University of Virginia Library

BOOK IV.

1. CHAP. I.

If ever I had my readers completely by the button,
it is at this moment. Here is a redoubtable
fortress reduced to the greatest extremity; a valiant
commander in a state of the most imminent jeopardy—and
a legion of implacable foes thronging upon
every side. The sentimental reader is preparing to
indulge his sympathies, and bewail the sufferings of
the brave. The philosophic reader, to come with
his first principles, and coolly take the dimensions
and ascertain the proportions of great actions, like
an antiquary, measuring a pyramid with a two-foot
rule—while the mere reader, for amusement, promises

to regale himself after the monotonous pages
through which he has dozed, with murders, rapes,
ravages, conflagrations, and all the other glorious
incidents, that give eclat to victory, and grace the
triumph of the conqueror.

Thus every reader must press forward—he cannot
refrain, if he has the least spark of curiosity in
his disposition, from turning over the ensuing page.
Having therefore gotten him fairly in my clutches—
what hinders me from indulging in a little recreation,
and varying the dull task of narrative by stultifying
my readers with a drove of sober reflections
about this, that and the other thing—by pushing
forward a few of my own darling opinions; or talking
a little about myself—all which the reader will
have to peruse, or else give up the book altogether,
and remain in utter ignorance of the mighty deeds,
and great events, that are contained in the sequel.

To let my readers into a great literary secret,
your experienced writers, who wish to instil peculiar
tenets, either in religion, politics or morals, do
often resort to this expedient—illustrating their favourite
doctrines by pleasing fictions on established
facts---and so mingling historic truth, and subtle
speculation together, that the unwary million never
perceive the medley; but, running with open
mouth, after an interesting story, are often made to
swallow the most heterodox opinions, ridiculous
theories, and abominable heresies. This is particularly

the case with the industrious advocates of
the modern philosophy, and many an honest unsuspicious
reader, who devours their works under an
idea of acquiring solid knowledge, must not be surprised
if, to use a pious quotation, he finds “his
belly filled with the east wind.”

This same expedient is likewise a literary artifice,
by which one sober truth, like a patient and laborious
pack horse, is made to carry a couple of panniers
of rascally little conjectures on its back.
In this manner books are encreased, the pen is kept
going and trade flourishes; for if every writer were
obliged to tell merely what he knew, there would
soon be an end of great books, and Tom Thumb's
folio would be considered as a gigantic production—
A man might then carry his library in his pocket, and
the whole race of book makers, book printers, book
binders and book sellers might starve together;
but by being entitled to tell every thing he thinks,
and every thing he does not think—to talk about
every thing he knows, or does not know—to conjecture,
to doubt, to argue with himself, to laugh
with and laugh at his reader, (the latter of which
we writers do nine times out of ten—in our sleeves)
to indulge in hypotheses, to deal in dashes—and
stars **** and a thousand other innocent indulgencies—all
these I say, do marvelously concur to
fill the pages of books, the pockets of booksellers,
and the hungry stomachs of authors—do contribute

to the amusement and edification of the reader, and
redound to the glory, the encrease and the profit of
the craft!

Having thus, therefore, given my readers the
whole art and mystery of book making, they have
nothing further to do, than to take pen in hand, set
down and write a book for themselves—while in
the mean time I will proceed with my history,
without claiming any of the privileges above recited.

Wilhelmus Kieft who in 1634 ascended the
Gubernatorial chair, (to borrow a favourite, though
clumsy appellation of modern phraseologists) was
in form, feature and character, the very reverse of
Wouter Van Twiller, his renowned predecessor.
He was of very respectable descent, his father being
Inspector of Windmills in the ancient town of
Saardam; and our hero we are told made very
curious investigations into the nature and operations
of these machines when a little boy, which is one
reason why he afterwards came to be so ingenious
a governor. His name according to the most ingenious
etymologists was a corruption of Kyver,
that is to say a wrangler or scolder, and expressed
the hereditary disposition of his family; which for
nearly two centuries, had kept the windy town of
Saardam in hot water, and produced more tartars
and brimstones than any ten families in the place—
and so truly did Wilhelmus Kieft inherit this family

endowment, that he had scarcely been a year in the
discharge of his government, before he was universally
known by the appellation of William the
Testy.

He was a brisk, waspish, little old gentleman,
who had dried and wilted away, partly through the
natural process of years, and partly from being
parched and burnt up by his fiery soul; which
blazed like a vehement rush light in his bosom,
constantly inciting him to most valourous broils,
altercations and misadventures. I have heard it
observed by a profound and philosophical judge of
human nature, that if a woman waxes fat as she
grows old, the tenure of her life is very precarious,
but if haply she wilts, she lives forever—such likewise
was the case with William the Testy, who grew
tougher in proportion as he dried. He was some
such a little dutchman as we may now and then see,
stumping briskly about the streets of our city, in a
broad skirted coat, with buttons nearly as large as
the shield of Ajax, which makes such a figure in
Dan Homer, an old fashioned cocked hat stuck on
the back of his head, and a cane as high as his chin.
His visage was broad, but his features sharp, his
nose turned up with a most petulant curl; his
cheeks, like the region of Terra del Fuego, were
scorched into a dusky red—doubtless in consequence
of the neighbourhood of two fierce little
grey eyes, through which his torrid soul beamed as

fervently, as a tropical sun blazing through a pair
of burning glasses. The corners of his mouth were
curiously modeled into a kind of fret work, not a
little resembling the wrinkled proboscis of an irritable
pug dog—in a word he was one of the
most positive, restless, ugly little men, that ever
put himself in a passion about nothing.

Such were the personal endowments of William
the Testy, but it was the sterling riches of his
mind that raised him to dignity and power. In
his youth he had passed with great credit through a
celebrated academy at the Hague, noted for producing
finished scholars, with a dispatch unequalled,
except by certain of our American colleges,
which seem to manufacture bachelors of arts, by
some patent machine. Here he skirmished very
smartly on the frontiers of several of the sciences,
and made such a gallant inroad into the dead languages,
as to bring off captive a host of Greek
nouns and Latin verbs, together with divers pithy
saws and apothegms, all which he constantly paraded
in conversation and writing, with as much
vain glory as would a triumphant general of yore
display the spoils of the countries he had ravaged.
He had moreover puzzled himself considerably
with logic, in which he had advanced so far as to
attain a very familiar acquaintance, by name at
least, with the whole family of syllogisms and dilemmas;
but what he chiefly valued himself on,

was his knowledge of metaphysics, in which, having
once upon a time ventured too deeply, he came
well nigh being smothered in a slough of unintelligible
learning—a fearful peril, from the effects of
which he never perfectly recovered.—In plain
words, like many other profound intermeddlers in
this abstruse bewildering science, he so confused his
brain, with abstract speculations which he could not
comprehend, and artificial distinctions which he
could not realize, that he could never think clearly
on any subject however simple, through the whole
course of his life afterwards. This I must confess
was in some measure a misfortune, for he never
engaged in argument, of which he was exceeding
fond, but what between logical deductions and
metaphysical jargon, he soon involved himself and
his subject in a fog of contradictions and perplexities,
and then would get into a mighty passion with
his adversary, for not being convinced gratis.

It is in knowledge, as in swimming, he who
ostentatiously sports and flounders on the surface,
makes more noise and splashing, and attracts more
attention, than the industrious pearl diver, who
plunges in search of treasures to the bottom. The
“universal acquirements” of William Kieft, were
the subject of great marvel and admiration among
his countrymen—he figured about at the Hague
with as much vain glory, as does a profound Bonze
at Pekin, who has mastered half the letters of the

Chinese alphabet; and in a word was unanimously
pronounced an universal genius!—I have known
many universal geniuses in my time, though to
speak my mind freely I never knew one, who, for
the ordinary purposes of life, was worth his weight
in straw—but for the purposes of government, a little
sound judgment and plain common sense, is worth
all the sparkling genius that ever wrote poetry, or
invented theories.

