Chapter IV: Book VII (1)

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.
CHAP. I.—How Peter Stuyvesant relieved the Sovereign People from
the burden of taking care of the nation; with sundy particulars
of his conduct in time of peace, and of the rise of a great
Dutch aristocracy 259
CHAP. II.—How Peter Stuyvesant labored to civilize the
community—how he was a great promoter of holidays—how he
instituted kissing on New-Year’s Day—how he distributed fiddles
throughout the New Netherlands—how he ventured to reform the
ladies’ petticoats, and how he caught a Tartar 270
CHAP. III.—How troubles thicken on the province—how it is
threatened by the Helderbergers, the Merrylanders, and the
Giants of the Susquehanna 278
CHAP. IV.—How Peter Stuyvesant adventured into the East Country,
and how he fared there 284
CHAP. V.—How the Yankees secretly sought aid of the British
Cabinet in their hostile schemes against the Manhattoes 296
CHAP. VI.—Of Peter Stuyvesant’s expedition into the East Country,
showing that, though an old bird, he did not understand trap 300
CHAP. VII.—How the people of New Amsterdam were thrown into a
great panic, by the news of the threatened invasion; and the
manner in which they fortified themselves 308
CHAP. VIII.—How the Grand Council of the New Netherlands were
miraculously gifted with long tongues in the moment of
emergency—showing the value of words in warfare 315
CHAP. 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 resolutions 323
CHAP. X.—Containing a doleful disaster of Antony the Trumpeter—and
how Peter Stuyvesant, like a second Cromwell, suddenly dissolved
a Rump Parliament 338
CHAP. XI.—How Peter Stuyvesant defended the city of New Amsterdam
for several days by dint of the strength of his head. 347
CHAP. XII.—Containing the dignified retirement, and mortal
surrender of Peter the Headstrong 360
CHAP. XIII.—The Author’s reflections upon what has been said 372

Illustrations

PAGE “AS THEY DEFILED THROUGH THE PRINCIPAL GATE THAT STOOD AT THE HEAD OF WALL STREET” _Frontispiece_ “BLACKSMITHS SUFFERED THEIR FIRES TO GO OUT” 3 THE EDICT OF WILLIAM THE TESTY 9 A LONG PIPE 11 A POT-HOUSE POLITICIAN 13 THE MERRYLANDERS WERE FOND OF BOXING 19 “I LOWER IT TO NONE” 25 “A WHOLE ROW OF HELDERBERGERS REARED THEIR ROUND BURLY HEADS” 29 THE WISE MEN AND SOOTHSAYERS 32 “THEY SOLD THEM GUNS THAT EXPLODED AT THE FIRST FIRING” 39 DUTCH FAMILY PIPE 43 “DRINKING, FIDDLING AND DANCING” 49 “SO AS TO DELIGHT THE GOVERNOR WHILE AT HIS REPASTS” 61 “A NANTUCKET WHALER WITH A SPY GLASS TWICE AS LONG” 71 “THE OLD WOMEN REJOICED THAT THERE WAS TO BE NO WAR” 73 “THE ANGRY BULL BUTTS WITH HIS HORNS” 78 TWO AMBASSADORS 81 “SNIVELLING SCOURINGS, BROILS, AND MARAUDINGS, KEPT UP ON THE EASTERN FRONTIERS” 85 MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER WAS INJURED 89 “TWANGING HIS TRUMPET LIKE A VERY DEVIL” 93 “THE KNOWING COMMISSIONERS WINKED TO EACH OTHER” 97 THE MILITIA 105 THE FORTIFICATIONS 107 “HAVING A MOST SUSPICIOUS PREDILECTION FOR BLACK CATS AND BROOMSTICKS” 111 THE WORTHY JUDGES 114 JAN JANSEN ALPENDAM 119 “HE FRIGHTED ALL, CATS, DOGS, AND ALL” 123 VAN POFFENBURGH’S VALOR 127 KELDERMEESTER 129 PETRUS STUYVESANT 135 JAN PRINTZ 139 THE MOSQUITO PLAGUE 141 “THE MAIN GUARD WAS TURNED OUT” 146 “WITH GREAT CEREMONY, INTO THE FORT” 149 “TO ROB ALL THE HEN-ROOSTS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD” 152 DIRK SCHUILER 157 “AND PADDLED OVER TO NEW AMSTERDAM” 161 “AND STUMPING UP AND DOWN STAIRS” 164 “SOME LITTLE INDIAN VILLAGE” 171 THE OMNIPOTENT MANETHO 174 THE KILLING OF THE STURGEON 179 “THESE WERE OF A SOUR ASPECT” 184 “AS THEY DEFILED THROUGH THE PRINCIPAL GATE THAT STOOD AT THE HEAD OF WALL STREET” 185 “A CREW OF HARD SWEARERS” 191 “CRAMMED THE POCKETS OF HER HERO WITH GINGERBREAD AND DOUGHNUTS” 198 “HAVING SHOT THE DEVIL WITH A SILVER BULLET, ONE DARK STORMY NIGHT” 201 “BARRICADED THE DOORS AND WINDOWS EVERY EVENING AT SUNDOWN” 204 “MARCHED OUT WITH THE HONORS OF WAR” 207 ANIMATING HARANGUES 212 “BEFORE A BIT OF BROKEN LOOKING-GLASS, SHAVING HIMSELF” 217 MARS AS A DRUNKEN CORPORAL 223 THE CHARGE 227 THE DESPERATE STRUGGLE 230 “ON BLUNDERED AND THUNDERED THE HEAVY-STERNED FUGITIVES” 233 “THIS HEAVEN-DIRECTED BLOW DECIDED THE BATTLE” 238 “SPITTING HALF A DOZEN LITTLE FELLOWS ON HIS SWORD” 243 THE SHADES OF DEPARTED AND LONG-FORGOTTEN HEROES 246 “MYNHEER WILLIAM BEEKMAN” 250 “THE OLD WOMEN FLOCKED AROUND ANTONY” 252 “‘NAY, BUT,’ SAID PETER, ‘TRY YOUR INGENUITY, MAN’” 262 “SEATED ON THE ‘STOEP’ BEFORE HIS DOOR” 265 “PLATTER-BREECHES” 269 NEW YEAR’S DAY AT THE GOVERNOR’S 273 THE DANCE 275 A SUSQUESAHANOCK 281 A BUXOM LASS 289 THE JOURNEY 291 “THEY BESTRODE THEIR CANES AND GALLOPED OFF IN HORRIBLE CONFUSION” 293 LORD STERLING 298 “HE WAS TREATED TO A SIGHT OF PLYMOUTH ROCK” 304 “NOR WOULD HE GO OUT OF A NIGHT WITHOUT A LANTERN” 311 THE LONG TALK AT THE COUNCIL-FIRE 317 “THE SUDDEN ENTRANCE OF A MESSENGER” 321 THE ARRIVAL OF PETER 325 “WAS TO MOUNT THE ROOF, WHENCE HE CONTEMPLATED WITH RUEFUL ASPECT THE HOSTILE SQUADRON” 328 “METAMORPHOSING PUMPS INTO FORMIDABLE SOLDIERS” 331 A PUBLIC MEETING IN FRONT OF THE STADTHOUSE 335 THE DEATH OF ANTONY VAN CORLEAR 341 “APOLLO PEEPING OUT NOW AND THEN FOR AN INSTANT” 344 DETERMINED COCK 352 “A LEGION OF BRITISH BEEF-FED WARRIORS POURED INTO NEW AMSTERDAM” 357 “CONDUCTED EVERY STRAY HOG OR COW IN TRIUMPH TO THE POUND” 362 “ON APRIL FOOL’S ERRANDS FOR PIGEON’S MILK” 365 “‘WELL, DEN!—HARDKOPPIG PETER BEN GONE AT LAST!’” 369

