam was the most thorough- ly be-kissed community in all Christendom. Another great measure of Peter Stuyvesant for public improvement was the distribution of fiddles throughout the land. These were placed in the hands of veteran negroes, who were despatched as missionaries to every part of the province. This measure, it is said, was first suggested by Antony the Trumpeter; and the effect was marvellous. Instead of those " indignation meetings " set on foot in the time of William the Testy, where men met together to rail at public abuses, groan over the evils of the times, and make each other miserable, there w^ere joyous gatherings of the two sexes to dance and make merry. Now were in- stituted " quilting bees " and " husking bees," and other rural assemblages, where, under the inspiring influence of the fiddle, toil was enlivened by gayety and followed up by the dance. " Raising bees " also were frequent, where houses sprang up at the wagging of the fiddlestick, as the walls of Thebes sprang up of yore to the sound of the lyre of Amphion. Jolly autumn, which pours its treasures over hill and dale, was in those days a season for the lifting of the heel as well as the heart ; labor came dancing in the train of HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 355 abundance, and frolic prevailed throughout the land. Happy days! when the yeomanry of the Nieuw Neder- landts were merry rather than wise, and when the notes of the fiddle, those harbingers of good humor and good will, resounded at the close of the day from every hamlet along the Hudson ! Nor was it in rural communities alone that Peter Stuy- vesant introduced his favorite engine of civilization. Under his rule the fiddle acquired that potent sway in New Am- sterdam which it has ever since retained. Weekly assem- blages were held, not in heated ballrooms at midnight hours, but on Saturday afternoons, by the golden light of the sun, on the green lawn of the Battery, with Antony the Trumpeter for master of ceremonies. Here would the good Peter take his seat under the spreading trees, among the old burghers and their wives, and watch the mazes of the dance. Here would he smoke his pipe, crack his joke, and forget the rugged toils of war in the sweet oblivious festivities of peace, giving a nod of approbation to those of the young men who shuflied and kicked most vigorously, and now and then a hearty smack, in all honesty of soul, to the buxom lass who held out longest and tired down every competitor — infallible proof of her being the best dancer. Once, it is true, the harmony of these meetings was in danger of interruption, A young belle just returned from a visit to Holland, who of course led the fashions, made her appearance in not more than half a dozen petticoats, and these of alarming shortness. A whisper and a flutter ran through the assembly. The young men of course were lost in admiration, but the old ladies were shocked in the extreme, especially those who had marriageable daughters ; the young ladies blushed and felt excessively for the " poor thing," and even the governor himself appeared to be in some kind of perturbation. To complete the confusion of the good folks, she under- 356 HISTOEY 6F new YORK. took, in the course of a jig, to describe some figures in algebra taught her by a dancing-master at Rotterdam. Unfortunately, at the highest flourish of her feet some vagabond zephyr obtruded his services, and a display of the graces took place, at which all the ladies present were thrown into great consternation ; several grave country members were not a little moved, and the good Peter Stuyvesant himself was grievously scandalized. The shortness of the female dresses, which had continued in fashion ever since the days of William Kieft, had long offended his eye, and, though extremely averse to meddling with the petticoats of the ladies, yet he immediately recom- mended that every one should be furnished with a flounce to the bottom. He likewise ordered that the ladies, and indeed the gentlemen, should use no other step in dancing than "shuflie and turn" and "double trouble," and for- bade, under pain of his high displeasure, any young lady thenceforth to attempt what was termed "exhibiting the graces." These were the only restrictions he ever imposed upon the sex, and these were considered by them as tyrannical oppressions, and resisted with that becoming spirit mani- fested by the gentle sex whenever their privileges are in- vaded. In fact, Antony Van Corlear — who, as has been shown, was a sagacious man, experienced in the w^ays of women — took a private occasion to intimate to the governor that a conspiracy was forming among the young vrouws of New Amsterdam, and that, if the matter were pushed any further, there was danger of their leaving off petticoats altogether ; whereupon the good Peter shrugged his shoul- ders, dropped the subject, and ever after suffered the women to wear their petticoats and cut their capers as high as they pleased — a privilege which they have jealously maintained in the Manhattoes uuto the present day. CHAPTER III. HOW TROUBLES THICKEN ON THE PROVINCE — HOW IT IS THREATENED BY THE HELDERBERGERS, THE MERRY- LANDERS, AND THE GIANTS OF THE SUSQUEHANNA. In the last two chapters I have regaled the reader with a delectable picture of the good Peter and his metropolis during an interval of peace. It was, however, but a bit of blue sky in a stormy day ; the clouds are again gathering up from all points of the compass, and, if I am not mis- taken in my forebodings, we shall have rattling weather in the ensuing chapters. It is with some communities as it is with certain meddle- some individuals : they have a wonderful facility at getting into scrapes, and I have always remarked that those are most prone to get in who have the least talent at getting out again. This is doubtless owing to the excessive valor of those states, for I have likewise noticed that this ram- pant quality is always most frothy and fussy where most confined, which accounts for its vaporing so amazingly in little states, little men, and ugly little women more espe- cially. Such is the case with this little province of the Nieuw Nederlandts, which by its exceeding valor has already drawn upon itself a host of enemies — has had fighting enough to satisfy a province twice its size, and is in a fair way of becoming an exceedingly forlorn, well-belabored, and woe-begone little province. All v.hich was providentially ordered to give interest and sublimity to this pathetic history. The first interruption to the halcyon quiet of Peter 357 358 HISTORY 6f new YORK. Stuyvesant was caused by liostile intelligence from the old belligerent nest of Kensellaerstein. Killian, the lordly pa- troon of Rensellaerwick, was again in the field at the head of his myrmidons of the Helderberg, seeking to annex the. whole of the Kaatskill Mountains to his domains. The Indian tribes of these mountains had likewise taken up the hatchet and menaced the venerable Dutch settlement of Esopus. Fain would I entertain the reader with the triumphant campaign of Peter Stuyvesant in the liaunted regions of those mountains, but that I hold all Indian conflicts to be mere barbaric brawls, unworthy of the pen which has re- corded the classic war of Fort Christina ; and as to these Helderberg commotions, they are among the flatulencies which from time to time afflict the bowels of this ancient province as with a wind-colic, and which I deem it seemly and decent to pass over in silence. The next storm of trouble was from the south. Scarcely had the worthy Mynheer Beekman got warm in the seat of authority on the South River than enemies began to spring up all around him. Hard by was a formidable race of savages inhabiting the gentle region watered by the Sus- quehanna, of whom the following mention is made by Master Hariot in his excellent history: " The Susquesahanocks are a giantly people, strange in proportion, behavior, and attire, their voice sounding from them as out of a cave. Their tobacco-pipes were three quarters of a yard long, carved at the great end with a bird, beare, or other device, sufficient to beat out the brains of a horse. The calfe of one of their legges measured three quarters of a yard about ; the rest of the limbs proportion- able."* These gigantic savages and smokers caused no little dis- quiet in the mind of Mynheer Beekman, threatening to cause a famine of tobacco in the land ; but his most formid- * Harlot's Journal, Purch. Pilgrims. HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 359 able enemy was the roaring, roystering Euglisli colony of Maryland, or, as it was anciently written, Merryland, so called because the inhabitants, not having the fear of the Lord before their eyes, were prone to make merry and get fuddled with mint-julep and apple-toddy. They were, moreover, great horse-racers and cock-fighters, mighty wrestlers and jumpers, and enormous consumers of hoe- cake and bacon. They lay claim to be the first inventors of those recondite beverages cock-tail, stone-fence, and sherry cobbler, and to have discovered the gastronomical merits of terrapins, soft crabs, and canvas-back ducks. This rantipole colony, founded by Lord Baltimore, a British nobleman, was managed by his agent, a swaggering Englishman, commonly called Fendall; that is to say, "of- fend all," a name given him for his bullying propensities. These were seen in a message to Mynheer Beekman, threat- ening him, unless he immediately swore allegiance to Lord Baltimore as the rightful lord of the soil, to come at the head of the roaring boys of Merryland and the giants of the Susquehanna and sweep him and his Nederlandters out of the country. The trusty sword of Peter Stuyvesant almost leaped from its scabbard when he received missives from Mynheer Beek- man informing him of the swaggering menaces of the bully Fendall ; and as to the giantly warriors of the Susquehanna, nothing would have more delighted him than a bout, hand to hand, with half a score of them, having never encoun- tered a giant in the whole course of his campaigns, unless •we may consider the stout Risingh as such ; and he was but a little one. Nothing prevented his marching instantly to the South River and enacting scenes still more glorious than those of Fort Christina but the necessity of first putting a stop to the increasing aggressions and inroads of the Y'ankees, so as not to leave an enemy in his rear ; but he wrote to Myn- heer Beekman to keep up a bold front and stout heart, 360 HISTORY O]^ NEW YORK. promising, as soon as he had settled affairs in the East, that he would hasten to the South with his burly warriors of the Hudson, to lower the crests of the giants and mar the merriment of the Merrylanders. CHAPTER IV. HOW PETER STUYVESANT ADVENTURED INTO THE EAST COUNTRY, AND HOW HE FARED THERE. To explain the apparently sudden movement of Peter Stuyvesant against the crafty men of the East Country, I would observe that during his campaigns on the South Eiver and in the enchanted regions of the Catskill Moun- tains the twelve tribes of the East had been more than usually active in prosecuting their subtle scheme for the subjugation of the Nieuw Nederlandts. Independent of the incessant maraudings among hen- roosts and squattings along the border, invading armies would penetrate from time to time into the very heart of the country. As their prototypes of yore went forth into the land of Cauaan with their wives and their chil- dren, their men-servants and their maid-servants, their flocks and herds, to settle themselves down in the land and possess it, so these chosen people of modern days would progress through the country in patriarchal style, conducting carts and wagons laden with household fur- niture, with women and children piled on top and pots and kettles dangling beneath. At the tail of these vehi- cles would stalk a crew of long-limbed, lank-sided var- lets, with axes on their shoulders and packs on their backs, resolutely bent upon " locating " themselves, as they termed it, and improving the country. These were the most dan- gerous kind of invaders. It is true they were guilty of no overt acts of hostility ; but it was notorious that wherever they got a footing the honest Dutchmen gradually disap- peared, retiring slowly as do the Indians before the white 361 362 HISTORY t)F NEW YORK. men, being in some way or other talked and chaffered and bargained and swapped — and, in plain English, elbowed — out of all those rich bottoms and fertile nooks in which our Dutch yeomanry are prone to nestle themselves. Peter Stuyvesant Avas at length roused to this kind of war in disguise, by which the Yankees were craftily aiming to subjugate his dominions. He was a man easily taken in, it is true, as all great-hearted men are apt to be ; but if he once found it out, his wrath was terrible. He now threw diplomacy to the dogs, determined to appear no more by ambassadors, but to repair in person to the great council of the Amphictyons, bearing the sword in one hand and the olive-branch in the other, and giving them their choice of sincere and honest peace or open and iron