Strange as it may sound therefore, the universal
acquirements of the illustrious Wilhelmus, were
very much in his way, and had he been a less learned
little man, it is possible he would have been a
much greater governor. He was exceedingly fond
of trying philosophical and political experiments;
and having stuffed his head full of scraps and remnants
of ancient republics, and oligarchies, and aristocracies,
and monarchies, and the laws of Solon
and Lycurgus and Charondas, and the imaginary
commonwealth of Plato, and the Pandects of Justinian,
and a thousand other fragments of venerable
antiquity, he was forever bent upon introducing
some one or other of them into use; so that between
one contradictory measure and another, he entangled
the government of the little province of Nieuw
Nederlandts in more knots during his administration,
than half a dozen successors could have untied.

No sooner had this bustling little man been
blown by a whiff of fortune into the seat of government,

than he called together his council and delivered
a very animated speech on the affairs of the
province. As every body knows what a glorious
opportunity a governor, a president, or even an
emperor has, of drubbing his enemies in his
speeches, messages and bulletins, where he has the
talk all on his own side, they may be sure the high
mettled William Kieft did not suffer so favourable
an occasion to escape him, of evincing that gallantry
of tongue, common to all able legislators. Before
he commenced, it is recorded that he took out
of his pocket a red cotton handkerchief, and gave a
very sonorous blast of the nose, according to the
usual custom of great orators. This in general I
believe is intended as a signal trumpet, to call the
attention of the auditors, but with William the
testy it boasted a more classic cause, for he had
read of the singular expedient of that famous demagogue
Caius Gracchus, who when he harangued
the Roman populace, modulated his tones by an
oratorical flute or pitch-pipe—“which”, said the
shrewd Wilhelmus, “I take to be nothing more nor
less, than an elegant and figurative mode of saying
—he previously blew his nose.”

This preparatory symphony being performed,
he commenced by expressing a humble sense of his
own want of talents---his utter unworthiness of the
honour conferred upon him, and his humiliating
incapacity to discharge the important duties of his

new station---in short, he expressed so contemptible
an opinion of himself, that many simple country
members present, ignorant that these were mere
words of course, always used on such occasions,
were very uneasy, and even felt wrath that he
should accept an office, for which he was consciously
so inadequate.

He then proceeded in a manner highly classic,
profoundly erudite, and nothing at all to the purpose,
being nothing more than a pompous account of all
the governments of ancient Greece, and the wars of
Rome and Carthage, together with the rise and fall
of sundry outlandish empires, about which the assembly
knew no more than their great grand children
who were yet unborn. Thus having, after the
manner of your learned orators, convinced the audience
that he was a man of many words and great
erudition, he at length came to the less important
part of his speech, the situation of the province---
and here he soon worked himself into a fearful rage
against the Yankees, whom he compared to the
Gauls who desolated Rome, and the Goths and
Vandals who overran the fairest plains of Europe—
nor did he forget to mention, in terms of adequate
opprobrium, the insolence with which they had encroached
upon the territories of New Netherlands,
and the unparalleled audacity with which they had
commenced the town of New Plymouth, and planted
the onion patches of Weathersfield under the very
walls, or rather mud batteries of Fort Goed Hoop.

Having thus artfully wrought up his tale of terror
to a climax, he assumed a self satisfied look,
and declared, with a nod of knowing import, that
he had taken measures to put a final stop to these
encroachments—that he had been obliged to have
recourse to a dreadful engine of warfare, lately invented,
awful in its effects, but authorized by direful
necessity. In a word, he was resolved to conquer
the Yankees---by proclamation!

For this purpose he had prepared a tremendous
instrument of the kind ordering, commanding and
enjoining the intruders aforesaid, forthwith to remove,
depart and withdraw from the districts, regions
and territories aforesaid, under pain of suffering
all the penalties, forfeitures, and punishments
in such case made and provided, &c. This proclamation
he assured them, would at once exterminate
the enemy from the face of the country, and he
pledged his valour as a governor, that within two
months after it was published, not one stone should
remain on another, in any of the towns which they
had built.

The council remained for some time silent, after
he had finished; whether struck dumb with admiration
at the brilliancy of his project, or put to
sleep by the length of his harangue, the history of
the times doth not mention. Suffice it to say, they at
length gave a universal grunt of acquiescence—the
proclamation was immediately dispatched with due

ceremony, having the great seal of the province,
which was about the size of a buckwheat pancake,
attached to it by a broad red ribband. Governor
Kieft having thus vented his indignation, felt greatly
relieved---adjourned the council sine die—put on
his cocked hat and corduroy small clothes, and
mounting a tall raw boned charger, trotted out to
his country seat, which was situated in a sweet, sequestered
swamp, now called Dutch street, but more
commonly known by the name of Dog's Misery.

Here, like the good Numa, he reposed from
the toils of legislation, taking lessons in government,
not from the Nymph Egeria, but from the
honoured wife of his bosom; who was one of that
peculiar kind of females, sent upon earth a little
after the flood, as a punishment for the sins of
mankind, and commonly known by the appellation
of knowing women. In fact, my duty as an historian
obliges me to make known a circumstance
which was a great secret at the time, and consequently
was not a subject of scandal at more than
half the tea tables in New Amsterdam, but which
like many other great secrets, has leaked out in
the lapse of years—and this was, that the great
Wilhelmus the Testy, though one of the most potent
little men that ever breathed, yet submitted at
at home to a species of government, neither laid
down in Aristotle, nor Plato; in short, it partook of
the nature of a pure, unmixed tyranny, and is

familarly denominated petticoat government.—An
absolute sway, which though exceedingly common
in these modern days, was very rare among the
ancients, if we may judge from the rout made
about the domestic economy of honest Socrates;
which is the only ancient case on record.

The great Kieft however, warded off all the
sneers and sarcasms of his particular friends, who
are ever ready to joke with a man on sore points
of the kind, by alledging that it was a government
of his own election, which he submitted to through
choice; adding at the same time that it was a profound
maxim which he had found in an ancient author—“he
who would aspire to govern, should first
learn to obey.”

2. CHAP. II.

Never was a more comprehensive, a more expeditious,
or, what is still better, a more economical
measure devised, than this of defeating the
Yankees by proclamation—an expedient, likewise,
so humane, so gentle and pacific; there were ten
chances to one in favour of its succeeding,—but
then there was one chance to ten that it would not
succeed—as the ill-natured fates would have it,
that single chance carried the day! The proclamation
was perfect in all its parts, well constructed,
well written, well sealed and well published—all
that was wanting to insure its effect, was that the
Yankees should stand in awe of it; but, provoking
to relate, they treated it with the most absolute
contempt, applied it to an unseemly purpose,
which shall be nameless, and thus did the first war-like
proclamation come to a shameful end—a fate
which I am credibly informed, has befallen but too
many of its successors.

It was a long time before Wilhelmus Kieft could
be persuaded by the united efforts of all his counsellors,
that his war measure had failed in producing
any effect.—On the contrary, he flew in a passion
whenever any one dared to question its efficacy;
and swore, that though it was slow in operating, yet
when once it began to work, it would soon purge
the land from these rapacious intruders. Time
however, that tester of all experiments both in philosophy
and politics, at length convinced the great
Kieft, that his proclamation was abortive; and that
notwithstanding he had waited nearly four years, in
a state of constant irritation, yet he was still further
off than ever from the object of his wishes. His
implacable adversaries in the east became more
and more troublesome in their encroachments, and
founded the thriving colony of Hartford close upon
the skirts of Fort Goed Hoop. They moreover commenced
the fair settlement of Newhaven (alias the
Red Hills) within the domains of their high mightinesses—while
the onion patches of Pyquag were
a continual eye sore to the garrison of Van Curlet.
Upon beholding therefore the inefficacy of his measure,
the sage Kieft like many a worthy practitioner
of physic, laid the blame, not to the medicine, but
the quantity administered, and resolutely resolved
to double the dose.