=Book IV.= (_Continued._)
CONTAINING THE CHRONICLES OF THE REIGN OF WILLIAM THE TESTY.

A HISTORY OF NEW YORK

=Chapter VII.=
GROWING DISCONTENTS OF NEW AMSTERDAM UNDER THE GOVERNMENT OF WILLIAM THE
TESTY.

It has been remarked by the observant writer of the Stuyvesant manuscript, that under the administration of William Kieft the disposition of the inhabitants of New Amsterdam experienced an essential change, so that they became very meddlesome and factious. The unfortunate propensity of the little governor to experiment and innovation, and the frequent exacerbations of his temper, kept his council in a continual worry; and the council being to the people at large what yeast or leaven is to a batch, they threw the whole community in a ferment; and the people at large being to the city what the mind is to the body, the unhappy commotions they underwent operated most disastrously upon New Amsterdam,—insomuch that, in certain of their paroxysms of consternation and perplexity, they begat several of the most crooked, distorted, and abominable streets, lanes, and alleys with which this metropolis is disfigured.

The fact was, that about this time the community, like Balaam’s ass, began to grow more enlightened than its rider, and to show a disposition for what is called “self-government.” This restive propensity was first evinced in certain popular meetings, in which the burghers of New Amsterdam met to talk and smoke over the complicated affairs of the province, gradually obfuscating themselves with politics and tobacco-smoke. Hither resorted those idlers and squires of low degree who hang loose on society and are blown about by every wind of doctrine. Cobblers abandoned their stalls to give lessons on political economy; blacksmiths suffered their fires to go out while they stirred up the fires of faction; and even tailors, though said to be the ninth part of humanity, neglected their own measures to criticize the measures of government.

Strange! that the science of government, which seems to be so generally understood, should invariably be denied to the only one called upon to exercise it. Not one of the politicians in question, but, take his word for it, could have administered affairs ten times better than William the Testy.

“BLACKSMITHS SUFFERED THEIR FIRES TO GO OUT.”
]

Under the instructions of these political oracles the good people of New Amsterdam soon became exceedingly enlightened, and, as a matter of course, exceedingly discontented. They gradually found out the fearful error in which they had indulged, of thinking themselves the happiest people in creation, and were convinced that, all circumstances to the contrary notwithstanding, they were a very unhappy, deluded, and consequently ruined people!

We are naturally prone to discontent, and avaricious after imaginary causes of lamentation. Like lubberly monks we belabor our own shoulders, and take a vast satisfaction in the music of our own groans. Nor is this said by way of paradox; daily experience shows the truth of these observations. It is almost impossible to elevate the spirits of a man groaning under ideal calamities; but nothing is easier than to render him wretched, though on the pinnacle of felicity; as it would be an Herculean task to hoist a man to the top of a steeple, though the merest child could topple him off thence.

I must not omit to mention that these popular meetings were generally held at some noted tavern, these public edifices possessing what in modern times are thought the true fountains of political inspiration. The ancient Greeks deliberated upon a matter when drunk, and reconsidered it when sober. Mob-politicians in modern times dislike to have two minds upon a subject, so they both deliberate and act when drunk; by this means a world of delay is spared; and as it is universally allowed that a man when drunk sees double, it follows conclusively that he sees twice as well as his sober neighbors.

=Chapter VIII.=
OF THE EDICT OF WILLIAM THE TESTY AGAINST TOBACCO—OF THE PIPE-PLOT, AND
THE RISE OF FEUDS AND PARTIES.

Wilhelmus Kieft, as has already been observed, was a great legislator on a small scale, and had a microscopic eye in public affairs. He had been greatly annoyed by the factious meeting of the good people of New Amsterdam, but, observing that on these occasions the pipe was ever in their mouth, he began to think that the pipe was at the bottom of the affair, and that there was some mysterious affinity between politics and tobacco-smoke. Determined to strike at the root of the evil, he began forthwith to rail at tobacco, as a noxious, nauseous weed, filthy in all its uses; and as to smoking, he denounced it as a heavy tax upon the public pocket,—a vast consumer of time, a great encourager of idleness, and a deadly bane to the prosperity and morals of the people. Finally he issued an edict, prohibiting the smoking of tobacco throughout the New Netherlands. Ill-fated Kieft! Had he lived in the present age and attempted to check the unbounded license of the press, he could not have struck more sorely upon the sensibilities of the million. The pipe, in fact, was the greatest organ of reflection and deliberation of the New Netherlander. It was his constant companion and solace: was he gay, he smoked; was he sad, he smoked; his pipe was never out of his mouth; it was part of his physiognomy; without it his best friends would not know him. Take away his pipe? You might as well take away his nose!