war. His privy councillors were astonished and dismayed when he announced his determination. For once they ventured to remonstrate, setting forth the rashness of venturing his sacred person in the midst of a strange and barbarous peo- ple. They might as well have tried to turn a rusty weath- ercock with a broken-winded bellows. In the fiery heart of the iron -headed Peter sat enthroned the five kinds of courage described by Aristotle, and had the philosopher enumerated five hundred more, I verily believe he w^ould have possessed them all. As to that better part of valor called discretion, it was too cold-blooded a virtue for his tropical temperament. Summoning, therefore, to his presence his trusty follower, Antony Van Corlear, he commanded him to hold himself in readiness to accompany him the following morning on this his hazardous enterprise. Kow, Antony the Trumpeter was by this time a little stricken in years, yet by dint of keeping up a good heart and having never known care or sorrow (having never been married), he was still a hearty, jocund, rubicund, gamesome wag, and of great capacity in the doublet. This last was ascribed to his living a jolly HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 363 life on those domains at the Hook which Peter Stuyvesant had granted to him for his gallantry at Fort Casirair. Be this as it may, there was nothing that more delighted Antony than this command of the great Peter, for he could have followed the stout-heaited old governor to the world's end with love and loyalty ; and he moreover still remem- bered the frolicking and dancing and bundling and other disports of the East Country, and entertained dainty recol- lection of numerous kind and buxom lasses whom he longed exceedingly again to encounter. Thus then did this mirror of hardihood set forth, with no other attendant but his trumpeter, upon one of the most perilous enterprises ever recorded in the annals of knight- errantry. For a single warrior to venture ojienly among a whole nation of foes — but, above all, for a plain, down- right Dutchman to think of negotiating with the whole council of New England ! — never was there known a more desperate undertaking ! Ever since I have entered upon the chronicles of this peerless but hitherto uncelebrated chieftain has he kept me in a state of incessant action and anxiety with the toils and dangers he is constantly en- countering. Oh for a chapter of the tranquil reign of Wouter Van Twiller, that I might repose on it as on a feather bed ! Is it not enough, Peter Stuyvesant, that I have once al- ready rescued thee from the machinations of these terrible Amphictyons by bringing the powers of witchcraft to thine aid ? Is it not enough that I have followed thee undaunt- ed, like a guardian spirit, into the midst of the horrid bat- tle of Fort Christina ? that I have been put incessantly to my trumps to keep thee safe and sound, now warding off with my single pen the shower of dastard blows that fell upon thy rear, now narrowly shielding thee from a deadly thrust by a mere tobacco-box, now casing thy dauntless skull with adamant, when even thy stubborn ram beaver failed to resist the sword of the stout Kisingh, and now not merely 364 HISTOKY OF NEW YORK. bringing thee off alive, but triumphant, from the clutches of the gigantic Swede by the desperate means of a paltry- stone pottle? Is not all this enough, but must thou still be plunging into new difficulties and hazarding in head- long enterprises thyself, thy trumpeter, and thy historian ? And now the ruddy-faced Aurora, like a buxom cham- bermaid, draws aside the sable curtains of the night, and out bounces from his bed the jolly red-haired Phcebus, startled at being caught so late in the embraces of Dame Thetis. With many a stable-boy oath he harnesses his brazen-footed steeds, and whips and lashes and splashes up the firmament, like a loitering coachman half an hour be- hind his time. And now behold that imp of fame and prowess, the headstrong Peter, bestriding a raw-boned, switch-tailed charger, gallantly arrayed in full regimentals, and bracing on his thigh that trusty brass-hilted sword which had wrought such fearful deeds on the banks of the Delaware. Behold, hard, after him his doughty trumpeter Van Cor- lear, mounted on a broken-winded, wall-eyed, calico mare, his stone pottle, which had laid low the mighty Hisingh, slung under his arm, and his trumpet displayed vauntingly in his right hand, decorated with a gorgeous banner on which is emblazoned the great beaver of the Manhattoes. See them proudly issuing out of the city gate, like an iron- clad hero of yore with his faithful squire at his heels, the populace following with their eyes and shouting many a parting wish and hearty cheering : Farewell, Hardkoppig Piet ! Farewell, honest Antony ! Pleasant be your v/ay- faring — prosperous your return ! The stoutest hero that ever drew a sword, and the worthiest trumpeter that ever trod shoe-leather. Legends are lamentably silent about the events that be- fell our adventurers in this their adventurous travel, ex- cepting the Stuyvesant manuscript, which gives the sub- stance of a pleasant little heroic poem written on the HISTOKY OF NEW YOKK. 365 occasion by Dominie iEgidius Liiyck,^ who appears to have been the poet-laureate of New Amsterdam. This inestimable manuscript assures us that it was a rare spectacle to behold the great Peter and his loyal follower hailing the morning sun and rejoicing in the clear counte- nance of nature as they pranced it through tlie pastoral scenes of Bloemen Dael, which in those days was a sweet and rural valley, beautified with many a bright wild-flower, refreshed by many a pure streamlet, and enlivened here and there by a delectable little Dutch cottage sheltered under some sloping hill and almost buried in embowering trees. Now did they enter upon the confines of Connecticut, where they encountered many grievous difficulties and perils. At one place they were assailed by a troop of country squires and militia colonels, who, mounted on goodly steeds, hung upon their rear for several miles, harassing them exceedingly with guesses and questions, more espe- cially the w^orthy Peter, whose silver-chased leg excited not a little marvel. At another place, hard by the renowned town of Stamford, they were set upon by a great and mighty legion of church deacons, who imperiously de- manded of them five shillings for travelling on Sunday, and threatened to carry them captive to a neighboring church whose steeple peered above the trees ; but these the valiant Peter put to rout with little difficulty, insomuch that they bestrode their canes and galloped off in horrible confusion, leaving their cocked hats behind in the hurry of their flight. But not so easily did he escape from the hands of a crafty man of Pyquag, who with undaunted persever- ance and repeated onsets fairly bargained him out of his goodly switch-tailed charger, leaving in place thereof a villainous foundered Narragansett pacer. * This Luyck was moreover rector of the Latin School in Nieuw Nederlandts, 1663. There are two })ieces addressed to iEgidius Lnyck in D, Selyn's MSS. of poesies, upon his marriage with Judith Isen- doorn. Old MS. 366 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. But, maugre all these hardships, they pursued their journey cheerily along the course of the soft-flowing Con- necticut, whose gentle waves, says the song, roll through many a fertile vale and sunny plain, now reflecting the lofty spires of the bustling city and now the rural beauties of the humble hamlet, now echoing with the busy hum of commerce and now with the cheerful song of the peasant. At every town would Peter Stuyvesant, wlio was noted for warlike punctilio, order the sturdy Antony to sound a courteous salutation, though the manuscript observes that the inhabitants w^ere throw^n into great dismay when they heard of his approach. For the fame of his incomj)arabIe achievements on the Delaware had spread throughout the East Country, and they dreaded lest he had come to take vengeance on their manifold transgressions. But the good Peter rode through these towns w'ith a smiling aspect, waving his hand with inexpressible majesty and condescension ; for he verily believed that the old clothes which these ingenious people had thrust into their broken windows, and the festoons of dried apples and peaches which ornamented the fronts of their houses, were so many decorations in honor of his approach, as it was tlie custom in the days of chivalry to compliment renowned heroes by sumptuous displays of tapestry and gorgeous furniture. The w^omen crowded to the doors to gaze upon him as he passed, so much does prowess in arms delight the gentle sex. The little children, too, ran after him in troops, staring with wonder at his regimentals, his brimstone breeches, and the silver garniture of his wooden leg. Nor must I omit to mention the joy which many strapping wenches betrayed at beholding the jovial Van Corlear, who had whilom delighted them so much with his trumpet when he bore the great Peter's challenge to the Amphic- tyons. The kind-hearted Antony alighted from his calico mare and kissed them nil with infinite loving-kindness, and HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 367 was right pleased to see a crew of little trumpeters crowd- ing round him for his blessing ; each of whom he patted on the head, bade him be a good boy, and gave him a penny to buy molasses candy. CHAPTER V. HOW THE YANKEES SECRETLY SOUGHT THE AID OF THE BRITISH CABINET IN THEIR HOSTILE SCHEMES AGAINST THE MANHATTOES. Now, SO it happened that while the great and good Peter Stuyvesant, followed by his trusty squire, was making his chivalric progress through the East Country a dark and direful scheme of war against his beloved province was forming in that nursery of monstrous projects, the British Cabinet. This, we are confidently informed, was the result of the secret instigations of the great council of the league, who, finding themselves totally incompetent to vie in arms with the heavy-stern ed warriors of the Manhattoes and their iron-headed commander, sent emissaries to the British gov- ernment setting forth in eloquent language the wonders and delights of this delicious little Dutch Canaan, and implor- ing that a force might be sent out to invade it by sea, while they should co-operate by land. These emissaries arrived at a critical juncture, just as the British Lion was beginning to bristle up his mane and wag his tail ; for we are assured by the anonymous writer of the Stuyvesant manuscript that the astounding victory of Peter Stuyvesant at Fort Christina had resounded throughout Europe, and his annexation of the territory of New Sweden had awakened the jealousy of the British Cabinet for their wild lands at the south. This jealousy was brought to a head by the representations of Lord Baltimore, who declared that the territory thus annexed lay within the lands granted to him by the British Crown, and he claimed to be protected 36S HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 369 in his rights. Lord Sterling, another British subject, claimed the whole of Nassau or Long Island, once the Ophir of AVilliam the Testy, but now the kitchen-garden of the Manhattoes, which he declared to be British terri- tory by the right of discovery, but unjustly usurped by the Nederlandters. The result of all these rumors and representations was a sudden zeal on the part of His Majesty Charles the Second for the safety and well-being of his transatlantic possessions, and especially for the recovery of the New Netherlands, which Yankee logic had, somehow or other, proved to be a continuity of the territory taken possession of for the Brit- ish Crown by the Pilgrims when they landed on Plymouth Pock, fugitives from British oppression. All this goodly land, thus wrongfully held by the Dutchmen, he presented in a fit of affection to his brother the duke of York — a donation truly royal, since none but great sovereigns have a right to give av/ay what does not belong to them. That this munificent gift might not be merely nominal. His Majesty ordered that an armament should be straightway despatched to invade the city of New Amsterdam by land and w^ater and put his brother in complete possession of the premises. Thus critically situated are the affairs of the New Neder- landters. While the honest burghers are smoking their pipes in sober security, and the privy councillors are snor- ing in the council-chamber, while Peter the Headstrong is undauntedly making his way through the East Country in the confident hope by honest words and manly deeds to bring the grand council to ter-ns, a hostile fleet is sweeping like a thunder-cloud across the Atlantic, soon to rattle a storm of war about the ears of the dozing Nederlandters and to put the mettle of their governor to the trial. But, come w^hat may, I here pledge my veracity that in all warlike conflicts and doubtful perplexities he will ever acquit himself like a gallant, noble-minded, obstinate old 24 370 HISTOEY OF NEW YORK. cavalier. Forward, then, to the charge! Shine