In the year 1638 therefore, that being the fourth
year of his reign, he fulminated against them a second

proclamation, of heavier metal than the former;
written in thundering long sentences, not one
word of which was under five syllables. This, in
fact, was a kind of non-intercourse bill, forbidding
and prohibiting all commerce and connexion, between
any and every of the said Yankee intruders,
and the said fortified post of Fort Goed Hoop, and
ordering, commanding and advising, all his trusty,
loyal and well-beloved subjects, to furnish them
with no supplies of gin, gingerbread or sour crout;
to buy none of their pacing horses, meazly pork,
apple brandy, Yankee rum, cyder water, apple
sweetmeats, Weathersfield onions or wooden bowls,
but to starve and exterminate them from the face of
the land.

Another pause of a twelve month ensued, during
which the last proclamation received the same
attention, and experienced the same fate as the
first—at the end of which term, the gallant Jacobus
Van Curlet dispatched his annual messenger, with
his customary budget of complaints and entreaties.
Whether the regular interval of a year, intervening
between the arrival of Van Curlet's couriers, was
occasioned by the systematic regularity of his
movements, or by the immense distance at which
he was stationed from the seat of government is a
matter of uncertainty. Some have ascribed it to
the slowness of his messengers, who, as I have before
noticed, were chosen from the shortest and fattest

of his garrison, as least likely to be worn out
on the road; and who, being pursy, short winded
little men, generally travelled fifteen miles a day,
and then laid by a whole week, to rest. All
these, however, are matters of conjecture; and I
rather think it may be ascribed to the immemorial
maxim of this worthy country—and which has ever
influenced all its public transactions—not to do
things in a hurry.

The gallant Jacobus Van Curlet in his dispatches
respectfully represented, that several years had
now elapsed, since his first application to his late
excellency, the renowned Wouter Van Twiller:
during which interval, his garrison had been reduced
nearly one-eighth, by the death of two of his
most valiant, and corpulent soldiers, who had accidentally
over eaten themselves on some fat salmon,
caught in the Varsche rivier. He further stated
that the enemy persisted in their inroads, taking no
notice of the fort or its inhabitants; but squatting
themselves down, and forming settlements all
around it; so that, in a little while, he should find
himself enclosed and blockaded by the enemy, and
totally at their mercy.

But among the most atrocious of his grievances,
I find the following still on record, which may
serve to shew the bloody minded outrages of these
savage intruders. “In the meane time, they of
Hartford have not onely usurped and taken in the

lands of Connecticott, although unrighteously and
against the lawes of nations, but have hindered our
nation in sowing theire owne purchased broken up
lands, but have also sowed them with corne in the
night, which the Netherlanders had broken up and
intended to sowe: and have beaten the servants of
the high and mighty the honored companie, which
were labouring upon theire master's lands, from
theire lands, with sticks and plow staves in hostile
manner laming, and amongst the rest, struck Ever
Duckings[1] a hole in his head, with a stick, soe that
the blood ran downe very strongly downe upon his
body!”

But what is still more atrocious—

“Those of Hartford sold a hogg, that belonged
to the honored companie, under pretence that it had
eaten of theire grounde grass, when they had not
any foot of inheritance. They proferred the hogg
for 5s. if the commissioners would have given 5s.
for damage; which the commissioners denied, because
noe mans owne hogg (as men use to say) can
trespasse upon his owne master's grounde.”[2]

The receipt of this melancholy intelligence incensed
the whole community—there was something
in it that spoke to the dull comprehension, and

touched the obtuse feelings even of the puissant
vulgar, who generally require a kick in the rear, to
awaken their slumbering dignity. I have known
my profound fellow citizens bear without murmur,
a thousand essential infringements of their rights,
merely because they were not immediately obvious
to their senses—but the moment the unlucky Pearce
was shot upon our coasts, the whole body politic
was in a ferment—so the enlighted Nederlanders,
though they had treated the encroachments of their
eastern neighbours with but little regard, and left
their quill valiant governor, to bear the whole brunt
of war, with his single pen—yet now every individual
felt his head broken in the broken head of
Duckings—and the unhappy fate of their fellow
citizen the hog; being impressed, carried and sold
into captivity, awakened a grunt of sympathy from
every bosom.

The governor and council, goaded by the
clamours of the multitude, now set themselves earnestly
to deliberate upon what was to be done.
Proclamations had at length fallen into temporary
disrepute; some were for sending the Yankees a
tribute, as we make peace offerings to the petty
Barbary powers, or as the Indians sacrifice to
the devil. Others were for buying them out,
but this was opposed, as it would be acknowledging
their title to the land they had seized. A variety
of measures were, as usual in such cases, proposed,

discussed and abandoned, and the council had at
last, to adopt the means, which being the most
common and obvious, had been knowingly over-looked—for
your amazing acute politicians, are
forever looking through telescopes, which only
enable them to see such objects as are far off, and
unattainable; but which incapacitates them to see
such things as are in their reach, and obvious to all
simple folk, who are content to look with the naked
eyes, heaven has given them. The profound council,
as I have said, in their pursuit after Jack-o'-lanterns,
accidentally stumbled on the very measure they
were in need of; which was to raise a body of
troops, and dispatch them to the relief and reinforcement
of the garrison. This measure was
carried into such prompt operation, that in less
than twelve months, the whole expedition, consisting
of a serjeant and twelve men, was ready to
march; and was reviewed for that purpose, in the
public square, now known by the name of the Bowling
Green. Just at this juncture the whole community
was thrown into consternation, by the sudden
arrival of the gallant Jacobus Van Curlet; who
came straggling into town at the head of his crew
of tatterdemalions, and bringing the melancholy
tidings of his own defeat, and the capture of the
redoubtable post of Fort Goed Hope by the ferocious
Yankees.

The fate of this important fortress, is an impressive

warning to all military commanders. It was
neither carried by strom, nor famine; no practicable
breach was effected by cannon or mines; no magazines
were blown up by red hot shot, nor were the
barracks demolished, or the garrison destroyed, by
the bursting of bombshells. In fact, the place was
taken by a stratagem no less singular than effectual;
and one that can never fail of success, whenever
an opportunity occurs of putting it in practice.
Happy am I to add, for the credit of our illustrious
ancestors, that it was a stratagem, which though it
impeached the vigilance, yet left the bravery of the
intrepid Van Curlet and his garrison, perfectly free
from reproach.

It appears that the crafty Yankees, having learned
the regular habits of the garrison, watched a
favourable opportunity and silently introduced
themselves into the fort, about the middle of a
sultry day; when its vigilant defenders having
gorged themselves with a hearty dinner and smoaked
out their pipes, were one and all snoring most
obstreperously at their posts; little dreaming of so
disasterous an occurrence. The enemy most inhumanly
seized Jacobus Van Curlet, and his sturdy
myrmidons by the nape of the neck, gallanted them
to the gate of the fort, and dismissed them severally,
with a kick on the crupper, as Charles the twelfth
dismissed the heavy bottomed Russians, after the

battle of Narva—only taking care to give two kicks
to Van Curlet, as a signal mark of distinction.

A strong garrison was immediately established
in the fort; consisting of twenty long sided, hard
fisted Yankees; with Weathersfield onions stuck
in their hats, by way of cockades and feathers—
long rusty fowling pieces for muskets—hasty pudding,
dumb fish, pork and molasses for stores; and
a huge pumpkin was hoisted on the end of a pole,
as a standard—liberty caps not having as yet come
into fashion.