The immediate effect of the edict of William the Testy was a popular commotion. A vast multitude, armed with pipes and tobaccoboxes, and an immense supply of ammunition, sat themselves down before the governor’s house, and fell to smoking with tremendous violence. The testy William issued forth like a wrathful spider, demanding the reason of this lawless fumigation. The sturdy rioters replied by lolling back in their seats, and puffing away with redoubled fury, raising such a murky cloud that the governor was fain to take refuge in the interior of his castle.

A long negotiation ensued through the medium of Antony the Trumpeter. The governor was at first wrathful and unyielding, but was gradually smoked into terms. He concluded by permitting the smoking of tobacco, but he abolished the fair long pipes used in the days of Wouter Van Twiller, denoting ease, tranquillity, and sobriety of deportment; these he condemned as incompatible with the despatch of business, in place whereof he substituted little captious short pipes, two inches in length, which, he observed, could be stuck in one corner of the mouth, or twisted in the hatband, and would never be in the way. Thus ended this alarming insurrection, which was long known by the name of The Pipe-Plot, and which, it has been somewhat quaintly observed, did end, like most plots and seditions, in mere smoke.

But mark, oh, reader! the deplorable evils which did afterwards result. The smoke of these villanous little pipes, continually ascending in a cloud about the nose, penetrated into and befogged the cerebellum, dried up all the kindly moisture of the brain, and rendered the people who used them as vaporous and testy as the governor himself. Nay, what is worse, from being goodly, burly, sleek-conditioned men, they became, like our Dutch yeomanry who smoke short pipes, a lantern-jawed, smoke-dried, leathern-hided race.

THE EDICT OF WILLIAM THE TESTY.
]

Nor was this all. From this fatal schism in tobacco-pipes we may date the rise of parties in the Nieuw Nederlandts. The rich and self-important burghers who had made their fortunes, and could afford to be lazy, adhered to the ancient fashion, and formed a kind of aristocracy known as the _Long Pipes_; while the lower order, adopting the reform of William Kieft as more convenient in their handicraft employments, were branded with the plebeian name of _Short Pipes_.

A third party sprang up, headed by the descendants of Robert Chewit, the companion of the great Hudson. These discarded pipes altogether and took to chewing tobacco; hence they were called _Quids_,—an appellation since given to those political mongrels which sometimes spring up between two great parties, as a mule is produced between a horse and an ass.

And here I would note the great benefit of party distinctions in saving the people at large the trouble of thinking. Hesiod divides mankind into three classes—those who think for themselves, those who think as others think, and those who do not think at all. The second class comprises the great mass of society; for most people require a set creed and a file-leader. Hence the origin of party: which means a large body of people, some few of whom think, and all the rest talk. The former take the lead and discipline the latter; prescribing what they must say, what they must approve, what they must hoot at, whom they must support, but, above all, whom they must hate; for no one can be a right good partisan, who is not a thorough-going hater.

A LONG PIPE.
]

The enlightened inhabitants of the Manhattoes, therefore, being divided into parties, were enabled to hate each other with great accuracy. And now the great business of politics went bravely on, the long pipes and short pipes assembling in separate beer-houses, and smoking at each other with implacable vehemence, to the great support of the State and profit of the tavern-keepers. Some, indeed, went so far as to bespatter their adversaries with those odoriferous little words which smell so strong in the Dutch language, believing, like true politicians, that they served their party, and glorified themselves in proportion as they bewrayed their neighbors. But, however they might differ among themselves, all parties agreed in abusing the governor, seeing that he was not a governor of their choice, but appointed by others to rule over them.

Unhappy William Kieft! exclaims the sage writer of the Stuyvesant manuscript, doomed to contend with enemies too knowing to be entrapped, and to reign over a people too wise to be governed. All his foreign expeditious were baffled and set at naught by the all-pervading Yankees; all his home measures were canvassed and condemned by “numerous and respectable meetings” of pot-house politicians.

In the multitude of counsellors, we are told, there is safety; but the multitude of counsellors was a continual source of perplexity to William Kieft. With a temperament as hot as an old radish, and a mind subject to perpetual whirlwinds and tornadoes, he never failed to get into a passion with every one who undertook to advise him. I have observed, however, that your passionate little men, like small boats with large sails, are easily upset or blown out of their course; so was it with William the Testy, who was prone to be carried away by the last piece of advice blown into his ear. The consequence was, that, though a projector of the first class, yet by continually changing his projects he gave none a fair trial; and by endeavoring to do everything, he in sober truth did nothing.

A POT-HOUSE POLITICIAN.
]

In the meantime, the sovereign people got into the saddle, showed themselves, as usual, unmerciful riders; spurring on the little governor with harangues and petitions, and thwarting him with memorials and reproaches, in much the same way as holiday apprentices manage an unlucky devil of a hack-horse,—so that Wilhelmus Kieft was kept at a worry or a gallop throughout the whole of his administration.

=Chapter IX.=
OF THE FOLLY OF BEING HAPPY IN TIME OF PROSPERITY—OF TROUBLES TO THE
SOUTH BROUGHT ON BY ANNEXATION—OF THE SECRET EXPEDITION OF JAN JANSEN
ALPENDAM, AND HIS MAGNIFICENT REWARD.