out, pro- pitious stars, on the renowned city of the Manhattoes, and the blessing of St. Nicholas go with thee, honest Peter Stuy vesant ! CHAPTER VI. bF PETER STUYVESANt's EXPEDITION INTO THE EAST COUNTRY, SHOWING THAT, THOUGH AN OLD BIRD, HE DID NOT UNDERSTAND TRAP. Great nations resemble great men in this particular, that their greatness is seldom known until they get in trouble : adversity, therefore, has been wisely denominated the ordeal of true greatness, which, like gold, can never re- ceive its real estimation until it has passed through the furnace. In proportion, therefore, as a nation, a commu- nity, or an individual (possessing the inherent quality of greatness) is involved in perils and misfortunes, in propor- tion does it rise in grandeur, and even when sinking under calamity makes, like a house on fire, a more glorious dis- play than ever it did in the fairest period of its prosperity. The vast empire of China, though teeming with popula- tion and imbibing and concentrating the wealth of nations, has vegetated through a succession of drowsy ages, and were it not for its internal revolution and the subversion of its ancient government by the Tartars might have pre- sented nothing but a dull detail of monotonous prosperity. Pompeii and Herculaneum might have passed into ob- livion, with a herd of their contemporaries, had they not been fortunately overwhelmed by a volcano. The re- nowned city of Troy acquired celebrity only from its ten years' distress and final conflagration ; Paris rose in im- portance by the plots and massacres which ended in the exaltation of Napoleon ; and even the mighty London has skulked through the records of time, celebrated for nothing of moment excepting the plague, the great fire, and Guy 371 372 HISTORY O"^ NEW YOEK. Faiix's gunpowder plot! Thus cities and empires creep along, enlarging in silent obscurity, until they burst forth in some tremendous calamity, and snatch, as it were, im- mortality from the explosion! The above principle being admitted, my reader will plainly perceive that the city of New Amsterdam and its dependent province are on the high road to greatness. Dangers and hostilities threaten from every side, and it is really a matter of astonishment how so small a state has been able in so short a time to entangle itself in so many difficulties. Ever since the province was first taken by the nose at the fort of Good Hope in the tranquil days of Wouter Van Twiller has it been gradually increasing in historic importance, and never could it have had a more appropriate chieftain to conduct it to the pinnacle of grandeur than Peter Stuyvesant. This truly headstrong hero, having successfully effected his daring progress through the East Country, girded up his loins as he approached Boston, and prepared for the grand onslaught with the Amphictyous which was to be the crowning achievement of the campaign. Throwing Antony Van Corlear, who, with his calico mare, formed his escort and army, a little in the advance, and bidding him be of stout heart and great v/ind, he placed himself firmly in his saddle, cocked his hat more fiercely over his left eye, summoned all the heroism of his soul into his countenance, and with one arm akimbo, the hand resting on the pom- mel of his sword, rode into the great metropolis of the league, Antony sounding his trumpet before him in a man- ner to electrify the whole community. Never w^as there such a stir in Boston as on this occa- sion ; never such a hurrying hither and thither about the streets, such popping of heads out of windows, such gath- ering of knots in market-places. Peter Stuyvesant was a straightforward man and prone to do everything above- board. He would have ridden at once to the great coun- HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 373 cil-house of the league and sounded a parley; but the grand council knew the mettlesome hero they had to deal with, and were not for doing things in a hurry. On the con- trary, they sent forth deputations to meet him on the way to receive him in a style befitting the great potentate of the Manhattoes, and to multiply all kinds of honors and ceremonies and formalities and other courteous impedi- ments in his path. Solemn banquets were accordingly given him, equal to Thanksgiving feasts. Complimentary speeches were made him, wherein he vras entertained with the surpassing virtues, long sufferings, and achievements of the Pilgrim Fathers ; and it is even said he was treated to a sight of Plymouth Rock, that great corner-stone of Yankee empire. I will not detain my readers by recounting the endless devices by which time was wasted and obstacles and delays multiplied, to the infinite annoyance of the impatient Peter. Neither will I fatigue them by dwelling on his negotiations with the grand council when he at length brouglit them to business. Suffice it to say, it vras like most other diplo- matic negotiations : a great deal was said and very little done; one conversation led to another; one conference begot misunderstandings which it took a dozen conferences to explain, at the end of which both parties found them- selves just where they had begun, but ten times less likely to come to an agreement. In the midst of these perplexities, which bewildered the brain and incensed the ire of honest Peter, he received private intelligence of the dark conspiracy matured in the British Cabinet, with the astounding fact that a British squadron was already on the way to invade ]S'ew Amster- dam by sea, and that the grand council of Amphictyons, while thus beguiling him with subtleties, were actually prepared to co-operate by land! Oh, how did the sturdy old warrior rage and roar when he found himself thus entrapped like a lion in the hunter's 374 HISTOEY OF NEW YORK. toil ! Now did he draw his trusty sword and determine to break in upon the council of the Amphictyons and put every mother's son of them to death. Kow did he resolve to fight his way throughout all the regions of the East and to lay waste Connecticut River ! Gallant but unfortunate Peter! Did I not enter with sad forebodings on this ill-starred expedition? Did I not tremble when I saw thee, with no other counsellor than thine own head, no other armor but an honest tongue, a spotless conscience, and a rusty sword, no other protector but St. Nicholas, and no other attendant but a trumpeter, — did I not tremble when I beheld thee thus sally forth to contend with all the knowing powers of New England ? It was a long time before the kind-hearted expostulations of Antony Van Corlear, aided by the soothing melody of his trumpet, could lower the spirits of Peter Stuyvesant from their warlike and vindictive tone and jDrevent his making widows and orphans of half the population of Boston. With great difficulty he was prevailed upon to bottle up his wrath for the present, to conceal from the council his knowledge of their machinations, and, by effect- ing his escape, to be able to arrive in time for the salvation of the Manhattoes. The latter suggestion awakened a new ray of hope in his bosom ; he forthwith despatched a secret message to his councillors at New Amsterdam, apprising them of their dan- ger and commanding them to put the city in a posture of defence, promising to come as soon as possible to their assist- ance. This done, he felt marvellously relieved, rose slowly, shook himself like a rhinoceros, and issued forth from his den in much the same manner as Giant Despair is de- scribed to have issued from Doubting Castle in the chivalric history of the Pilgrim's Progress. And now much does it grieve me that I must leave the gallant Peter in this imminent jeopardy ; but it behooves us to hurry back and see what is going on at New Amster- HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 375 dam, for greatly do I fear that city is already in a turmoil. Such was ever the fate of Peter Stuyvesant ; while doing one thing with heart and soul, he was too apt to leave everything else at sixes and sevens. While, like a poten- tate of yore, he was absent attending to those things in person which in modern days are trusted to generals and ambassadors, his little territory at home was sure to get in an uproar ; all which was owdng to that uncommon strength of intellect which induced him to trust to nobody but him- self, and which had acquired him the renowned appellation of Peter the Headstrono:. CHAPTER VII. HOW THE PEOPLE OF NEW AMSTERDAM WERE THROWN INTO A GREAT PANIC BY THE NEWS OF THE THREAT- ENED INVASION, AND THE MANNER IN WHICH THEY FORTIFIED THEMSELVES. There is no sight more truly interesting to a philosopher than a community where every individual has a voice in public affairs, where every individual considers himself the Atlas of the nation, and where every individual thinks it his duty to bestir himself for the good of his country, — I say there is nothing more interesting to a philosopher than such a community in a sudden bustle of vrar. Such clamor of tongues, such patriotic bawling, such running hither and thither, everybody in a hurry, everybody in trouble, everybody in the way, and everybody interrupting his neighbor, who is busily employed in doing nothing ! It is like witnessing a great fire, where the whole community are agog — some dragging about empty engines, othei'S scampering with full buckets and spilling the contents into their neighbor's boots, and others ringing the church-bells all night by way of putting out tiie fire; little firemen, like sturdy little knights storming a breach, clamormg up and down scaling-ladders, and bawling through tin trum- pets by way of directing the attack. Here a fellow, in his great zeal to save the property of the unfortunate, catches up an anonymous chamber utensil, and gallants it off Avith an air of as much self-importance as if he had rescued a pot of money ; there another throws looking-glasses and china out of the v.indow to save them from the flames ; whilst those who can do nothing else run up and down the streets, keeping up an incessant cry of Fire! Fire I Fire! 376 I HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 377 " When the news arrived at Sinope," says Lucian — though I own the story is rather trite — " that Philip was about to attack them, the inhabitants were thrown into a violent alarm. Some ran to furbish up their arms ; others rolled stones to build up the walls — everybody, in short, was employed, and everybody in the way of his neighbor. Diogenes alone could find nothing to do, whereupon, not to be idle w^ien the welfare of his country was at stake, he tucked up his robe and fell to rolling his tub with might and main up and down the Gymnasium." In like manner did every mother's son in the patriotic community of New Amsterdam on receiving the missives of Peter Stuyvesant busy himself most mightily in putting things in confusion and assisting the general uproar. " Every man," saith the Stuyvesiint manuscript, " flew to arms!" by v,^hich is meant that not one of our honest Dutch citizens would venture to church or to market without an old-fashioned spit of a sword dangling at his side and a long Dutch fowling-piece on his shoulder, nor would he go out of a night without a lantern, nor turn a corner without first peeping cautiously round, lest he should come unawares upon a British army ; and we are informed that Stoffel Brinkerhoff, who was con- sidered by the old women almost as brave a man as the governor himself, actually had two one-pound swivels mounted in his entry, one pointing out at the front door and the other at the back. But the most strenuous measure resorted to on this awful occasion, and one which has since been found of w^onderful efficacy, was to assemble popular meetings. These brawl- ing convocations, I have already shown, were extremely offensive to Peter Stuyvesant ; but as this was a moment of unusual agitation, and as the old governor was not present to repress them, they broke out with intolerable violence. Hither, therefore, the orators and politicians repaired, striv- ing who should bav."l loudest and exceed the others in hyperbolical bursts of patriotism and in resolutions to 378 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. uphold and defend the government. In these sage meet- ings it was resolved that they were the most enlightened, the most dignified, the most formidable, and the most ancient community upon the face of the earth. This res- olution being carried unanimously, another was immediately proposed — whether it were not possible and politic to ex- terminate Great Britain ? upon Vvhich sixty-nine members spoke in the affirmative, and only one arose to suggest some doubts, who as a punishment for his treasonable presump- tion was immediately seized by the mob and tarred and feathered ; which punishment being equivalent to the Tar- peian Rock, he was afterwards considered as an outcast from society and his opinion went for nothing. The ques- tion, therefore, being unanimously carried in the affirmative, it was recommended to the grand council to pass it into a law; which was accordingly done. By this measure the hearts of the people at large were wonderfully