3. CHAP. III.

Language cannot express the prodigious fury,
into which the testy Wilhelmus Kieft was thrown
by this provoking intelligence. For three good
hours the rage of the little man was too great for
words, or rather the words were too great for him;
and he was nearly choaked by some dozen huge,
mis-shapen, nine cornered dutch oaths, that crowded
all at once into his gullet. A few hearty thumps
on the back, fortunately rescued him from suffocation—and
shook out of him a bushel or two of
enormous execrations, not one of which was smaller
than “dunder and blixum!”—It was a matter of
astonishment to all the bye standers, how so small
a body, could have contained such an immense
mass of words without bursting. Having blazed
off the first broadside, he kept up a constant firing
for three whole days—anathematizing the Yankees,
man, woman, and child, body and soul, for a

set of dieven, schobbejaken, deugenieten, twist-zoekeren,
loozen-schalken blaes-kaeken, kakken-bedden,
and a thousand other names of which,
unfortunately for posterity, history does not make
particular mention. Finally he swore that he
would have nothing more to do with such a
squatting, bundling, guessing, questioning, swapping,
pumpkin-eating, molasses-daubing, shingle-splitting,
cider-watering, horse-jockeying, notion-peddling
crew—that they might stay at Fort Goed
Hoop and rot, before he would dirty his hands by
attempting to drive them away; in proof of which
he ordered the new raised troops, to be marched
forthwith into winter quarters, although it was not
as yet quite mid summer. Governor Kieft faithfully
kept his word, and his adversaries as faithfully
kept their post; and thus the glorious river
Connecticut, and all the gay vallies through which it
rolls, together with the salmon, shad and other fish
within its waters, fell into the hands of the victorious
Yankees, by whom they are held at this very
day—and much good may they do them.

Great despondency seized upon the city of New
Amsterdam, in consequence of these melancholly
events. The name of Yankee became as terrible
among our good ancestors, as was that of Gaul
among the ancient Romans; and all the sage old
women of the province, who had not read Miss
Hamilton on education, used it as a bug-bear,

wherewith to frighten their unruly brats into obedience.

The eyes of all the province were now turned
upon their governor, to know what he would do
for the protection of the common weal in these
days of darkness and peril. Great apprehensions
prevailed among the reflecting part of the community,
especially the old women, that these terrible
fellows of Connecticut, not content with the conquest
of Fort Goed Hoop would incontinently march
on to New Amsterdam and take it by storm—and
as these old ladies, through means of the governor's
spouse, who as has been already hinted, was “the
better horse,” had obtained considerable influence
in public affairs, keeping the province under a kind
of petticoat government, it was determined that
measures should be taken for the effective fortification
of the city.

Now it happened that at this time there sojourned
in New Amsterdam one Anthony Van Corlear[3] a
jolly fat dutch trumpeter, of a pleasant burley visage—famous
for his long wind and his huge
whiskers, and who as the story goes, could twang
so potently upon his instrument, as to produce an

effect upon all within hearing, as though ten thousand
bag-pipes were singing most lustly i' the nose.
Him did the illustrious Kieft pick out as the man
of all the world, most fitted to be the champion of
New Amsterdam, and to garrison its fort; making
little doubt but that his instrument would be as effectual
and offensive in war as was that of the Paladin
Astolpho, or the more classic horn of Alecto.
It would have done one's heart good to have seen
the governor snapping his fingers and fidgetting
with delight, while his sturdy trumpeter strutted
up and down the ramparts, fearlessly twanging his
trumpet in the face of the whole world, like a thrice
valorous editor daringly insulting all the principalities
and powers—on the other side of the Atlantic.

Nor was he content with thus strongly garrisoning
the fort, but he likewise added exceedingly to
its strength by furnishing it with a formidable battery
of quaker guns—rearing a stupendous flag-staff
in the centre which overtopped the whole city—and
moreover by building a great windmill on one of
the bastions.[4] This last to be sure, was somewhat
of a novelty in the art of fortification, but as I have

already observed William Kieft was notorious for
innovations and experiments, and traditions do affirm
that he was much given to mechanical inventions—constructing
patent smoke-jacks—carts that
went before the horses, and especially erecting wind-mills,
for which machines he had acquired a singular
predilection in his native town of Saardam.

All these scientific vagaries of the little governor
were cried up with ecstasy by his adherents as proofs
of his universal genius—but there were not wanting
ill natured grumblers who railed at him as employing
his mind in frivolous pursuits, and devoting that
time to smoke-jacks and windmills, which should
have been occupied in the more important concerns
of the province. Nay they even went so far as to
hint once or twice, that his head was turned by his
experiments, and that he really thought to manage
his government, as he did his mills—by mere wind!
—such is the illiberality and slander to which your
enlightened rulers are ever subject.

Notwithstanding all the measures therefore of
William the Testy to place the city in a posture of
defence, the inhabitants continued in great alarm
and despondency. But fortune, who seems always
careful, in the very nick of time, to throw a bone
for hope to gnaw upon, that the starveling elf may
be kept alive; did about this time crown the arms
of the province with success in another quarter, and
thus cheered the drooping hearts of the forlorn Nederlanders;

otherwise there is no knowing to what
lengths they might have gone in the excess of their
sorrowing—“for grief,” says the profound historian
of the seven champions of Christendom, “is
companion with despair, and despair a procurer of
infamous death!”

Among the numerous inroads of the Moss-troopers
of Connecticut, which for some time past
had occasioned such great tribulation, I should particularly
have mentioned a settlement made on the
eastern part of Long Island, at a place which, from
the peculiar excellence of its shell fish, was called
Oyster Bay. This was attacking the province in a
most sensible part, and occasioned a great agitation
at New Amsterdam.

It is an incontrovertible fact, well known to
your skilful physiologists, that the high road to the
affections, is through the throat; and this may be
accounted for on the same principles which I have
already quoted, in my strictures on fat aldermen.
Nor is this fact unknown to the world at large;
and hence do we observe, that the surest way to
gain the hearts of the million, is to feed them well—
and that a man is never so disposed to flatter, to
please and serve another, as when he is feeding at
his expense; which is one reason why your rich
men, who give frequent dinners, have such abundance
of sincere and faithful friends. It is on this
principle that our knowing leaders of parties secure
the affections of their partizans, by rewarding them

bountifully with loaves and fishes; and entrap the
suffrages of the greasy mob, by treating them with
bull feasts and roasted oxen. I have known many
a man, in this same city, acquire considerable importance
in society, and usurp a large share of the
good will of his enlightened fellow citizens, when
the only thing that could be said in his eulogium
was, that “he gave a good dinner, and kept excellent
wine.”

Since then the heart and the stomach are so
nearly allied, it follows conclusively that what affects
the one, must sympathetically affect the other.
Now it is an equally incontrovertible fact, that of
all offerings to the stomach, there is none more
grateful than the testaceous marine animal, called
by naturalists the Ostea, but known commonly by
the vulgar name of Oyster. And in such great
reverence has it ever been held, by my gormandizing
fellow citizens, that temples have been dedicated
to it, time out of mind, in every street, lane and
alley throughout this well fed city. It is not to be
expected therefore, that the seizing of Oyster Bay,
a place abounding with their favourite delicacy,
would be tolerated by the inhabitants of New Amsterdam.
An attack upon their honour they might
have pardoned; even the massacre of a few citizens
might have been passed over in silence; but
an outrage that affected the larders of the great
city of New Amsterdam, and threatened the stomachs
of its corpulent Burgomasters, was too serious

to pass unrevenged. The whole council were
unanimous in opinion, that the intruders should be
immediately driven by force of arms, from Oyster
Bay, and its vicinity, and a detachment was accordingly
dispatched for the purpose, under command
of one Stoffel Brinkerhoff, or Brinkerhoofd (i. e.
Stoffel, the head-breaker) so called because he was
a man of mighty deeds, famous throughout the
whole extent of Nieuw Nederlandts for his skill at
quarterstaff, and for size would have been a match
for Colbrand, that famous Danish champion, slain
by little Guy of Warwick.