If we could but get a peep at the tally of dame Fortune, where like a vigilant landlady she chalks up the debtor and creditor accounts of thoughtless mortals, we should find that every good is checked off by an evil, and that, however we may apparently revel scot-free for a season, the time will come when we must ruefully pay off the reckoning. Fortune in fact is a pestilent shrew, and withal an inexorable creditor; and though for a time she may be all smiles and courtesies and indulge us in long credits, yet sooner or later she brings up her arrears with a vengeance, and washes out her scores with our tears. “Since,” says good old Boëtius, “no man can retain her at his pleasure; what are her favors but sure prognostications of approaching trouble and calamity?”

This is the fundamental maxim of that sage school of philosophers, the croakers, who esteem it true wisdom to doubt and despond when other men rejoice, well knowing that happiness is at best but transient,—that, the higher one is elevated on the seesaw balance of fortune, the lower must be his subsequent depression,—that he who is on the uppermost round of a ladder has most to suffer from a fall, while he who is at the bottom runs very little risk of breaking his neck by tumbling to the top.

Philosophical readers of this stamp must have doubtless indulged in dismal forebodings all through the tranquil reign of Walter the Doubter, and considered it what Dutch seamen call a weather-breeder. They will not be surprised, therefore, that the foul weather which gathered during his days should now be rattling from all quarters on the head of William the Testy.

The origin of some of these troubles may be traced quite back to the discoveries and annexations of Hans Reinier Oothout, the explorer, and Wynant Ten Breeches, the land-measurer, made in the twilight days of Oloffe the Dreamer; by which the territories of the Nieuw Nederlandts were carried far to the south, to Delaware river and parts beyond. The consequence was, many disputes and brawls with the Indians, which now and then reached the drowsy ears of Walter the Doubter and his council, like the muttering of distant thunder from behind the mountains, without, however, disturbing their repose. It was not till the time of William the Testy that the thunderbolt reached the Manhattoes. While the little governor was diligently protecting his eastern boundaries from the Yankees, word was brought him of the irruption of a vagrant colony of Swedes in the south, who had landed on the banks of the Delaware and displayed the banner of that redoubtable virago Queen Christina, and taken possession of the country in her name. These had been guided in their expedition by one Peter Minuits, or Minnewits, a renegade Dutchman, formerly in the service of their High Mightinesses, but who now declared himself governor of all the surrounding country, to which was given the name of the province of NEW SWEDEN.

It is an old saying that “a little pot is soon hot,” which was the case with William the Testy. Being a little man, he was soon in a passion, and once in a passion, he soon boiled over. Summoning his council on the receipt of this news, he belabored the Swedes in the longest speech that had been heard in the colony since the wordy warfare of Ten Breeches and Tough Breeches. Having thus taken off the fire-edge of his valor, he resorted to his favorite measure of proclamation, and despatched a document of the kind, ordering the renegade Minnewits and his gang of Swedish vagabonds to leave the country immediately, under pain of the vengeance of their High Mightinesses the Lords States-General, and of the potentates of the Manhattoes.

This strong measure was not a whit more effectual than its predecessors, which had been thundered against the Yankees; and William Kieft was preparing to follow it up with something still more formidable, when he received intelligence of other invaders on his southern frontier, who had taken possession of the banks of the Schuylkill, and built a fort there. They were represented as a gigantic, gun-powder race of men, exceedingly expert at boxing, biting, gouging, and other branches of the rough-and-tumble mode of warfare, which they had learned from their prototypes and cousins-german, the Virginians, to whom they have ever borne considerable resemblance. Like them, too, they were great roisters, much given to revel on hoe-cake and bacon, mint-julep and apple-toddy; whence their newly formed colony had already acquired the name of Merryland, which, with a slight modification, it retains to the present day.

THE MERRYLANDERS WERE FOND OF BOXING.
]

In fact, the Merrylanders and their cousins, the Virginians, were represented to William Kieft as offsets from the same original stock as his bitter enemies the Yanokie, or Yankee tribes of the east, having both come over to this country for the liberty of conscience, or, in other words, to live as they pleased: the Yankees taking to praying and money-making, and converting quakers; and the Southerners to horse-racing and cock-fighting, and breeding negroes.

Against these new invaders Wilhelmus Kieft immediately despatched a naval armament of two sloops and thirty men, under Jan Jansen Alpendam, who was armed to the very teeth with one of the little governor’s most powerful speeches, written in vigorous Low Dutch.

Admiral Alpendam arrived without accident in the Schuylkill, and came upon the enemy just as they were engaged in a great “barbecue,” a kind of festivity or carouse much practised in Merryland. Opening upon them with the speech of William the Testy, he denounced them as a pack of lazy, canting, julep-tippling, cock-fighting, horse-racing, slave-trading, tavern-hunting, Sabbath-breaking, mulatto-breeding upstarts, and concluded by ordering them to evacuate the country immediately: to which they laconically replied in plain English, “they’d see him d——d first!”

Now, this was a reply on which neither Jan Jansen Alpendam nor Wilhelmus Kieft had made any calculation. Finding himself, therefore, totally unprepared to answer so terrible a rebuff with suitable hostility, the admiral concluded his wisest course would be to return home and report progress. He accordingly steered his course back to New Amsterdam, where he arrived safe, having accomplished this hazardous enterprise at small expense of treasure and no loss of life. His saving policy gained him the universal appellation of the Saviour of his Country; and his services were suitably rewarded by a shingle monument, erected by subscription on the top of Flattenbarrack Hill, where it immortalized his name for three whole years, when it fell to pieces and was burnt for firewood.

=Chapter X.=
TROUBLOUS TIMES ON THE HUDSON—HOW KILLIAN VAN RENSELLAER ERECTED A
FEUDAL CASTLE, AND HOW HE INTRODUCED CLUB-LAW INTO THE PROVINCE.

About this time the testy little governor of the New Netherlands appears to have had his hands full, and with one annoyance and the other to have been kept continually on the bounce. He was on the very point of following up the expedition of Jan Jansen Alpendam by some belligerent measures against the marauders of Merryland, when his attention was suddenly called away by belligerent troubles springing up in another quarter, the seeds of which had been sown in the tranquil days of Walter the Doubter.