encouraged, and they waxed exceeding choleric and valorous. Indeed, the first paroxysm of alarm having in some measure sub- sided, the old women having buried all the money they could lay their hands on, and their husbands daily getting fuddled with what was left, the community began even to stand on the offensive. Songs were manufactured in Low Dutch and sung about the streets wherein the English were most woefully beaten and shown no quarter, and popular addresses were made, wherein it was proved to a certainty that the fate of Old England depended upon the will of the New Amstcrdammers. Finally, to strike a violent blow at the very vitals of Great Britain, a multitude of the wiser inhabitants as- sembled, and, having purchased all the British manufac- tures they could find, they made thereof a huge bonfire ; and in the patriotic glow of the moment every man present who had a hat or breeches of English workmanship pulled it ofiTand threw it into the flames — to the irreparable detri- ment, loss, and ruin of the English manufacturers. In HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 379 commemoration of this great exploit tliey erected a pole on the spot, with a device on the top intended to represent the province of Nieuw Nederlandts destroying Great Britain, under the similitude of an Eagle picking the little island of Old England out of the globe ; but, either through the unskilfulness of the sculptor or his ill-timed waggery, it bore a striking resemblance to a goose vainly striving to get hold of a dumpling. CHAPTER VIII. HOW THE GRAND COUNCIL OF TH]-; NEW NETHERLANDS WERE MIRACULOUSLY GIFTED WITH LONG TONGUES IN THE MOIMENT OF EMERGENCY SHOWING THE VALUE OF WORDS IN WARFARE. It will need but little penetration in any one conversant with the ways of that wise but windy potentate, the sov- ereign people, to discover that, notwithstanding all the war- like bluster and bustle of the last chapter, the city of New Amsterdam was not a whit more prepared for war than before. The privy councillors of Peter Stuyvesant were aware of this, and, having received his private orders to put the city in an immediate posture of defence, they called a meeting of the oldest and richest burghers to assist them v.'ith their wisdom. These were that order of citizens commonly termed " men of the greatest weight in the com- munity," their weight being estimated by the heaviness of their heads and of their purses. Tlieir wisdom, in fact, is apt to be of a ponderoiis kind, and to hang like a millstone round the neck of the community. Two things were unanimously determined in this assem- bly of venerables : First, that the city required to be put in a state of defence ; and second, that, as the danger was im- minent, there should be no time lost ; which points being settled, they fell to making long speeches and belaboring one another in endless and intemperate disputes. For about this time was this unhappy city first visited by that talking endemic so prevalent in this country, and which so in- variably evinces itself wherever a number of wise men as- semble together, breaking out in long, windy speeches, 3S0 i HISTOEY OF NEW YORK. 381 caused, as physicians suppose, by the foul air wlncli is ever generated in a crowd. Now it was, moreover, that they first introduced the ingenious method of measuring the mer- its of an harangue by the hour-glass, he being considered the ablest orator who spoke longest on a question. For which ex- cellent invention, it is recorded, we are indebted to the same profound Dutcli critic who judged of books by their size. This sudden pasi^ion for endless harangues, so little con- sonant with tiie customary gravity and taciturnity of our gage foreuitliers, was supposed by certain philosophers to have been imbibed, together with divers others barbarous propensities, iVorn their savage neighbors, who were pecu- jiarly noted for loRg talks and council-fires, and never under- took any affair of the least importance without previous debates and harangues among their chiefs and old men. But the real cause was, that the people, in electing their representatives to the grand council, were particular in choosing them for their talents at talking, without inquir- ing whether they possessed the more rare, difficult, and ofttimes important talent of holding their tongues. The ■consequence was, that this deliberative body was composed of the most loquacious men in the community. As they considered themselves placed there to talk, every man con- cluded that his duty to his constituents — and, what is more, hi& popularity with them — required that he should harangue on every subject, whether he understood it or not. There was an ancient mode of burying a chieftain by every sol- dier throwing his shield full of earth on the corpse until a mighty mound was formed ; so whenever a question was brought forward in this assembly, every member pressing forward to throw on his quantum of wisdom, the subject was quickly buried under a mountain of words. We are told that disciples on entering the school of Pyth- agoras were for tv.'o years enjoined silence, and forbidden either to ask questions or make remarks. After they had thus acquired the inestimable art of holding their tongues, 382 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. they were gradually permitted to make inquiries, and finally to communicate their own opinions. With what a beneficial effect could this wise regulation o of Pythagoras be introduced in modern legislative bodies! and how wonderfully would it have tended to expedite business in the grand council of the Manhattoes ! At this perilous juncture the fatal word economy, the stumbling-block of William the Testy, had been once more set afloat, according to which the cheapest plan of defence was insisted upon as the best ; it being deemed a great stroke of policy in furnishing powder to economize in ball. Thus did Dame Wisdom (whom the wags of antiquity have humorously personified as a woman) seem to take a mischievous pleasure in jilting tlie venerable councillors of New Amsterdam. To add to the confusion, the old factions of Short Pipes and Long Pipes, which had been almost strangled by the herculean grasp of Peter Stuyve- sant, now sprang up with tenfold vigor. Whatever was proposed by a Short Pipe was opposed by the whole tribe of Long Pipes, who, like true partisans, deemed it their first duty to effect the downfall of their rivals ; their sec- ond, to elevate themselves ; and their third, to consult the public good, though many left the third consideration out of question altogether. In this great collision of hard heads it is astonishing the number of projects that were struck out — projects which threw the windmill system of William the Testy completely in the background. These were almost uniformly opposed by the " men of the greatest weight in the community !'* your weighty men, though slow to devise, being always great at " negativing." Among these were a set of fit, self-important old burghers who smoked their pipes and said nothing except to negative every plan of defence pro- posed. These were that class of " conservatives" Avho, hav- ing amassed a fortune, button up their pockets, shut their mouths, sink, as it were, into themselves, and pass the rest HISTORY OF NEW YORK. ,383 of their lives in the indwelling beatitude of conscious wealth ; as some phlegmatic oyster, having swallowed a pearl, closes its shell, sinks in the mud, and devotes the rest of its life to the conservation of its treasure. Every plan of defence seemed to these worthy old gentlemen pregnant with ruin. An armed force was a legion of locusts preying upon the public property ; to fit out a naval armament was to throw their money into the sea ; to build fortifications was to bury it in the dirt. In short, they settled it as a sovereign maxim, so loug as their pockets were full, no matter how much they were drubbed. A kick left no scar, a broken head cured itself, but an empty purse was of all mahidies the slowest to heal, and one in which Nature did nothing for the patient. Thus did this venerable assembly of sages lavish away that time which the urgency of affairs rendered invaluable in empty brawls and long-Avinded speeches, without ever agreeing, except on the point w^ith which they started — namely, that there was no time to be lost and delay was ruinous. At length, St. Nicholas taking compassion on their distracted situation and anxious to preserve them from anarchy, so ordered that in the midst of one of their most noisy debates on the subject of fortification and de- fence, when they had nearly fallen to loggerheads in con- sequence of not being able to convince each other, the question was happily settled by the sudden entrance of a messenger, who informed them that a hostile fleet had arrived and was actually advancing up the bay! CHAPTER IX. IN WHICH THE TROUBLES OF NEW AMSTERDAM APPEAR TO THICKEN — SHOWING THE BRAVERY, IN TIME OF PERIL, OF A PEOPLE WHO DEFEND THEMSELVES BY RESOLU- TIONS. Like as an assemblage of belligerent cats, gibbering and caterwauling, eyeing one another with hideous grimaces and contortions, spitting in each other's faces, and on the point of a general clapperclawing, are suddenly put to scampering rout and confusion by the appearance of a house-dog, so was the no less vociferous council of New Amsterdam amazed, astounded, and totally dispersed by the sudden arrival of the enemy. Every member waddled home as fast as his short legs could carry him, wheezing as he went with corpulency and terror. Arrived at his castle, he barricadoed the street-door and buried himself in the cider-cellar, without venturing to peep out lest he should have his head carried off by a cannon-ball. The sovereign people crowded into the market-place, herding together with the instinct of sheep, who seek safety in each other's company when the shepherd and his dog are absent and the wolf is prowling round the fold. Far from finding relief, however, they only increased each other's, terrors. Each man looked ruefully in his neighbor's face in search of encouragement, but only found in its woe-be- gone lineaments a confirmation of his own dismay. Not a word now was to be heard of conquering Great Britain, not a whisper about the sovereign virtues of economy ; while the old women heightened the general gloom by clamorously bewailing their fate and calling for protection on St. Nicholas and Peter Stuyvesant. 38:1 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 385 Oh, how did they bewail the absence of the lion-hearted Peter ! and how did they long for the comforting presence of Antonj' Van Corlear! Indeed, a gloomy uncertainty hung over the fate of these adventurous heroes. Day after day had elapsed since the alarming message from the gov- ernor, without bringing any further tidings of his safety. Many a fearful conjecture was hazarded as to what had be- fallen him and his loyal squire. Had they not been de- voured alive by the cannibals of Marblehead and Cape Cod ? Had they not been put to the question by the great council of Amphictyons ? Had they not been smothered in onions by the terrible men of Pyquag ? In the midst of this consternation and perplexity, when horror, like a mighty nightmare, sat brooding upcm the little fiit, plethoric city of New Amsterdam, the ears of the multitude were suddenly startled by the distant sound of a trumpet : it approached, it grew louder and louder, and now it re- sounded at the city gate. The public could not be mis- taken in the well-known sound ; a shout of joy burst from their lips as the gallant Peter, covered with dust and fol- lowed by his faithful trumpeter, came galloping into the market-place. The first transports of the populace having subsided, they gathered round the honest Antony as he dismounted, over- whelming him with greetings and congratulations. In breathless accents he related to them the marvellous ad- ventures through which the old governor and himself had gone in making their escape from the clutches of the terri- ble Amphictyons. But though the Stuyvesant manuscript, with its customary minuteness where anything touching the great Peter is concerned, is very particular as to the inci- dents of this masterly retreat, the state of the public affairs will not allow me to indulge iu a full recital thereof Let it suffice to say that while Peter Stuyvesant was anxiously revolving in his mind how he could make good his escape with honor and dignity, certain of the ships sent out for the 25 383 HISTORY br NEW YORK. conquest of the Maiihattoes touched at the eastern ports to obtain supplies and to call on the grand council of the league for its promised co-operation. Upon hearing of this, the vigilant Peter, perceiving that a moment's delay, were fiital, made a secret and precipitate decampment, though much did it grieve his lofty soul to be obliged to turn his back even upon a nation of foes. Many hair- breadth 'scapes and divers perilous mishaps did they sus- tain as they scoured without sound of trumpet through the fair regions of the East. Already was the country in an uproar W'ith hostile preparation, and