Stoffel Brinckerhoff was a man of few words,
but prompt actions—one of your straight going
officers, who march directly forward, and do their
orders without making any parade about it. He
used no extraordinary speed in his movements, but
trudged steadily on, through Nineveh and Babylon,
and Jericho and Patchog, and the mighty town of
Quag, and various other renowned cities of yore,
which have by some unaccountable witchcraft of
the Yankees, been strangely transplanted to Long
Island, until he arrived in the neighbourhood of
Oyster Bay.

Here was he encountered by a tumultuous host
of valiant warriors, headed by Preserved Fish,
and Habbakuk Nutter, and Return Strong, and
Zerubbabel Fisk, and Jonathan Doolittle and Determined
Cock!—at the sound of whose names the
courageous Stoffel verily believed that the whole

parliament of Praise God Barebones had been let
loose to discomfit him. Finding however that this
formidable body was composed merely of the “select
men” of the settlement, armed with no other
weapons but their tongues, and that they had issued
forth with no other intent, than to meet him on the
field of argument—he succeeded in putting them
to the rout with little difficulty, and completely
broke up their settlement. Without waiting to write
an account of his victory on the spot, and thus letting
the enemy slip through his fingers while he was
securing his own laurels, as a more experienced
general would have done, the brave Stoffel thought
of nothing but completing his enterprize, and utterly
driving the Yankees from the island. This hardy
enterprize he performed in much the same manner
as he had been accustomed to drive his oxen; for
as the Yankees fled before him, he pulled up his
breeches and trudged steadily after them, and would
infallibly have driven them into the sea, had they
not begged for quarter, and agreed to pay tribute.

The news of this achievement was a seasonable
restorative to the spirits of the citizens of New
Amsterdam. To gratify them still more, the governor
resolved to astonish them with one of those
gorgeous spectacles, known in the days of classic
antiquity, a full account of which had been flogged
into his memory, when a school-boy at the Hague.
A grand triumph therefore was decreed to Stoffel

Brinckerhoff, who made his triumphant entrance
into town riding on a Naraganset pacer; five pumpkins,
which like Roman eagles had served the
enemy for standards, were carried before him—ten
cart loads of oysters, five hundred bushels of Weathersfield
onions, a hundred quintals of codfish, two
hogsheads of molasses and various other treasures,
were exhibited as the spoils and tribute of the
Yankees; while three notorious counterfeiters of
Manhattan notes,[5] were led captive to grace the
hero's triumph. The procession was enlivened by
martial music, from the trumpet of Antony Van
Corlear the champion, accompanied by a select band
of boys and negroes, performing on the national instruments
of rattle bones and clam shells. The
citizens devoured the spoils in sheer gladness of
heart—every man did honour to the conqueror, by
getting devoutly drunk on New England rum—and
learned Wilhelmus Kieft calling to mind, in a momentary
fit of enthusiasm and generosity, that it was
customary among the ancients to honour their victorious
generals with public statues, passed a gracious
decree, by which every tavernkeeper was
permitted to paint the head of the intrepid Stoffel
on his sign!

4. CHAP. IV.

If we could but get a peep at the tally of dame
Fortune, where, like a notable landlady, she regularly
chalks up the debtor and creditor accounts of
mankind, we should find that, upon the whole, good
and evil are pretty nearly balanced in this world;
and that though we may for a long while revel in
the very lap of prosperity, the time will at length
come, when we must ruefully pay off the reckoning.
Fortune, in fact, is a pestilent shrew, and
withal a most inexorable creditor; for though she
may indulge her favourites in long credits, and
overwhelm them with her favours; yet sooner or
later, she brings up her arrears, with the rigour of
an experienced publican, and washes out her scores
with their tears. “Since,” says good old Bœtius
in his consolations of philosophy, “since no man
can retain her at his pleasure, and since her flight
is so deeply lamented, what are her favours but

sure prognostications of approaching trouble and
calamity.”

There is nothing that more moves my contempt
at the stupidity and want of reflection in my
fellow men, than to behold them rejoicing, and indulging
in security and self confidence, in times of
prosperity. To a wise man, who is blessed with
the light of reason, those are the very moments of
anxiety and apprehension; well knowing that according
to the system of things, happiness is at
best but transient—and that the higher a man is elevated
by the capricious breath of fortune, the lower
must be his proportionate depression. Whereas,
he who is overwhelmed by calamity, has the less
chance of encountering fresh disasters, as a man at
the bottom of a hill, runs very little risk of breaking
his neck by tumbling to the top.

This is the very essence of true wisdom, which
consists in knowing when we ought to be miserable;
and was discovered much about the same
time with that invaluable secret, that “every thing
is vanity and vexation of spirit;” in consequence
of which maxim your wise men have ever been the
unhappiest of the human race; esteeming it as an
infalliable mark of genius to be distressed without
reason—since any man may be miserable in time of
misfortune, but it is the philosopher alone who
can discover cause for grief in the very hour of
prosperity.

According to the principle I have just advanced,
we find that the colony of New Netherlands,
which under the reign of the renowned Van Twiller,
had flourished in such alarming and fatal serenity;
is now paying for its former welfare, and
discharging the enormous debt of comfort which it
contracted. Foes harass it from different quarters;
the city of New Amsterdam, while yet in its
infancy is kept in constant alarm; and its valiant
commander little William the Testy answers the
vulgar, but expressive idea of “a man in a peck of
troubles.”

While busily engaged repelling his bitter enemies
the Yankees, on one side, we find him suddenly
molested in another quarter, and by other
assailants. A vagrant colony of Swedes, under
the conduct of Peter Minnewits, and professing allegience
to that redoubtable virago, Christina queen
of Sweden; had settled themselves and erected
a fort on south (or Delaware) river—within the
boundaries, claimed by the Government of the
New Netherlands. History is mute as to the particulars
of their first landing, and their real pretensions
to the soil, and this is the more to be lamented;
as this same colony of Swedes will hereafter
be found most materially to affect, not only the interests
of the Nederlanders, but of the world at
large!

In whatever manner therefore, this vagabond
colony of Swedes first took possession of the country,
it is certain that in 1638, they established a
fort, and Minnewits, according to the off hand usage
of his contemporaries, declared himself governor of
all the adjacent country, under the name of the province
of New Sweden. No sooner did this reach
the ears of the choleric Wilhelmus, than, like a true
spirited chieftan, he immediately broke into a violent
rage, and calling together his council, belaboured
the Swedes most lustily in the longest speech
that had ever been heard in the colony, since the
memorable dispute of Ten breeches and Tough
breeches. Having thus given vent to the first ebullitions
of his indignation, he had resort to his favourite
measure of proclamation, and dispatched
one, piping hot, in the first year of his reign, informing
Peter Minnewits that the whole territory,
bordering on the south river, had, time out of mind,
been in possession of the Dutch colonists, having
been “beset with forts, and sealed with their
blood.”

The latter sanguinary sentence, would convey
an idea of direful war and bloodshed; were we not
relieved by the information that it merely related to
a fray, in which some half a dozen Dutchmen had
been killed by the Indians, in their benevolent attempts
to establish a colony and promote civilization.
By this it will be seen that William Kieft,

though a very small man, delighted in big expressions,
and was much given to a praise-worthy figure
in rhetoric, generally cultivated by your little great
men, called hyperbole. A figure which has been
found of infinite service among many of his class,
and which has helped to swell the grandeur of many
a mighty self-important, but windy chief magistrate.
Nor can I resist in this place, from observing
how much my beloved country is indebted to
this same figure of hyperbole, for supporting certain
of her greatest characters—statesmen, orators,
civilians and divines; who by dint of big words,
inflated periods, and windy doctrines, are kept
afloat on the surface of society, as ignorant swimmers
are buoyed up by blown bladders.