The reader will recollect the deep doubt into which that most pacific of governors was thrown on Killian Van Rensellaer’s taking possession of Bearn Island by _wapen recht_. While the governor doubted and did nothing, the lordly Killian went on to complete his sturdy little castellum of Rensellaerstein, and to garrison it with a number of his tenants from the Helderberg, a mountain region famous for the hardest heads and hardest fists in the province. Nicholas Koorn, a faithful squire of the patroon, accustomed to strut at his heels, wear his cast-off clothes, and imitate his lofty bearing, was established in this post as wacht-meester. His duty it was to keep an eye on the river, and oblige every vessel that passed, unless on the service of their High Mightinesses, to strike its flag, lower its peak, and pay toll to the lord of Rensellaerstein.

This assumption of sovereign authority within the territories of the Lords States-General, however it might have been tolerated by Walter the Doubter, had been sharply contested by William the Testy on coming into office; and many written remonstrances had been addressed by him to Killian Van Rensellaer, to which the latter never deigned a reply. Thus, by degrees, a sore place, or, in Hibernian parlance, a _raw_, had been established in the irritable soul of the little governor, insomuch that he winced at the very name of Rensellaerstein.

Now it came to pass, that, on a fine sunny day, the Company’s yacht, the _Half-Moon_, having been on one of its stated visits to Fort Aurania, was quietly tiding it down the Hudson. The commander, Govert Lockerman, a veteran Dutch skipper of few words but great bottom, was seated on the high poop, quietly smoking his pipe under the shadow of the proud flag of Orange, when, on arriving abreast of Bearn Island, he was saluted by a stentorian voice from the shore, “Lower thy flag, and be d——d to thee!”

Govert Lockerman, without taking his pipe out of his mouth, turned up his eye from under his broad-brimmed hat to see who hailed him thus discourteously. There, on the ramparts of the fort, stood Nicholas Koorn, armed to the teeth, flourishing a brass-hilted sword, while a steeple-crowned hat and cock’s tail-feather, formerly worn by Killian Van Rensellaer himself, gave an inexpressible loftiness to his demeanor.

Govert Lockerman eyed the warrior from top to toe, but was not to be dismayed. Taking the pipe slowly out of his mouth, “To whom should I lower my flag?” demanded he. “To the high and mighty Killian Van Rensellaer, the lord of Rensellaerstein!” was the reply.

“I LOWER IT TO NONE.”
]

“I lower it to none but the Prince of Orange and my masters the Lords States-General.” So saying, he resumed his pipe and smoked with an air of dogged determination.

Bang! went a gun from the fortress; the ball cut both sail and rigging. Govert Lockerman said nothing, but smoked the more doggedly.

Bang! went another gun; the shot whistled close astern.

“Fire, and be d——d,” cried Govert Lockerman, cramming a new charge of tobacco into his pipe, and smoking with still increasing vehemence.

Bang! went a third gun. The shot passed over his head, tearing a hole in the “princely flag of Orange.”

This was the hardest trial of all for the pride and patience of Govert Lockerman. He maintained a stubborn, though swelling silence; but his smothered rage might be perceived by the short vehement puffs of smoke emitted from his pipe, by which he might be tracked for miles, as he slowly floated out of shot and out of sight of Bearn Island. In fact he never gave vent to his passion until he got fairly among the highlands of the Hudson; when he let fly whole volleys of Dutch oaths, which are said to linger to this very day among the echoes of the Dunderberg, and to give particular effect to the thunder-storms in that neighborhood.

It was the sudden apparition of Govert Lockerman at Dog’s Misery, bearing in his hand the tattered flag of Orange, that arrested the attention of William the Testy, just as he was devising a new expedition against the marauders of Merryland. I will not pretend to describe the passion of the little man when he heard of the outrage of Rensellaerstein. Suffice it to say, in the first transports of his fury, he turned Dog’s Misery topsy-turvy; kicked every cur out of doors, and threw the cats out of the window; after which, his spleen being in some measure relieved, he went into a council of war with Govert Lockerman, the skipper, assisted by Antony Van Corlear, the Trumpeter.

=Chapter XI.=
ON THE DIPLOMATIC MISSION OF ANTONY THE TRUMPETER TO THE FORTRESS OF
RENSELLAERSTEIN—AND HOW HE WAS PUZZLED BY A CABALISTIC REPLY.

The eyes of all New Amsterdam were now turned to see what would be the end of this direful feud between William the Testy and the patroon of Rensellaerwick; and some, observing the consultations of the governor with the skipper and the trumpeter, predicted warlike measures by sea and land. The wrath of William Kieft, however, though quick to rise, was quick to evaporate. He was a perfect brush-heap in a blaze, snapping and crackling for a time, and then ending in smoke. Like many other valiant potentates, his first thoughts were all for war, his sober second thoughts for diplomacy.

“A WHOLE ROW OF HELDERBERGERS REARED THEIR ROUND BURLY HEADS.”
]

Accordingly, Govert Lockerman was once more despatched up the river in the Company’s yacht, the _Goed Hoop_ bearing Antony the Trumpeter as ambassador, to treat with the belligerent powers of Rensellaerstein. In the fulness of time the yacht arrived before Bearn Island, and Antony the Trumpeter, mounting the poop, sounded a parley to the fortress. In a little while the steeple-crowned hat of Nicholas Koorn, the wacht-meester, rose above the battlements, followed by his iron visage, and ultimately his whole person, armed, as before, to the very teeth; while, one by one, a whole row of Helderbergers reared their round burly heads above the wall, and beside each pumpkin-head peered the end of a rusty musket. Nothing daunted by this formidable array, Antony Van Corlear drew forth and read with audible voice a missive from William the Testy, protesting against the usurpation of Bearn Island, and ordering the garrison to quit the premises, bag and baggage, on pain of the vengeance of the potentate of the Manhattoes.