they were obliged to take a large circuit in their flight, lurking along through the woody mountains of the Devil's Backbone, whence the valiant Peter sallied forth one day like a lion and put to rout a w'hole legion of squatters, consisting of three gen- erations of a prolific family who were already on their "way to take possession of some corner of the Xew Nether- lands. Nay, the faithful Antony had great difficulty, at sundry times, to prevent him, in the excess of his wrath, from descending dowm from the mountains and falling, sword in hand, upon certain of the border- towns who were marshalling forth their draggle-tailed militia. The first movement of the governor, on reaching his dwelling, was to mount the roof, whence he contemplated with rueful aspect the hostile squadron. This had already come to anchor in the bay, and consisted of two stout frig- ates, having on board, as John Josselyn, Gent., informs us, " three hundred valiant redcoats." Having taken this sur- vey, he sat himself down and wrote an epistle to the com- mander, demanding the reason of his anchoring in the har- bor without obtaining previous permission so to do. This letter was couched in the most dignified and courteous terms, though I have it from undoubted authority that his teeth were clenched and he had a bitter sardonic grin upon his visage all the while he wrote. Having despatched his let- ter, the grim Peter stumped to and fro about the town with I niSTOKY OF NEW YOKE. 387 a most war-betokening countenance, his hands thrust into his breeches pockets and whistling a Low Dutch psalm tune, which bore no small resemblance to the music of a north- east wind when a storm is brewing. The very dogs as they eyed him skulked away in dismay, while all the old and ugly women of New Amsterdam ran howling at his heels, imploring him to save them from murder, robbery, and pitiless ravishment! The reply of Colonel Nichols, who commanded the in- vaders, was couched in terms of equal courtesy with the letter of the governor, declaring the right and title of His British IMajesty to the province, where he affirmed the Dutch to be mere interlopers, and demanding that the town, forts, etc. should be forthwith rendered into His Majesty's obedience and protection ; promising, at the same time, life, liberty, estate, and free trade to every Dutch den- izen who should readily submit to His Majesty's govern- ment. Peter Stuyvesant read over this friendly epistle with some such harmony of aspect as vvc may suppose a crusty farmer reads the loving letter of John Stiles w'arning him of an action of ejectment. He was not, however, to be taken by surprise, but, thrusting the summons into his breeches pocket, stalked three times across the room, took a pinch of snuff with great vehemence, and then, loftily waving his hand, promised to send an answer the next morning. He now summoned a general meeting of his privy councillors and burgomasters — not to ask their advice, for, confident in his own strong head, he needed no man's counsel, but appa- rently to give them a piece of his mind on their late craven conduct. His orders being duly promulgated, it was a piteous sight to behold the late valiant burgomasters, who had demol- ished the whole British empire in their harangues, peeping ruefully out of their hiding-places, crawling cautiously forth, dodging through narrow lanes and alleys, starting at 888 HISTOKY OF NEW YOKE. every little dog that barked, mistaking lamp-posts for Brit- ish grenadiers, and in the excess of their panic meta- morphosing pumps into formidable soldiers levelling blun- derbusses at their bosoms ! Having, however, in despite of numerous perils and difficulties of the kind, arrived safe, without the loss of a single man, at the hall of assembly, they took their seats and awaited in fearful silence the ar- rival of the governor. In a few moments the wooden leg of the intrepid Peter was heard in regular and stout-hearted thumps upon the staircase. He entered the chamber ar- rayed in full suit of regimentals, and carrying his trusty tolcdo, not girded on his thigh, but tucked under his arm. As the governor never equipped himself in this portentous manner unless something of martial nature were working within his pericranium, his council regarded him ruefully, as if they saw fire and sword in his iron countenance, and forgot to light their pipes in breathless suspense. His first words were to rate his council soundly for hav- ing wasted in idle debate and party feud the time which should have been devoted to putting the city in a state of defence. He was particularly indignant at those brawlers who had disgraced the councils of the province by empty bickerings and scurrilous invectives against an absent en- emy. He now called upon them to make good their words by deeds, as the enemy they had defied and derided was at the gate. Finally, he informed them of the summons he had received to surrender, but concluded by swearing to defend the province as long as Heaven was on his side and he had a wooden leg to stand upon ; which warlike sentence he emphasized by a thwack with the flat of his sword upon the table that quite electrified his audi- tors. The privy councillors, who had long since been brought into as perfect discipline as were ever the soldiers of the great Frederick, knew there was no use in saying a word — so lighted their pipes, and smoked away in silence, like fat HISTORY OF NEW YOEK. 389 and discreet councillors. But the burgomasters, being in- flated with considerable importance and self-sufficiency, acquired at popular meetings, were not so easily satisfied. Mustering up fresh spirit when they found there was some chance of escaping from their present jeopardy without the disagreeable alternative of fighting, they requested a copy of the summons to surrender, that they might show it to a general meeting of the people. So insolent and mutinous a request would have been enough to have roused the gorge of the tranquil Van Twil- ler himself; what then must have been its effect upon the great Stuyvesant, who was not only a Dutchman, a gov- ernor, and a valiant wooden-legged soldier to boot, but withal a man of the most stomachful and gunpowder dis- position ? He burst forth into a blaze of indignation — swore not a mother's son of them should see a syllable of it ; that as to their advice or concurrence, he did not care a whiff of tobacco for either ; that they might go home and go to bed like old women, for he was determined to de- fend the colony himself, without the assistance of them or their adherents ! So saying, he tucked his sword under his arm, cocked his hat upon his head, and, girding up his loins, stumped indignantly out of the council-chamber, every- body making room for him as he passed. No sooner was he gone than the busy burgomasters called a public meeting in front of the stadt-house, where they appointed as chairman one Dofue Roerback, formerly a meddlesome member of the cabinet during the reign of AVilllam the Testy, but kicked out of office by Peter Stuy- vesant on taking the reins of government. He was, withal, a mighty gingerbread-baker in the land, and reverenced by the populace as a man of dark knowledge, seeing that he was the first to imprint New Year cakes with the mys- terious hieroglyphics of the Cock and Breeches and such like magical devices. This burgomaster, who still chewed the cud of ill-will V 390 HISTORY OF KEW YORK. against Peter Stuyvesant, addressed the multitude in what is called a patriotic s^oeech, informing them of the courteous summons which the governor had received to surrender, of his refusal to comply therewith, and of his denying the public even a sight of the summons, which doubtless con- tained conditions highly to the honor and advantage of the province. He then proceeded to speak of His Excellency in high- sounding terms of vituperation suited to the dignity of his station, comparing him to Nero, Caligula, and other fla- grant great men of yore, assuring the people that the his- tory of the world did not contain a despotic outrage equal to the present — that it would be recorded in letters of fire on the bloodstained tablet of history — that ages would roll back with sudden horror when the}^ came to view it — tliat the womb of time (by the w^ay, your orators and v.riters take strange liberties with the womb of time, though some would fain have us believe that Time is an old gentleman), — that the womb of time, pregnant as it was with direful horrors, would never produce a joarallel enormity ! — with a variety of other heart-rending, soul-stirring tropes and fig- ures which I cannot enumerate ; neither, indeed, need I, for they were of the kind which even to the present day forms the style of popular harangues and patriotic orators, and may be classed in rhetoric under the general title of Rig- marole. The result of this speech of the inspired burgomaster was a memorial addressed to the governor remonstrating in good round terms on his conduct. It was proposed that Dofue Roerback himself should be the bearer of this me- morial, but this he warily declined, having no inclination of coming again within kicking distance of His Excellency. Who did deliver it has never been named in history, in which neglect he has suffered grievous wrong, seeing that he was equally worthy of blazon with him perpetuated in Scottish song and story by the surname of 13ell-the-cat. IIISTOEY OF NEW YOEK. 391 All we know of the fate of this memorial Is, that it was used by the grim Peter to light his pipe, which, from the vehemence w^ith which he smoked it, was evidently any- thing but a pipe of peace. CHAPTER X. CONTAINING A DOLEFUL DISASTER OF ANTONY THE TRUM- PETER — AND HOW PETER STUYVESANT, LIKE A SECOND CROMWELL, SUDDENLY DISSOLVED A RUMP PARLIA- MENT. Now did tlie high-minded Pieter de Groodt shower down a pannier-load of maledictions upon his burgomasters for a set of self-willed, obstinate, factious varlets who would neither be convinced nor persuaded. Nor did he omit to bestow some left-handed compliments upon the sovereign people as a herd of poltroons, who had no relish for the glorious hardships and illustrious misadventures of battle, but would rather stay at home and eat and sleep in ignoble ease than fight in a ditch for immortality and a broken head. Resolutely bent, however, upon defending his beloved city in despite even of itself, he called unto him his trusty Van Corlear, who was his right-hand man in all times of emergency. Him did he adjure to take his war-denoun- cing trumpet, and, mounting his horse, to beat up the coun- try night and day, sounding the alarm along the pastoral borders of the Bronx, startling the wild solitudes of Croton, arousing the rugged yeomanry of AYeehawk and Hoboken, the mighty men of battle of Tappan Bay, and the brave boys of Tarry-Town, Petticoat- Lane, and Sleepy-Hollow — charging them one and all to sling their powder-horns, shoulder their fowling-pieces, and march merrily down to the Manhattocs. Now, there was nothing in all the world, the divine sex excepted, that Antony Van Corlear loved better than 392 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 393 errands of this kind. So, just stopping to take a lusty din- ner, and bracing to his side his junk-bottle well charged with heart-inspiring Hollands, he issued jollily from the city gate, which looked out upon v.liat is at present called Broadway, sounding a farewell strain thiit rung in spright- ly echoes through the w^inding streets of New Amsterdam. Alas ! never more were they to be gladdened by the melody of their favorite trumpeter! It was a dark and stormy night when the good Antony arrived at the creek (sagely denominated Haerlem River) which separates the island of Manna-hata from the main- land. The wind was high, the elements were in an uproar, and no Charon could be found to ferry the adventurous sounder of brass across the water. For a short time he vapored like an impatient ghost upon the brink, and then, bethinking himself of the urgency of his errand, took a hearty embrace of his stone bottle, swore most valorously that he would swim across in spite of the devil (Spyt den Duyvel), and daringly plunged into the stream. Luckless Antony ! Scarce had he buflfeted halfway over when he was observed to struggle violently, as if battling with the spirit of the waters : instinctively he put his trumpet to his mouth, and, giving a vehement blast, sank for ever to the bottom ! The clangor of his trumpet, like that of the ivory horn of the renowned Paladin Orlando when expiring in the glorious field of Roncesvalles, rang far and wide through the country, alarming the neighbors round, who hurried in amazement to the spot. Here an old Dutch burgher, famed for his veracity, and who had been a witness of the fact, related to them the melancholy affair, with the fearful ad- dition (to which I am slow of giving belief) that he saw the duyvel, in the shape of a huge moss-bonker, seize the sturdy Antony by the leg and drag him beneath the waves. Certain it is, the place, with the adjoining promontory, which projects into the Hudson, has been called