The proclamation against Minnewits concluded
by ordering the self-dubbed governor, and his gang
of Swedish adventurers, immediately to leave the
country under penalty of the high displeasure, and
inevitable vengeance of the puissant government of
the Nieuw Nederlandts. This “strong measure,”
however, does not seem to have had a whit more
effect than its predecessors, which had been thundered
against the Yankees—the Swedes resolutely
held on to the territory they had taken possession
of—whereupon matters for the present remained in
statu quo.

That Wilhelmus Kieft should put up with this
insolent obstinacy in the Swedes, would appear incompatible

with his valourous temperament; but
we find that about this time the little man had his
hands full; and what with one annoyance and another,
was kept continually on the bounce.

There is a certain description of active legislators,
who by shrewd management, contrive always
to have a hundred irons on the anvil, every one of
which must be immediately attended to; who consequently
are ever full of temporary shifts and expedients,
patching up the public welfare and cobbling
the national affairs, so as to make nine holes where
they mend one—stopping chinks and flaws with
whatever comes first to hand, like the Yankees I
have mentioned stuffing old clothes in broken windows.
Of this class of statesmen was William
the Testy—and had he only been blessed with powers
equal to his zeal, or his zeal been disciplined by a
little discretion, there is very little doubt but he
would have made the greatest governor of his size
on record—the renowned governor of the island of
Barataria alone excepted.

The great defect of Wilhelmus Kieft's policy
was, that though no man could be more ready to stand
forth in an hour of emergency, yet he was so intent
upon guarding the national pocket, that he suffered
the enemy to break its head—in other words, whatever
precaution for public safety he adopted, he was
so intent upon rendering it cheap, that he invariably
rendered it ineffectual. All this was a remote consequence

of his profound education at the Hague—
where having acquired a smattering of knowledge,
he was ever after a great conner of indexes, continually
dipping into books, without ever studying to
the bottom of any subject; so that he had the scum
of all kinds of authors fermenting in his pericranium.
In some of these title page researches he unluckily
stumbled over a grand political cabalistic
word, which, with his customary facility he immediately
incorporated into his great scheme of government,
to the irretrievable injury and delusion
of the honest province of Nieuw Nederlandts, and
the eternal misleading, of all experimental rulers.

In vain have I pored over the Theurgia of the
Chaldeans, the Cabala of the Jews, the Necromancy
of the Arabians—The Magic of the Persians—the
Hocus Pocus of the English, the Witch-craft of
the Yankees, or the Pow-wowing of the Indians to
discover where the little man first laid eyes on this
terrible word. Neither the Sephir Jetzirah, that
famous cabalistic volume, ascribed to the Patriarch
Abraham; nor the pages of the Zohar, containing
the mysteries of the cabala, recorded by the learned
rabbi Simeon Jochaides, yield any light to my enquiries—Nor
am I in the least benefited by my
painful researches in the Shem-hamphorah of Benjamin,
the wandering Jew, though it enabled Davidus
Elm to make a ten days' journey, in twenty
four hours. Neither can I perceive the slightest

affinity in the Tetragrammaton, or sacred name of
four letters, the profoundest word of the Hebrew
Cabala; a mystery, sublime, ineffable and incommunicable—and
the letters of which Jod-He-Van-He,
having been stolen by the Pagans, constituted
their great Name Jao, or Jove. In short, in all my
cabalistic, theurgic, necromantic, magical and astrological
researches, from the Tetractys of Pythagoras,
to the recondite works of Breslaw and mother
Bunch, I have not discovered the least vestige of
an origin of this word, nor have I discovered any
word of sufficient potency to counteract it.

Not to keep my reader in any suspence, the
word which had so wonderfully arrested the attention
of William the Testy and which in German
characters, had a particularly black and ominous
aspect, on being fairly translated into the English
is no other than economy—a talismanic term,
which by constant use and frequent mention, has
ceased to be formidable in our eyes, but which has
as terrible potency as any in the arcana of necromancy.

When pronounced in a national assembly it has
an immediate effect in closing the hearts, beclouding
the intellects, drawing the purse strings and buttoning
the breeches pockets of all philosophic legislators.
Nor are its effects on the eye less wonderful.
It produces a contraction of the retina, an
obscurity of the christaline lens, a viscidity of the

vitreous and an inspiration of the aqueous humours,
an induration of the tunica sclerotica and a
convexity of the cornea; insomuch that the organ of
vision loses its strength and perspicuity, and the
unfortunate patient becomes myopes or in plain
English, pur-blind; perceiving only the amount of
immediate expense without being able to look further,
and regard it in connexion with the ultimate
object to be effected.—“So that,” to quote the
words of the eloquent Burke, “a briar at his nose
is of greater magnitude than an oak at five hundred
yards distance.” Such are its instantaneous operations,
and the results are still more astonishing.
By its magic influence seventy-fours, shrink into
frigates—frigates into sloops, and sloops into gunboats.
As the defenceless fleet of Eneas, at the
command of the protecting Venus, changed into sea
nymphs, and protected itself by diving; so the
mighty navy of America, by the cabalistic word
economy, dwindles into small craft, and shelters
itself in a mill-pond!

This all potent word, which served as his
touchstone in politics, at once explains the whole
system of proclamations, protests, empty threats,
windmills trumpeters, and paper war, carried on by
Wilhelmus the Testy—and we may trace its operations
in an armament which he fitted out in 1642 in a moment of great wrath; consisting of two
sloops and thirty men, under the command of

Mynheer Jan Jansen Alpendam, as admiral of the
fleet, and commander in chief of the forces. This
formidable expedition, which can only be paralleled
by some of the daring cruizes of our infant navy,
about the bay and up the sound; was intended to
drive the Marylanders from the Schuylkill, of
which they had recently taken possession—and
which was claimed as part of the province of New
Nederlants—for it appears that at this time our infant
colony was in that enviable state, so much
coveted by ambitious nations, that is to say, the
government had a vast extent of territory; part of
which it enjoyed, and the greater part of which it
had continually to quarrel about.

Admiral Jan Jansen Alpendam was a man of
great mettle and prowess; and no way dismayed at
the character of the enemy; who were represented
as a gigantic gunpowder race of men, who lived on
hoe cakes and bacon, drank mint juleps and brandy
toddy, and were exceedingly expert at boxing,
biting, gouging, tar and feathering, and a variety of
other athletic accomplishments, which they had
borrowed from their cousins german and prototypes
the Virginians, to whom they have ever borne
considerable resemblance—notwithstanding all these
alarming representations, the admiral entered the
Schuylkill most undauntedly with his fleet, and
arrived without disaster or opposition at the place
of destination.

Here he attacked the enemy in a vigorous
speech in low dutch, which the wary Kieft had previously
put in his pocket; wherein he courteously
commenced by calling them a pack of lazy, louting,
dram drinking, cock fighting, horse racing, slave
driving, tavern haunting, sabbath breaking, mulatto
breeding upstarts—and concluded by ordering them
to evacuate the country immediately—to which
they most laconically replied in plain English (as
was very natural for Swedes) “they'd see him
d—d first.”

Now this was a reply for which neither Jan
Jansen Alpendam, nor Wilhelmus Kieft had made
any calculation—and finding himself totally unprepared
to answer so terrible a rebuff with suitable
hostility he concluded, like a most worthy admiral
of a modern English expedition, that his wisest
course was to return home and report progress.
He accordingly sailed back to New Amsterdam,
where he was received with great honours, and
considered as a pattern for all commanders; having
achieved a most hazardous enterprize, at a
trifling expense of treasure, and without losing a
single man to the state!—He was unanimously
called the deliverer of his country; (an appellation
liberally bestowed on all great men) his two sloops
having done their duty, were laid up (or dry docked)
in a cove now called the Albany Bason, where

they quietly rotted in the mud; and to immortalize
his name, they erected, by subscription, a magnificent
shingle monument on the top of Flatten barrack[6]
Hill, which lasted three whole years; when it fell
to pieces, and was burnt for fire-wood.