In reply, the wacht-meester applied the thumb of his right hand to the end of his nose, and the thumb of his left hand to the little finger of the right, and spreading each hand like a fan, made an aërial flourish with his fingers. Antony Van Corlear was sorely perplexed to understand this sign, which seemed to him something mysterious and masonic. Not liking to betray his ignorance, he again read with a loud voice the missive of William the Testy, and again Nicholas Koorn applied the thumb of his right hand to the end of his nose, and the thumb of his left hand to the little finger of the right, and repeated this kind of nasal weather-cock. Antony Van Corlear now persuaded himself that this was some shorthand sign or symbol, current in diplomacy, which, though unintelligible to a new diplomat, like himself, would speak volumes to the experienced intellect of William the Testy; considering his embassy therefore at an end, he sounded his trumpet with great complacency, and set sail on his return down the river, every now and then practising this mysterious sign of the wacht-meester, to keep it accurately in mind.

Arrived at New Amsterdam he made a faithful report of his embassy to the governor, accompanied by a manual exhibition of the response of Nicholas Koorn. The governor was equally perplexed with his embassy. He was deeply versed in the mysteries of free-masonry; but they threw no light on the matter. He knew every variety of wind-mill and weather-cock, but was not a whit the wiser as to the aërial sign in question. He had even dabbled in Egyptian hieroglyphics and the mystic symbols of the obelisks, but none furnished a key to the reply of Nicholas Koorn. He called a meeting of his council. Antony Van Corlear stood forth in the midst, and putting the thumb of his right hand to his nose, and the thumb of his left hand to the finger of the right, he gave a faithful fac-simile of the portentous sign. Having a nose of unusual dimensions, it was as if the reply had been put in capitals; but all in vain: the worthy burgomasters were equally perplexed with the governor. Each one put his thumb to the end of his nose, spread his fingers like a fan, imitated the motion of Antony Van Corlear, and then smoked in dubious silence. Several times was Antony obliged to stand forth like a fugleman and repeat the sign, and each time a circle of nasal weather-cocks might be seen in the council-chamber.

THE WISE MEN AND SOOTHSAYERS.
]

Perplexed in the extreme, William the Testy sent for all the soothsayers, and fortunetellers and wise men of the Manhattoes, but none could interpret the mysterious reply of Nicholas Koorn. The council broke up in sore perplexity. The matter got abroad, and Antony Van Corlear was stopped at every corner to repeat the signal to a knot of anxious newsmongers, each of whom departed with his thumb to his nose and his fingers in the air, to carry the story home to his family. For several days all business was neglected in New Amsterdam; nothing was talked of but the diplomatic mission of Antony the Trumpeter,—nothing was to be seen but knots of politicians with their thumbs to their noses. In the meantime the fierce feud between William the Testy and Killian Van Rensellaer, which at first had menaced deadly warfare, gradually cooled off, like many other war-questions, in the prolonged delays of diplomacy.

Still to this early affair of Rensellaerstein may be traced the remote origin of those windy wars in modern days which rage in the bowels of the Helderberg, and have wellnigh shaken the great patroonship of the Van Rensellaers to its foundation; for we are told that the bully boys of the Helderberg, who served under Nicholas Koorn the wacht-meester, carried back to their mountains the hieroglyphic sign which had so sorely puzzled Antony Van Corlear and the sages of the Manhattoes; so that to the present day the thumb to the nose and the fingers in the air is apt to be the reply of the Helderbergers whenever called upon for any long arrears of rent.

=Chapter XII.=
CONTAINING THE RISE OF THE GREAT AMPHICTYONIC COUNCIL OF THE PILGRIMS,
WITH THE DECLINE AND FINAL EXTINCTION OF WILLIAM THE TESTY.

It was asserted by the wise men of ancient times, who had a nearer opportunity of ascertaining the fact, that at the gate of Jupiter’s palace lay two huge tuns, one filled with blessings, the other with misfortunes; and it would verily seem as if the latter had been completely overturned and left to deluge the unlucky province of Nieuw Nederlandts: for about this time, while harassed and annoyed from the south and the north, incessant forays were made by the border-chivalry of Connecticut upon the pigsties and hen-roosts of the Nederlanders. Every day or two some broad-bottomed express-rider, covered with mud and mire, would come floundering into the gate of New Amsterdam, freighted with some new tale of aggression from the frontier; whereupon Antony Van Corlear, seizing his trumpet, the only substitute for a newspaper in those primitive days, would sound the tidings from the ramparts with such doleful notes and disastrous cadence as to throw half the old women in the city into hysterics; all which tended greatly to increase his popularity; there being nothing for which the public are more grateful than being frequently treated to a panic,—a secret well known to the modern editors.

But, oh ye powers! into what a paroxysm of passion did each new outrage of the Yankees throw the choleric little governor! Letter after letter, protest after protest, bad Latin, worse English, and hideous Low Dutch, were incessantly fulminated upon them, and the four-and-twenty letters of the alphabet, which formed his standing army, were worn out by constant campaigning. All, however, was ineffectual; even the recent victory at Oyster Bay, which had shed such a gleam of sunshine between the clouds of his fair-weather reign, was soon followed by a more fearful gathering up of those clouds, and indignations of more portentous tempest; for the Yankee tribe on the banks of the Connecticut, finding on this memorable occasion their incompetency to cope, in fair fight, with the sturdy chivalry of the Manhattoes, had called to their aid all the ten tribes of their brethren who inhabit the east country, which from them has derived the name of Yankee-land. This call was promptly responded to. The consequence was a great confederacy of the tribes of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Plymouth, and New Haven, under the title of the “United Colonies of New England”; the pretended object of which was mutual defence against the savages, but the real object the subjugation of the Nieuw Nederlands.

For, to let the reader into one of the great secrets of history, the Nieuw Nederlandts had long been regarded by the whole Yankee race as the modern land of promise, and themselves as the chosen and peculiar people destined, one day or other, by hook or by crook, to get possession of it. In truth, they are a wonderful and all-prevalent people, of that class who only require an inch to gain an ell, or a halter to gain a horse. From the time they first gained a foothold on Plymouth Rock, they began to migrate, progressing and progressing from place to place, and from land to land, making a little here and a little there, and controverting the old proverb, that a rolling stone gathers no moss. Hence they have facetiously received the nickname of THE PILGRIMS: that is to say, a people who are always seeking a better country than their own.