Spyt den Duyvel 394 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. ever since, the gliost of the unfortunate Antony still haunts the surrounding solitudes, and his trumpet has often been heard by the neighbors, of a stormy night, mingling with the howling of the blast. Nobody ever attempts to swim across the creek after dark — on the contrarv, a bridcre has been built to guard against such melancholy accidents in future — and as to moss-bonkers, they are held in such ab- horrence that no true Dutchman will admit them to his table who loves good fish and hates the devil. Such was the end of Antony Van Corlear, a man deserv- ing of a better fate. He lived roundly and soundly, like a true and jolly bachelor, until the day of his death ; but, though he was never married, yet did he leave behind some two or three dozen children in different parts of the coun- try — fine, chubl)y, brawling, flatulent little urchins, from whom, if legends speak true (and they are not apt to lie), did descend the innumerable race of editors who people and defend this country, and who are bountifully paid by the people for keeping up a constant alarm and making them miserable. It is hinted, too, that in his various ex- peditions into the East he did much towards promoting the population of the country ; in proof of which is adduced the notorious propensity of the people of those parts to sound their own trumpet. As some wayworn pilgrim, when the tempest whistles through his locks and night is gathering round, beholds his faithful dog, the companion and solace of his journeying, stretched lifeless at his feet, so did the generous-hearted hero of the Manhattoes contemplate the untimely end of Antony Van Corlear. He had been the faithful attendant of his footsteps, he had charmed him in many a weary hour by his honest gayety and the martial melody of his trum- pet, and had followed him with unflinching loyalty and affection through many a scene of direful peril and mishap. He was gone for ever ! and that, too, at a moment when every mongrel cur was skulking from his side. This, Peter HISTOEY OV NEW YOEK. 395 Stuyvesant, was the moment to try thy fortitude, and this was the moment when thou didst indeed shine forth Peter the Headstrong ! The glare of day had long dispelled the horrors of the stormy night; still, all was dull and gloomy. The late jovial Apollo hid his face behind lugubrious clouds, peep- ing out now and then for an instant, as if anxious, yet fear- ful, to see what was going on in his favorite city. This was the eventful morning when the great Peter was to give his reply to the summons of the invaders. Already was he closeted with his privy council, sitting in grim state, brood- ing over the fate of his favorite trumpeter, and anon boil- ing with indignation as the insolence of his recreant burgo- masters flashed upon his mind. While in this state of irritation a courier arrived in all haste from Winthrop, the subtle governor of Connecticut, counselling him, in the most affectionate and disinterested manner, to surrender the province, and magnifying the dangers and calamities to which a refusal would subject him. What a moment was this to intrude officious advice upon a man who never took advice in his whole life! The fiery old governor strode up and down the chamber with a vehemence that made the bosoms of his councillors to quake with awe, railing at his unlucky fate that thus made him the constant butt of factious subjects and Jesuitical advisers. Just at this ill-chosen juncture the officious burgomasters, who had heard of the arrival of mysterious despatches, came marching in a body into the room, with a legion of schepens and toad-eaters at their heels, and abruptly de- manded a perusal of the letter. This was too much for the spleen of Peter Stuyvesant. He tore the letter in a thou- sand pieces, threw it in the face of the nearest burgomaster, broke his pipe over the head of the next, hurled his spit- ting-box at an unlucky schepen who was just retreating out at the door, and finally prorogued the whole meeting sine die by kicking them down stairs with his wooden leg. 396 HISTOEY OF NEW YOKE. As soon as the burgomasters could recover from their confusion and had time to breathe they called a public meeting, where they related at full length, and with appro- priate coloring and exaggeration, the despotic and vindic- tive deportment of the governor, declaring that, for their own parts, they did not value a straw the being kicked, cuffed, and mauled by the timber toe of His Excellency, but that they felt for the dignity of the sovereign people thus rudely insulted by the outrage committed on the seat of honor of their representatives. The latter part of the harangue came home at once to that delicacy of feeling and jealous pride of character vested in all true mobs, who, though they may bear injuries without a murmur, yet are marvellously jealous of their sovereign dignity ; and there is no knowing to what act of resentment they might have been provoked, had they not been somewhat more afraid of their sturdy old governor than they were of St. Nich- olas, the English, or the d 1 himself. CHAPTER XL HOW PETER STUYVESANT DEFENDED THE CITY OF NEW AMSTERDAM FOR SEVERAL DAYS, BY DINT OF THE STRENGTH OF HIS HEAD. There is something exceedingly sublime and melan- choly in the siDectacle which the present crisis of our history presents. An illustrious and venerable little city, the me- tropolis of a vast extent of uninhabited country, garrisoned by a doughty host of orators, chairmen, committee-men, burgomasters, schepens, and old ^vomen, governed by a de- termined and strong-headed warrior, and fortified by mud- batteries, palisadoes, and resolutions, blockaded by sea, beleaguered by land, and threatened with direful desolation from without, while its very vitals are torn with internal faction and commotion ! Never did historic pen record a page of more complicated distress, unless it be the strife that distracted the Israelites during the siege of Jerusalem, where discordant parties were cutting each other's throats at the moment when the victorious legions of Titus had toppled down their bulwarks and were carrying fire and sword into the very sanctum sanctorum of the temple. Governor Stuyvesant having triumphantly put his grand council to the rout, and delivered himself from a multitude of impertinent advisers, despatched a categorical reply to the commanders of the invading squadron, wherein he asserted the right and title of their High Mightinesses the Lords States General to the province of New Netherlands, and, trusting in the righteousness of his cause, set the whole British nation at defiance! My anxiety to extricate my readers and myself from these disastrous scenes prevents me from giving the whole 397 398 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. of this gallant letter, which concluded in these manly and affectionate terms: "As touching the threats in your conclusion, we have nothing to answer, only that we fear nothing but what God (who is as just as merciful) shall lay upon us, all things being in his gracious disposal ; and w^e may as well be pre- served by him with small forces as by a great army ; which makes us to wish you all happiness and prosperity, and recommend you to his protection. My lords, your thrice humble and affectionate servant and friend, " P. Stuyvesant." Thus having thrown his gauntlet, the brave Peter stuck a pair of horse-pistols in his belt, girded an immense pow- der-horn on his side, thrust his sound leg into a Hessian boot, and, clapping his fierce little war-hat on the top of his head, paraded up and down in front of his house, deter- mined to defend his beloved city to the last. While all these struggles and dissensions were prevailing in the unhappy city of New Amsterdam, and v.hile its wor- thy but ill-starred governor was framing the above-quoted letter, the English commanders did not remain idle. They had agents secretly employed to foment the fears and clam- ors of the populace, and moreover circulated far and wide through the adjacent country a proclamation repeating the terms they had already held out in their summons to sur- render, at tlie same time beguiling the simple Nedcrlandters with the most crafty and conciliating professions. They promised that every man who voluntarily submitted to the authority of His British Majesty should retain peaceful possession of his house, his vrouw, and his cabbage-garden ; that he should be suffered to smoke his pipe, speak Dutch, w^ear as many breeches as he pleased, and import bricks, tiles, and stone jugs from Holland, instead of manufactur- ing them on the spot ; that he should on no account be compelled to learn the English language, nor eat codfish / HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 399 on Saturdays, nor keep accounts in any other way than by casting them up on his fingers and chalking them down upon the crown of his hat, as is observed among the Dutch yeo- manry at the present day ; that every man should be allowed quietly to inherit his father's hat, coat, shoe-buckles, pipe, and every other personal appendage; and that no man should be obliged to conform to any improvements, inven- tions, or any other modern innovations, but, on the con- trary, should be permitted to build his house, follow his trade, manage his farm, rear his hogs, and educate his chil- dren precisely as his ancestors had done before him from time immemorial. Finally, that he should have all the benefits of free trade, and should not be required to acknow- ledge any other saint in the calendar than St. Nicholas, who should thenceforward, as before, be considered the tutelar saint of the city. These terms, as may be supposed, appeared very satis- factory to the people, who had a great disposition to enjoy their property unmolested, and a most singular aversion to engage in a contest where they could gain little more than honor and broken heads — the first of which they held in philosophic indifi^erence, the latter in utter detestation. By these insidious means, therefore, did the English suc- ceed in alienating the confidence and affections of the pop- ulace from their gallant old governor, whom they considered as obstinately bent upon running them into hideous misad- ventures, and did not hesitate to speak their minds freely and abuse him most heartily — behind his back. Like as a mighty grampus, when assailed and buffeted by roaring waves and brawling surges, still keeps on an un- deviating course, ri.-ing above the boisterous billows, spout- ing and blowing as he emerges, so did the inflexible Peter pursue, unwavering, his determined career, and rise, con- temptuous, above the clamors of the rabble. But when the British warriors found that he set their power at defiance, they despatched recruiting officers to 400 HISTORY OF NEW YOKK. Jamaica, and Jericho, and Nineveh, and Quag, and Patchog, and all those towns on Long Island which had been subdued of yore by Stoffel Brinkerhoff, stirring up the progeny of Preserved Fish and Determined Cock and those other New England squatters to assail the city of New Amsterdam by land, while the hostile ships prepared for an assault by water. The streets of New Amsterdam now presented a scene of wild dismay and consternation. In vain did Peter Stuy- vesant order the citizens to arm and assemble on the Bat- tery. Blank terror reigned over the community. The whole party of Short Pipes in the course of a single night had changed into arrant old women — a metamorphosis only to be paralleled by the prodigies recorded by Livy as having happened at Rome at the approach of Hannibal, when statues sweated in pure affright, goats were converted into sheep, and cocks, turning into hens, ran cackling about the street. Thus baffled in all attempts to put the city in a state of defence, blockaded from without, tormented from within, and menaced with a Yankee invasion, even the stiff-necked will of Peter Stuy vesant for once gave way, and in spite of his mighty heart, which swelled in his throat until it nearly choked him, he consented to a treaty of surrender. Words cannot express the transports of the populace on receiving this intelligence ; had they obtained a conquest over their enemies they could not have indulged greater delight. The streets resounded with their congratulations ; they extolled their governor as the father and deliverer of his country ; they crowded to his house to testify their gratitude, and were ten times more noisy in their plaudits than when he returned, with victory perched upon his beaver, from the glorious capture of Fort Christina. But the indignant Peter shut his doors and windows, and took refuge in the innermost recesses of his mansion, that he might not hear the ignoble rejoicings of the rabble. HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 401 Commissioners were dov/ appointed on both sides and a capitulation was speedily arranged ; all that was wanting to ratify it was that it should be signed by the governor. When the commissioners v.'aited upon him for this purpose they were received with grim and bitter