5. CHAP. V.

Among the many wrecks and fragments of exalted
wisdom, which have floated down the stream
of time, from venerable antiquity, and have been
carefully picked up by those humble, but industrious
wights, who ply along the shores of literature,
we find the following sage ordinance of Charondas,
the locrian legislator—Anxious to preserve the ancient
laws of the state from the additions and improvements
of profound “country members,” or
officious candidates for popularity, he ordained, that
whoever proposed a new law, should do it with a
halter about his neck; so that in case his proposition
was rejected, he was strung up—and there the
matter ended.

This salutary institution had such an effect, that
for more than two hundred years there was only

one trifling alteration in the criminal code—and the
whole race of lawyers starved to death for want of
employment. The consequence of this was, that
the Locrians being unprotected by an overwhelming
load of excellent laws, and undefended by a standing
army of pettifoggers and sheriff's officers, lived
very lovingly together, and were such a happy people,
that we scarce hear any thing of them throughout
the whole Grecian history—for it is well known
that none but your unlucky, quarrelsome, rantipole
nations make any noise in the world.

Well would it have been for William the Testy,
had he happily, in the course of his “universal acquirements,”
stumbled upon this precaution of the
good Charondas. On the contrary, he conceived
that the true policy of a legislator was to multiply
laws, and thus secure the property, the persons and
the morals of the people, by surrounding them in a
manner with men traps and spring guns, and besetting
even the sweet sequestered walks of private
life, with quick-set hedges, so that a man could
scarcely turn, without the risk of encountering some
of these pestiferous protectors. Thus was he continually
coining petty laws for every petty offence
that occurred, until in time they became too numerous
to be remembered, and remained like those of
certain modern legislators, in a manner dead letters
—revived occasionally for the purpose of individual
oppression, or to entrap ignorant offenders.

Petty courts consequently began to appear,
where the law was administered with nearly as
much wisdom and impartiality as in those august
tribunals the aldermen's and justice shops of the
present day. The plaintiff was generally favoured,
as being a customer and bringing business to the
shop; the offences of the rich were discreetly
winked at—for fear of hurting the feelings of their
friends;—but it could never be laid to the charge
of the vigilant burgomasters, that they suffered
vice to skulk unpunished, under the disgraceful
rags of poverty.

About this time may we date the first introduction
of capital punishments—a goodly gallows being
erected on the water-side, about where Whitehall
stairs are at present, a little to the east of the
battery. Hard by also was erected another gibbet
of a very strange, uncouth and unmatchable description,
but on which the ingenious William Kieft valued
himself not a little, being a punishment entirely
of his own invention.[7]

It was for loftiness of altitude not a whit inferior
to that of Haman, so renowned in bible history;
but the marvel of the contrivance was, that the
culprit instead of being suspended by the neck, according

to venerable custom, was hoisted by the
waistband, and was kept for an hour together,
dangling and sprawling between heaven and earth—
to the infinite entertainment and doubtless great
edification of the multitude of respectable citizens,
who usually attend upon exhibitions of the kind.

It is incredible how the little governor chuckled
at beholding caitiff vagrants and sturdy beggars
thus swinging by the breech, and cutting antic gambols
in the air. He had a thousand pleasantries,
and mirthful conceits to utter upon the occasions
He called them his dandle-lions—his wild fowl—
his high flyers—his spread eagles—his goshawks—
his scare-crows and finally his gallows birds, which
ingenious appellation, though originally confined to
worthies who had taken the air in this strange manner,
has since grown to be a cant name given to all
candidates for legal elevation. This punishment,
moreover, if we may credit the assertions of certain
grave etymologists, gave the first hint for a
kind of harnessing, or strapping, by which our forefathers
braced up their multifarious breeches, and
which has of late years been revived and continue.
to be worn at the present day. It still bears the
name of the object to which it owes its origin; being
generally termed a pair of gallows-es—though
I am informed it is sometimes vulgarly denominated
suspenders.

Such were the admirable improvements of

William Kieft in criminal law—nor was his civil
code less a matter of wonderment, and much does
it grieve me that the limits of my work will not
suffer me to expatiate on both, with the prolixity
they deserve. Let it suffice then to say; that in a
little while the blessings of innumerable laws became
notoriously apparent. It was soon found
necessary to have a certain class of men to expound
and confound them—divers pettifoggers accordingly
made their appearance, under whose protecting
care the community was soon set together by
the ears.

I would not here, for the whole world, be
thought to insinuate any thing derogatory to the
profession of the law, or to its dignified members.
Well am I aware, that we have in this ancient
city an innumerable host of worthy gentlemen,
who have embraced that honourable order,
not for the sordid love of filthy lucre, or the selfish
cravings of renown, but through no other motives
under heaven, but a fervent zeal for the correct administration
of justice, and a generous and disinterested
devotion to the interests of their fellow citizens!—Sooner
would I throw this trusty pen into
the flames, and cork up my ink bottle forever
(which is the worst punishment a maggot brained
author can inflict upon himself) than infringe even
for a nail's breadth upon the dignity of this truly
benevolent class of citizens—on the contrary I allude

solely to that crew of caitiff scouts who in these
latter days of evil have become so numerous—who
infest the skirts of the profession, as did the recreant
Cornish knights the honourable order of chivalry
—who, under its auspices, commit their depredations
on society—who thrive by quibbles, quirks
and chicanery, and like vermin swarm most, where
there is most corruption.

Nothing so soon awakens the malevolent passions
as the facility of gratification. The courts of
law would never be so constantly crowded with petty,
vexatious and disgraceful suits, were it not for
the herds of pettifogging lawyers that infest them.
These tamper with the passions of the lower and
more ignorant classes; who, as if poverty was not
a sufficient misery in itself, are always ready to
heighten it, by the bitterness of litigation. They
are in law what quacks are in medicine—exciting
the malady for the purpose of profiting by the cure,
and retarding the cure, for the purpose of augmenting
the fees. Where one destroys the constitution,
the other impoverishes the purse; and it may likewise
be observed, that a patient, who has once been
under the hands of a quack, is ever after dabbling
in drugs, and poisoning himself with infallible remedies;
and an ignorant man who has once meddled
with the law under the auspices of one of these empyrics,
is forever after embroiling himself with his
neighbours, and impoverishing himself with successful

law suits.—My readers will excuse this digression
into which I have been unwarily betrayed;
but I could not avoid giving a cool, unprejudiced
account of an abomination too prevalent in this excellent
city, and with the effects of which I am unluckily
acquainted to my cost; having been nearly
ruined by a law suit, which was unjustly decided
against me—and my ruin having been completed,
by another which was decided in my favour.

It is an irreparable loss to posterity, that of the
innumerable laws enacted by William the Testy,
which doubtless formed a code that might have
vied with those of Solon, Lycurgus or Sancho Panza,
but few have been handed down to the present
day, among which the most important is one framed
in an unlucky moment, to prohibit the universal
practice of smoking. This he proved by mathematical
demonstration, to be not merely a heavy
tax upon the public pocket, but an incredible consumer
of time, a hideous encourager of idleness,
and of course a deadly bane to the morals of the
people. Ill fated Kieft!—had he lived in this most
enlightened and libel loving age, and attempted to
subvert the inestimable liberty of the press, he
could not have struck more closely, upon the sensibilities
of the million.

The populace were in as violent a turmoil as
the constitutional gravity of their deportment would

permit—a mob of factious citizens had even the
hardihood to assemble around the little governor's
house, where setting themselves resolutely down,
like a besieging army before a fortress, they one and
all fell to smoking with a determined perseverance,
that plainly evinced it was their intention, to funk
him into terms with villainous Cow-pen mundungus!—Already
was the stately mansion of the governor
enveloped in murky clouds, and the puissant
little man, almost strangled in his hole, when
bethinking himself, that there was no instance on
record, of any great man of antiquity perishing in
so ignoble a manner (the case of Pliny the elder being
the only one that bore any resemblance)—he was
fain to come to terms, and compromise with the
mob, on condition that they should spare his life,
by immediately extinguishing their tobacco pipes.