The tidings of this great Yankee league struck William Kieft with dismay, and for once in his life he forgot to bounce on receiving a disagreeable piece of intelligence. In fact, on turning over in his mind all that he had read at the Hague about leagues and combinations, he found that this was a counterpart of the Amphictyonic league, by which the states of Greece attained such power and supremacy; and the very idea made his heart quake for the safety of his empire at the Manhattoes.

The affairs of the confederacy were managed by an annual council of delegates held at Boston, which Kieft denominated the Delphos of this truly classic league. The very first meeting gave evidence of hostility to the Nieuw Nederlanders, who were charged, in their dealings with the Indians, with carrying on a traffic in “guns, powther, and shott,—a trade damnable and injurious to the colonists.” It is true the Connecticut traders were fain to dabble a little in this damnable traffic; but then they always dealt in what were termed Yankee guns, ingeniously calculated to burst in the pagan hands which used them.

The rise of this potent confederacy was a death-blow to the glory of William the Testy, for from that day forward he never held up his head, but appeared quite crestfallen. It is true, as the grand council augmented in power, and the league, rolling onward, gathered about the red hills of New Haven, threatening to overwhelm the Nieuw Nederlandts, he continued occasionally to fulminate proclamations and protests, as a shrewd sea-captain fires his guns into a water-spout; but alas! they had no more effect than so many blank cartridges.

Thus end the authenticated chronicles of the reign of William the Testy; for henceforth, in the troubles, perplexities, and confusion of the times, he seems to have been totally overlooked, and to have slipped forever through the fingers of scrupulous history. It is a matter of deep concern that such obscurity should hang over his latter days; for he was in truth a mighty and great-little man, and worthy of being utterly renowned, seeing that he was the first potentate that introduced into this land the art of fighting by proclamation, and defending a country by trumpeters and wind-mills.

THEY SOLD THEM GUNS THAT EXPLODED AT THE FIRST FIRING.
]

It is true, that certain of the early provincial poets, of whom there were great numbers in the Nieuw Nederlandts, taking advantage of his mysterious exit, have fabled, that, like Romulus, he was translated to the skies, and forms a very fiery little star, somewhere on the left claw of the Crab; while others, equally fanciful, declare that he had experienced a fate similar to that of the good king Arthur, who, we are assured by ancient bards, was carried away to the delicious abodes of fairyland, where he still exists in pristine worth and vigor, and will one day or another return to restore the gallantry, the honor, and the immaculate probity, which prevailed in the glorious days of the Round Table.[1]

All these, however, are but pleasing fantasies, the cobweb visions of those dreaming varlets, the poets, to which I would not have my judicious readers attach any credibility. Neither am I disposed to credit an ancient and rather apocryphal historian, who asserts that the ingenious Wilhelmus was annihilated by the blowing down of one of his wind-mills; nor a writer of later times, who affirms that he fell a victim to an experiment in natural history, having the misfortune to break his neck from a garret-window of the stadthouse in attempting to catch swallows by sprinkling salt upon their tails. Still less do I put my faith in the tradition that he perished at sea in conveying home to Holland a treasure of golden ore, discovered somewhere among the haunted region of the Catskill mountains.[2]

The most probable account declares, that, what with the constant troubles on his frontiers, the incessant schemings and projects going on in his own pericranium, the memorials, petitions, remonstrances, and sage pieces of advice of respectable meetings of the sovereign people, and the refractory disposition of his councillors, who were sure to differ from him on every point, and uniformly to be in the wrong, his mind was kept in a furnace-heat, until he became as completely burnt out as a Dutch family-pipe which has passed through three generations of hard smokers. In this manner did he undergo a kind of animal combustion, consuming away like a farthing rushlight: so that when grim death finally snuffed him out, there was scarce left enough of him to bury!

DUTCH FAMILY PIPE.
]

=Book V.=
CONTAINING THE FIRST PART OF THE REIGN OF PETER STUYVESANT, AND HIS
TROUBLES WITH THE AMPHICTYONIC COUNCIL.

=Chapter I.=
IN WHICH THE DEATH OF A GREAT MAN IS SHOWN TO BE NO VERY INCONSOLABLE
MATTER OF SORROW—AND HOW PETER STUYVESANT ACQUIRED A GREAT NAME FROM THE
UNCOMMON STRENGTH OF HIS HEAD.

To a profound philosopher like myself, who am apt to see clear through a subject, where the penetration of ordinary people extends but halfway, there is no fact more simple and manifest than that the death of a great man is a matter of very little importance. Much as we may think of ourselves, and much as we may excite the empty plaudits of the million, it is certain that the greatest among us do actually fill but an exceedingly small space in the world; and it is equally certain, that even that small space is quickly supplied when we leave it vacant. “Of what consequence is it,” said Pliny, “that individuals appear, or make their exit? the world is a theatre whose scenes and actors are continually changing.” Never did philosopher speak more correctly; and I only wonder that so wise a remark could have existed so many ages, and mankind not have laid it more to heart. Sage follows on in the footsteps of sage; one hero just steps out of his triumphal car, to make way for the hero who comes after him; and of the proudest monarch it is merely said, that “he slept with his fathers, and his successor reigned in his stead.”

The world, to tell the private truth, cares but little for their loss, and if left to itself would soon forget to grieve; and though a nation has often been figuratively drowned in tears on the death of a great man, yet it is ten to one if an individual tear has been shed on the occasion, excepting from the forlorn pen of some hungry author. It is the historian, the biographer, and the poet, who have the whole burden of grief to sustain,—who—kind souls!—like undertakers in England, act the part of chief mourners,—who inflate a nation with sighs it never heaved, and deluged it with tears it never dreamt of shedding. Thus, while the patriotic author is weeping and howling, in prose, in blank verse, and in rhyme, and collecting the drops of public sorrow into his volume, as into a lachrymal vase, it is more than probable his fellow-citizens are eating and drinking, fiddling, and dancing, as utterly ignorant of the bitter lamentations made in their name as are those men of straw, John Doe and Richard Roe, of the plaintiffs for whom they are generously pleased to become sureties.