courtesy. His warlike accoutrements were laid aside; an old Indian night-gown was wrapped about his rugged limbs, a red night-cap overshadowed his frowning brow, an iron-gray beard of three days' growth gave additional grimness to his visage. Thrice did he seize a worn-out stump of a pen and essay to sign the loathsome paper — thrice did he clench his teeth and make a horrible countenance, as though a dose of rhubarb, senna, and ipecacuanha had been oflered to his lips ; at length, dashing it from him, he seized his brass-hilted sword, and, jeiking it from the scabbard, swore by St. Nicholas to sooner die than yield to any power under heaven. For two whole days did he persist in this magnanimous resolution, during which his house was besieged by the rab- ble and menaces and clamorous revilings exhausted to no purpose. And now another course was adopted to soothe, if possible, his mighty ire. A procession was formed by the burgomasters and schepens, followed by the populace, to bear the capitulation in state to the governor's dwelling. They found the castle strongly barricadoed, and the old hero in full regimentals, with his cocked hat on his head, posted with a blunderbuss at the garret window. There was something in this formidable position that struck even the ignoble vulgar with awe and admiration. The brawling multitude could not but reflect with self- abasement upon their own pusillanimous conduct when they beheld their hardy but deserted old governor thus faithful to his post like a forlorn hope, and fully prepared to defend his ungrateful city to the last. These compunc- tions, however, were soon overwhelmed by the recurring tide of public apprehension. The populace arranged them- ^ 26 402 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. selves before the house, taking off their hats with most re- spectful humility. Burgomaster Roerback, who was of that popular class of orators described by Sallust as be- ing " talkative rather than eloquent," stepped forth and addressed the governor in a speech of three hours' length, detailing in the most pathetic terms the calamitous situa- tion of the province, and urging him, in a constant repetition of the same arguments and words, to sign the capitulation. The mighty Peter eyed hira from his garret window in grim silence ; now and then his eye would glance over the surrounding rabble, and an indignant grin, like that of an angry mastiff, would mark his iron visage. But, though a man of most undaunted mettle, though he had a heart as big as an ox and a head tliat would have set adamant to scorn, yet, after all, he Mas a mere mortal. Wearied out by these repeated oppositions and this eternal haranguing, and perceiving that unless he complied the inhabitants would follow their own inclination, or rather their fears, without waiting for his consent, or, what was still worse, the Yankees would have time to pour in their forces and claim a share in the conquest, he testily ordered them to hand up the paper. It was accordingly hoisted to him on the end of a pole, and having scrawled his name at the bottom of it, he anathematized them all for a set of cow- ardly, mutinous, degenerate poltroons, threw the capitula- tion at their heads, slammed down the window, and was heard stumping down stairs with vehement indignation. The rabble incontinently took to their heels ; even the burgomasters vrere not slow in evacuating the premises, fearing lest the sturdy Peter might issue from his den and greet them with some unwelcome testimonial of his dis- pleasure. Within three hours after the surrender a legion of Brit- ish beef-fed warriors poured into New Amsterdam, taking possession of the fort and batteries. And now might be niSTORY OF NEW YOEK. 403 heard from all quarters the sound of hammeis made by the old Dutch burghers in nailing up their doors and Avin- dows to protect their vrouws from these fierce barbarians, whom they contemplated in silent sullenness from the gar- ret windows as they paraded through the streets. Thus did Colonel Richard K^ichols, the commander of the British forces, enter into quiet possession of the conquered realm as locum tenens for the duke of York. The victory was attended with no other outrage than that of changing the name of the province and its metropolis, which thence- forth were denominated New Y'ork, and so have continued to be calied unto the present day. The inhabitants, ac- cording to treaty, were allowed to maintain quiet possession of their property ; but so inveterately did they retain their abhorrence of the British nation that in a private meeting of the leading citizens it was unanimously determined never to ask any of their conquerors to dinner. NOTE. Modern liistorians assert that when the New Netherlands were thus overrun by the British, as Spain in ancient days by the Sara- cens, a resolute band refused to bend the neck to the invader. Led by one Garret Van Home, a valorous and gigantic Dutchman, they crossed the bay and buried themselves among the marshes and cab- bage-gardens of Comraunipaw, as did Pelayo and his followers among the mountains of Asturias. Here their descendants have remained ever since, keeping themselves apart, like seed corn, to repeople the city with the genuine breed whenever it shall be effect- ually recovered from its intruders. It is said the genuine descend- ants of the Nederlandters who inhabit New York still look with longing eyes to the green marshes of ancient Pavonia, as did the conquered Spaniards of yore to the stern mountains of Asturias, considering: these the regions whence deliverance is to come. CHAPTER XII. CONTAIXING THE DIGNIFIED RETIREMENT AND IMORTAL SURRENDER OF PETER THE HEADSTRONG. Thus, then, have I concluded this great historical enter- prise ; but before I lay aside my weary pen there yet re- mains to be performed one pious duty. If among the variety of readers who may peruse this book tliere should haply be found any of those souls of true nobility which glow with celestial fire at the history of the generous and the brave, they will doubtless be anxious to know the fate of the gallant Peter Stuy vesant. To gratify one such ster- ling heart of gold I would go more lengths than to instruct the cold-blooded curiosity of a whole fraternity of phil- osophers. No sooner had that high-mettled cavalier signed the articles of capitulation than, determined not to witness the humiliation of his favorite city, he turned his back on its walls and made a growling retreat to his bouivery, or coun- try-seat, which w^as situated about two miles off, where he passed the remainder of his days in patriarchal retirement. There he enjoyed that tranquillity of mind which he had never known amid the distracting cares of government, and tasted the sweets of absolute and uncontrolled authority, which his factious subjects had so often dashed with the bitterness of opposition. Is persuasions could ever induce him to revisit the city ; on the contrary, he would always have his great arm-chair placed with its back to the windows which looked in that direction, until a thick grove of trees planted by his own hand grew up and formed a screen that effectually excluded it from the prospect. He railed continually at the degen- 404 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 405 erate innovations and improvements introduced by the con- querors, forbade a word of their detested language to be spoken in his family — a prohibition readily obeyed, since none of the household could speak anything but Dutch — and even ordered a fine avenue to be cut down in front of his house because it consisted of English cherry trees. The same incessant vigilance which blazed forth when he had a vast province under his care now showed itself with equal vigor, though in narrower limits. He patrolled with unceasing v/atchfulness the boundaries of his little terri- tory, repelled every encroachment with intrepid prompt- ness, punished every vagrant depredation upon his orchard or his farm-yard with inflexible severity, and conducted every stray hog or cow in triumph to the pound. But to the indigent neighbor, the friendless stranger, or the weary •wanderer his spacious doors were ever open, and his capa- cious fire-place, that emblem of his own warm and generous heart, had always a corner to receive and cherish them. There was an exception to this, I must confess, in case the ill-starred applicant were an Englicihman or a Yankee ; to v/hom, though he might extend the hand of assistance, he could never be brought to yield the rites of hospitality. Nay, if peradventure some straggling merchant of the East should stop at his door with his cart-load of tin ware or wooden bowls, the fiery Peter would issue forth like a giant from his castle, and make such a furious clattering among his pots and kettles that the vender of ''notions'' was fain to betake himself to instant flight. flis suit of regimentals, worn threadbare by the brush, were carefully hung up in the state bed-chamber, and regularly aired the first fair day of every month, and his cocked hat and trusty sword were suspended in grim repose over the parlor mantel-piece, forming supporters to a full- length portrait of the renowned admiral Van Tromp. In his domestic empire he maintained strict discipline and a well-organized despotic government ; but, though his own 406 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. will was the supreme law, yet tlie good of his subjects was his constant object. He watched over not merely their immediate comforts, but their morals and their ultimate welfare; for he gave them abundance of excellent admo- nition, nor could any of them complain that v.hen occasion required he was by any means niggardly in bestowing whole- some correction. The good old Dutch festivals, those periodical demonstra- tions of an overflowing heart and a thankful spirit which are falling into sad disuse among my fellow-citizens, were faith- fully observed in the mansion of Governor Stuyvesant. New Year was truly a day of open-handed liberality, of jocund revelry, and warm-hearted congratulation, when the bosom swelled with genial good-fellowship and the plen- teous table was attended with an unceremonious freedom and honest, broad-mouthed merriment unknown in these days of degeneracy and refinement. Paas and Pinxter were scrupulously observed throughout his dominions; nor was the day of St. Nicholas suffered to pass by v.'ithout making presents, hanging the stocking in the chimue}^ and complying with all its other ceremonies. Once a year, on the first day of April, he used to array himself in full regimentals, being the anniversary of his triumphal entry into New Amsterdam after the conquest of New Sweden. This was always a kind of saturnalia among the domestics, when they considered themselves at liberty, in some measure, to say and do what they pleased; for on this day their master was always observed to unbend and become exceeding pleasant and jocose, sending the old gray-headed negroes on April-fool's errands for pigeon's milk ; not one of whom but allowed himself to be taken in, and humored his old master's jokes as became a faithful and well-disciplined dependant. Thus did he reign happily and peacefully on his own land, injuring no man, envying no man, molested by no outward strifes, perplexed by no internal commotions ; and the mighty monarchs of the earth, HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 407 who were vainly seeking to maintain peace and promote the welfare of mankind by war and desolation, would have done well to have made a voyage to the little island of Manna-hata, and learned a lesson in government from the domestic economy of Peter Stuyvesant. In process of time, however, the old governor, like all other children of mortality, began to exhibit evident tokens of decay. Like an aged oak, which, though it long has braved the fury of the elements and still retains its gigantic proportions, begins to shake and groan with every blast, so was it with the gallant Peter ; for, though he still bore the port and semblance of what he was in the days of his hardihood and chivalry, yet did age and infirmity begin to sap the vigor of his frame. But his heart, that unconquer- able citadel, still triumphed unsubdued. With matchless avidity would he listen to every article of intelligence con- cerning the battles between the English and Dutch ; still would his pulse beat high whenever he heard of the vic- tories of De Ruyter, and his countenance lower and his eyebrows knit when fortune turned in favor of the English. At length, as on a certain day he had just smoked his fifth j)ipe, and was napping after dinner in his arm-chair, con- quering the whole British nation in his dreams, he was sud- denly aroused by a ringing of bells, rattling of drums, and roaring of cannon that put all his blood in a ferment. But when he learnt that these rejoicings were in honor of a great victory obtained by tlie combined English and French fleets over the brave De Ruyter and the younger Van Tromp, it went so much to his heart that he took to his bed, and in less than three days was brought to death's door by a violent cholera morbus ! Even in this extremity he still displayed the unconquerable spirit of Peter the Headstrong, holding out to the last gasp with inflexible obstinacy against a whole army of old women who were bent upon driving the enemy out of his bowels, in the true Dutch mode of defence, by inundation. 408 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. While lie thus lay, lingering ©n the verge of dissolution, news was brought him that the brave De Kuyter had made good his retreat with little loss, and meant once more to meet the enemy in battle. The closing eye of the old war- rior kindled with martial fire at the words ; he jDartly raised himself in bed, clenched his withered hand, as if he felt within his gripe that sword which waved in triumph before the walls of Fort Christina, and, giving a grim smile of exultation, sank back upon his pillow and expired. Thus died Peter Stuyvesant, a valiant soldier, a loyal subject, an upright governor, and an honest Dutchman, who wanted only a few empires to desolate to have been immortalized as a hero! His funeral obsequies were celebrated with the utmost grandeur and solemnity. The town was perfectly emptied of its inhabitants, who crowded in throngs to pay the last sad honors to their good old governor. All his sterling qualities rushed in full tide upon their recollection, while the memory of his foibles and his faults had expired with him. The ancient burghers contended who should have the privilege of bearing the pall ; the populace strove who should walk nearest to the bier ; and the melancholy pro- cession was closed by a number of gray -headed negroes who had wintered and summered in the household of their de- parted master for the greater part of a century. With sad and gloomy countenances the multitude gath- ered round the grave. They dwelt with mournful hearts on the sturdy virtues, the signal services, and the gallant exploits of the brave old worthy. They recalled with se- cret upbraidings their own factious oppositions to his gov- ernment, and many an ancient burgher, whose phlegmatic features had never been known to relax nor his eyes to moisten, was now observed to puff a pensive pipe and the big drop to steal down his cheek, while he muttered with affectionate accent and melancholy shake of the head, " Well, den ! Hardkoppig Pieter ben gone at last !" HISTOKY OF NEW YORK. 409 His remains were deposited in the family vault, under a chapel which he luid piously erected on his estate, and ded- icated to St. Nicholas, and which stood on the identical spot at present occupied by St. Mark's Church, where his tombstone is still to be seen. His estate, or bouivery, as it was called, has ever continued in the possession of his de- scendants, who by the uniform integrity of their conduct and their strict adherence to the customs and manners that prevailed in the " good old times " have proved themselves worthy of their illustrious ancestor. Many a time aud oft has the farm been haunted at night by enterprising money- diggers in quest of pots of gold said to have been buried by the old governor, though I ca,nnot learn that any of them have ever been enriched by their researches ; and who is there among my native-born fellow-citizens that does not remember when, in the mischievous days of his boyhood, he conceived it a great exploit to rob " Stuyvesant's or- chard" on a holiday afternoon? At this stronghold of the family may still be seen cer- tain memorials of the immortal Peter. His full-length portrait frowns in martial terrors from the parlor wall, his cocked hat and sword still hang up in the best bedroom, his brimstone-colored breeches were for a long v/hile sus- pended in the hall, until some years since they occasioned a dispute between a new-married couple, and his silver- mounted wooden leg is still treasured uj^ in the storeroom as an invaluable relic. CHAPTER XIII. THE author's reflections UPON WHAT HAS BEEN SAID. Among the numerous events which are each in their turn the most direful and melancholy of all possible occur- rences in your interesting and authentic history, there is none that occasions such deep and heartrending grief as the decline and fall of your renowned and mighty empires. Where is the reader who can contemplate without emotion the disastrous events by which the great dynasties of the world have been extinguished? While wandering, in imagination, among the gigantic ruins of states and em- pires, and marking the tremendous convulsions that wrought their overthrow, the bosom of the melancholy inquirer swells with sympathy commensurate to the sur- rounding desolation. Kingdoms, principalities, and powers have each had their rise, their progress, and their downfall — each in its turn has swayed a potent sceptre — each has returned to its primeval nothingness. And thus did it fare with the empire of their High Mightinesses at the Manhat- toes under the peaceful reign of Walter the Doubter, the fretfid reign of William the Testy, and the chivalric reign of Peter the Headstrong. Its history is fruitful of instruction and worthy of being pondered over attentively, for it is by thus raking among the ashes of departed greatness that the sparks of true knowledge are to be found and the lamp of wisdom illumi- nated. Let, then, the reign of AValter the Doubter warn against yielding to that sleek, contented security and that overweening fondness for comfort and repose which are produced by a state of prosperity and peace. These tend 410 HISTORY OF NEW YORK. 411 to unnerve a nation, to destroy its pride of character, to render it patient of insult, deaf to the calls of honor and of justice, and cause it to cling to peace, like the sluggard to his pillow, at the expense of every valuable duty and consideration. Such supineness ensures the very evil from which it shrinks. One right yielded up produces the usur- pation of a second ; one encroachment passively suffered makes way for another ; and the nation which thus, through a doting love of peace, has sacrificed honor and interest will at length have to fight for existence. Let the disastrous reign of William the Testy serve as a salutary warning against that fitful, feverish mode of legis- lation which acts without system, depends on shifts and projects, and trusts to lucky contingencies ; which hesitates and wavers, and at length decides with the rashness of ignorance and imbecility ; which stoops for popularity by courting the prejudices and flattering the arrogance, rather than commanding the respect, of the rabble ; which seeks safety in a multitude of counsellors, and distracts itself by a variety of contradictory schemes and opinions ; which mistakes procrastination for wariness, hurry for decision, parsimony for economy, bustle for business, and vaporing for valor; which is violent in council, sanguine in ex- pectation, precipitate in action, and feeble in execution ; which undertakes enterprises without forethought, enters upon them without preparation, conducts them without energy, and ends them in confusion and defeat. Let the reign of the good Stuyvesant show the eflfocts of vigor and decision, even w^hen destitute of cool judgment and surrounded by perplexities. Let it shovv' how frank- ness, probity, and high-soulcd courage will command respect and secure honor, even where success is unattainable. But at the same time let it caution against a too ready reliance on the good faith of others, and a too honest confidence in the loving professions of powerful neighbors, who are most friendly when they most mean to betray. Let it teach 412 HISTORY OF NEW YOEK. a judicious attention to the opinions and wishes of the many, who in times of peril must be soothed and led, or appre- hension will overpower the deference to authority. Let the empty worldliness of his factious subjects, their intemperate harangues, their violent " resolutions," their hectorings against an absent enemy, and their pusillanimity on his approach teach us to distrust and despise those clam- orous patriots whose courage dwells but in the tongue. Let them serve as a lesson to repress that insolence of speech, destitute of real force, which too often breaks forth in pop- ular bodies, and bespeaks the vanity rather than the spirit of a nation. Let them caution us against vaunting too much of our own power and prowess and reviling a noble enemy. True gallantry of soul would always lead us to treat a foe with courtesy and proud punctilio ; a contrary conduct but takes from the merit of victory and renders defeat doubly disgraceful. But I cease to dwell on the stores of excellent examples to be drawn from the ancient chronicles of the Manhattoes. He who reads attentively will discover the threads of gold which run throughout the web of history and are invisible to the dull eye of ignorance. But before I conclude let me point out a solemn warning, furnished in the subtle chain of events by which the capture of Fort Casimir has produced the present convulsions of our globe. Attend then, gentle reader, to this plain deduction, which, if thou art a king, an emperor, or other powerful potentate, I advise thee to treasure up in thy heart, though little expectation have I that my work will fall into such hands, for well I know the care of crafty ministers to keep all grave and edifying books of the kind out of the v/ay of unhappy monarchs, lest peradventure they should read them and learn wisdom. By the treacherous surprisal of Fort Casimir, then, did the crafty Swedes enjoy a transient triumph, but drew upon their heads the vengeance of Peter Stuy vesaut, who wrested HISTOKY OF NEW YORK. 413 all New Sweden from their hands. By the conquest of New Sweden, Peter Stuyvesant aroused the claims of Lord Baltimore, who appealed to the Cabinet of Great Britain, who subdued the whole province of New Netherlands. By this great achievement the whole extent of North America, from Nova Scotia to the Floridas,' was rendered one entire dependency upon the British Crown. But mark the con- sequence : the hitherto scattered colonies being thus consol- idated, and having no rival colonies to check or keep them in awe, waxed great and powerful, and, finally becoming too strong for the mother-country, were enabled to shake off its bonds and by a glorious Bevolution became an inde- pendent empire. But the chain of effects stopped not here : the successful revolution in America produced the sangui- nary revolution in France, which produced the puissant Bonaparte, who produced the French despotism which has thrown the whole world in confusion ! Thus have these great pov/ers been successively punished for their ill-starred conquests, and thus, as I asserted, have all the present con- vulsions, revolutions, and disasters that overNvhelm man- kind originated in the capture of the little Fort Casimir, as recorded in this eventful history. And now, worthy reader, ere I take a sad farewell — which, alas ! must be for ever — willingly would I part in cordial fellowship and bespeak thy kind-hearted remem- brance. That I have not written a better history of the days of the patriarchs is not my fault ; had any other per- son written one as good I should not have attempted it at all. That many will hereafter spring up and surpass me in excellence I have very little doubt, and still less care, well knowing that when the great Christovallo Colon (who is vulgarly called Columbus) had once stood his egg upon its end, every one at table could stand his up a thousand times more dextrously. Should any reader find matter of of- fence in this history, I should heartily grieve, though I would on no account question his penetration by telling 414 HISTOEY OF NEW YORK. him he was mistaken, his goo& nature by telling him he was captious, or his pure conscience by telling him he was startled at a shadow. Surely when so ingenious in finding offence where none was intended, it were a thousand pities he should not be suffered to enjoy the benefit of his discovery. I have too high an opinion of the understanding of my fellow-citizens to think of yielding them instruction, and I covet too much their good will to forfeit it by giving them good advice. I am none of those cynics who despise the world because it despises them ; on the contrary, though but low in its regard, I look up to it with the most perfect good nature, and my only sorrow is that it does not prove itself more worthy of the unbounded love I bear it. If, however, in this my historic production, the scanty fruit of a long and laborious life, I have failed to gratify the dainty palate of the age, I can only lament my misfor- tune, for it is too late in the season for me even to hope to repair it. Already has withering age showered his sterile snows upon my brow ; in a little while and this genial warmth which still lingers around my heart and throbs — worthy reader, throbs kindly — towards thyself will be chilled for ever. Haply, this frail compound of dust, which while alive may have given birth to naught but unprofit- able weeds, may form a humble sod of the valley, whence may spring many a sweet wild flower to adorn my be- loved island of Manna-hata ! THE END.