“DRINKING, FIDDLING, AND DANCING.”
]

The most glorious hero that ever desolated nations might have mouldered into oblivion among the rubbish of his own monument, did not some historian take him into favor, and benevolently transmit his name to posterity; and much as the valiant William Kieft worried, and bustled, and turmoiled, while he had the destinies of a whole colony in his hand, I question seriously whether he will not be obliged to this authentic history for all his future celebrity.

His exit occasioned no convulsion in the city of New Amsterdam nor its vicinity: the earth trembled not, neither did any stars shoot from their spheres; the heavens were not shrouded in black, as poets would fain persuade us they have been, on the death of a hero; the rocks (hard-hearted varlets!) melted not into tears, nor did the trees hang their heads in silent sorrow: and as to the sun, he lay abed the next night just as long, and showed as jolly a face when he rose as he ever did on the same day of the month in any year, either before or since. The good people of New Amsterdam, one and all, declared that he had been a very busy, active, bustling little governor; that he was “the father of his country”; that he was “the noblest work of God”; that “he was a man, take him for all in all, they ne’er should look upon his like again”; together with sundry other civil and affectionate speeches regularly said on the death of all great men: after which they smoked their pipes, thought no more about him, and Peter Stuyvesant succeeded to his station.

Peter Stuyvesant was the last, and, like the renowned Wouter Van Twiller, the best of our ancient Dutch governors. Wouter having surpassed all who preceded him, and Peter, or Piet, as he was sociably called by the old Dutch burghers, who were ever prone to familiarize names, having never been equalled by any successor. He was in fact the very man fitted by nature to retrieve the desperate fortunes of her beloved province, had not the Fates, those most potent and unrelenting of all ancient spinsters, destined them to inextricable confusion.

To say merely that he was a hero, would be doing him great injustice: he was in truth a combination of heroes; for he was of a sturdy, raw-boned make, like Ajax Telamon, with a pair of round shoulders that Hercules would have given his hide for (meaning his lion’s hide) when he undertook to ease old Atlas of his load. He was, moreover, as Plutarch describes Coriolanus, not only terrible for the force of his arm, but likewise of his voice, which sounded as though it came out of a barrel; and, like the self-same warrior, he possessed a sovereign contempt for the sovereign people, and an iron aspect, which was enough of itself to make the very bowels of his adversaries quake with terror and dismay. All this martial excellency of appearance was inexpressibly heightened by an accidental advantage, with which I am surprised that neither Homer nor Virgil have graced any of their heroes. This was nothing less than a wooden leg, which was the only prize he had gained in bravely fighting the battles of his country, but of which he was so proud, that he was often heard to declare he valued it more than all his other limbs put together; indeed so highly did he esteem it, that he had it gallantly enchased and relieved with silver devices, which caused it to be related in divers histories and legends that he wore a silver leg.[4]

Like that choleric warrior Achilles, he was somewhat subject to extempore bursts of passion, which were rather unpleasant to his favorites and attendants, whose perceptions he was apt to quicken, after the manner of his illustrious imitator, Peter the Great, by anointing their shoulders with his walking-staff.

Though I cannot find that he had read Plato, or Aristotle, or Hobbes, or Bacon, or Algernon Sydney, or Tom Paine, yet did he sometimes manifest a shrewdness and sagacity in his measures, that one would hardly expect from a man who did not know Greek, and had never studied the ancients. True it is, and I confess it with sorrow, that he had an unreasonable aversion to experiments, and was fond of governing his province after the simplest manner; but then he contrived to keep it in better order than did the erudite Kieft, though he had all the philosophers, ancient and modern, to assist and perplex him. I must likewise own that he made but very few laws; but then, again, he took care that those few were rigidly and impartially enforced; and I do not know but justice, on the whole, was as well administered as if there had been volumes of sage acts and statutes yearly made, and daily neglected and forgotten.

He was, in fact, the very reverse of his predecessors, being neither tranquil and inert, like Walter the Doubter, nor restless and fidgeting, like William the Testy,—but a man, or rather a governor, of such uncommon activity and decision of mind, that he never sought nor accepted the advice of others,—depending bravely upon his single head, as would a hero of yore upon his single arm, to carry him through all difficulties and dangers. To tell the simple truth, he wanted nothing more to complete him as a statesman than to think always right; for no one can say but that he always acted as he thought. He was never a man to flinch when he found himself in a scrape, but to dash forward through thick and thin, trusting, by hook or by crook, to make all things straight in the end. In a word, he possessed, in an eminent degree, that great quality in a statesman, called perseverance by the polite, but nicknamed obstinacy by the vulgar,—a wonderful salve for official blunders, since he who perseveres in error without flinching gets the credit of boldness and consistency, while he who wavers in seeking to do what is right gets stigmatized as a trimmer. This much is certain; and it is a maxim well worthy the attention of all legislators, great and small, who stand shaking in the wind, irresolute which way to steer, that a ruler who follows his own will pleases himself, while he who seeks to satisfy the wishes and whims of others runs great risk of pleasing nobody. There is nothing, too, like putting down one’s foot resolutely when in doubt, and letting things take their course. The clock that stands still points right twice in the four-and-twenty hours, while others may keep going continually and be continually going wrong.

Nor did this magnanimous quality escape the discernment of the good people of Nieuw Nederlandts; on the contrary, so much were they struck with the independent will and vigorous resolution displayed on all occasions by their new governor, that they universally called him Hard-Kopping Piet, or Peter the Headstrong,—a great compliment to the strength of his understanding.

If, from all that I have said, thou dost not gather, worthy reader, that Peter Stuyvesant was a tough, sturdy, valiant, weather-beaten, mettlesome, obstinate, leathern-sided, lion-hearted, generous-spirited old governor, either I have written to but little purpose, or thou art very dull at drawing conclusions.