The result of the armistice was, that though he
continued to permit the custom of smoking, yet did
he abolish the fair long pipes which prevailed in the
days of Wouter Van Twiller, denoting ease, tranquillity
and sobriety of deportment, and in place
thereof introduced little captious short pipes, two
inches in length; which he observed could be stuck
in one corner of the mouth, or twisted in the hat-band,
and would not be in the way of business.
But mark, oh reader! the deplorable consequences.
The smoke of these villainous 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
as vapourish and testy as their renowned little
governor—nay, what is more, from a goodly burley
race of folk, they became, like our honest dutch
farmers, who smoke short pipes, a lanthorn-jawed,
smoak-dried, leathern-hided race of men.

Indeed it has been remarked by the observant
writer of the Stuyvesant manuscript, that under the
administration of Wilhelmus Kieft the disposition
of the inhabitants of New Amsterdam experienced
an essential change, so that they became very
meddlesome and factious. The constant exacerbations
of temper into which the little governor
was thrown, by the maraudings on his frontiers,
and his unfortunate propensity to experiment and
innovation, occasioned him to keep 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 into 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.

But the worst of the matter was, that just about
this time the mob, since called the sovereign people,
like Balaam's ass, began to grow more enlightened
than its rider, and exhibited a strange
desire of governing itself. This was another effect
of the “universal acquirements” of William
the Testy. In some of his pestilent researches
among the rubbish of antiquity, he was struck with
admiration at the institution of public tables among
the Lacedemonians, where they discussed topics
of a general and interesting nature—at the schools
of the philosophers, where they engaged in profound
disputes upon politics and morals—where grey
beards were taught the rudiments of wisdom, and
youths learned to become little men, before they
were boys. “There is nothing” said the ingenious
Kieft, shutting up the book, “there is nothing
more essential to the well management of a country,
than education among the people; the basis of a
good government, should be laid in the public mind.”
—now this was true enough, but it was ever the
wayward fate of William the Testy, that when he
thought right, he was sure to go to work wrong.
In the present instance he could scarcely eat or
sleep, until he had set on foot brawling debating
societies, among the simple citizens of New Amsterdam.
This was the one thing wanting to
complete his confusion. The honest Dutch burghers,
though in truth but little given to argument

or wordy altercation, yet by dint of meeting often
together, fuddling themselves with strong drink,
beclouding their brains with tobacco smoke, and
listening to the harangues of some half a dozen
oracles, soon became exceedingly wise, and—as is
always the case where the mob is politically enlightened—exceedingly
discontented. They found
out, with wonderful quickness of discernment, the
fearful error in which they had indulged, in fancying
themselves the happiest people in creation—
and were fortunately convinced, that, all circumstances
to the contrary notwithstanding, they were
a very unhappy, deluded, and consequently, ruined
people!

In a short time the quidnuncs of New Amsterdam
formed themselves into sage juntos of
political croakers, who daily met together to groan
over public affairs, and make themselves miserable;
thronging to these unhappy assemblages with the
same eagerness, that your zealots have in all ages
abandoned the milder and more peaceful paths of
religion to crowd to the howling convocations of
fanaticism. We are naturally prone to discontent,
and avaricious after imaginary causes of lamentation—like
lubberly monks we belabour our own
shoulders, and seem to take a vast satisfaction in
the music of our own groans. Nor is this said for
the sake of paradox; daily experience shews the
truth of these sage observations. It is next to a

farce to offer consolation, or to think of elevating
the spirits of a man, groaning under ideal calamities;
but nothing is more easy than to render him wretched,
though on the pinnacle of felicity; as it is an
Herculean task to hoist a man to the top of a steeple,
though the merest child can topple him off thence.

In the sage assemblages I have noticed, the
philosophic reader will at once perceive the faint
germs of those sapient convocations called popular
meetings, prevalent at our day—Hither resorted
all those idlers and “squires of low degree,” who
like rags, hang loose upon the back of society, and
are ready to be blown away by every wind of doctrine.
Coblers abandoned their stalls and hastened
hither to give lessons on political economy—
blacksmiths left their handicraft and suffered their
own fires to go out, while they blew the bellows
and stirred up the fire of faction; and even taylors,
though but the shreds and patches, the ninth parts
of humanity, neglected their own measures, to attend
to the measures of government—Nothing
was wanting but half a dozen newspapers and patriotic
editors, to have completed this public illumination
and to have thrown the whole province in
an uproar!

I should not forget to mention, that these popular
meetings were always held at a noted tavern;
for houses of that description, have always been
found the most congenial nurseries of politicks;

abounding with those genial streams which give
strength and sustenance to faction—We are told that
the ancient Germans, had an admirable mode of
treating any question of importance; they first deliberated
upon it when drunk, and afterwards reconsidered
it, when sober. The shrewder mobs of
America, who dislike having two minds upon a
subject, both determine and act upon it drunk; by
which means a world of cold and tedious speculation
is dispensed with—and as it is universally allowed
that when a man is drunk he sees double, it
follows most conclusively that he sees twice as well
as his sober neighbours.

6. CHAP VI.

For some time however, the worthy politicians
of New Amsterdam, who had thus conceived the
sublime project of saving the nation, were very
much perplexed by dissentions, and strange contrariety
of opinions among themselves, so that they
were often thrown into the most chaotic uproar and
confusion, and all for the simple want of party classification.
Now it is a fact well known to your experienced
politicians, that it is equally necessary to
have a distinct classification and nomenclature in
politics, as in the physical sciences. By this means
the several orders of patriots, with their breedings
and cross breedings, their affinities and varieties
may be properly distinguished and known. Thus
have arisen in different quarters of the world the
generic titles of Guelfs and Ghibbelins—Round
heads and Cavaliers—Big endians and Little endians
—Whig and Tory—Aristocrat and Democrat—
Republican and Jacobin—Federalist and Antifederalist,
together with a certain mongrel party called
Quid; which seems to have been engendered between

the two last mentioned parties, as a mule is
produced between an horse and an ass—and like a
mule it seems incapable of procreation, fit only for
humble drudgery, doomed to bear successively the
burthen of father and mother, and to be cudgelled
soundly for its pains.

The important benefit of these distinctions is
obvious. How many very strenuous and hard
working patriots are there, whose knowledge is
bounded by the political vocabulary, and who,
were they not thus arranged in parties would never
know their own minds, or which way to think on a
subject; so that by following their own common
sense the community might often fall into that
unanimity, which has been clearly proved, by many
excellent writers, to be fatal to the welfare of a
republick. Often have I seen a very well meaning
hero of seventy six, most horribly puzzled to make
up his opinion about certain men and measures,
and running a great risk of thinking right; until
all at once he resolved his doubts by resorting to
the old touch stone of Whig and Tory; which
titles, though they bear about as near an affinity to
the present parties in being, as do the robustious
statues of Gog and Magog, to the worthy London
Aldermen, who devour turtle under their auspices
at Guild-Hall; yet are they used on all occasions
by the sovereign people, as a pair of spectacles,
through which they are miraculously enabled to see

beyond their own noses, and to distinguish a hawk
from a hand saw, or an owl from a buzzard!

Well, was it recorded in holy writ, "the horse
knoweth his rider, and the ass his master's crib,"
for when the sovereign people are thus harnessed
out, and properly yoked together, it is delectable to
behold with what system and harmony they jog onward,
trudging through the mud and mire, obeying the
commands of their drivers, and dragging the scurvy
dung carts of faction at their heels. How many
a patriotic member of congress have I known, loyally
disposed to adhere to his party through thick
and think but who would often, from sheer ignorance,
or the dictates of conscience and common sense,
have stumbled into the ranks of his adversaries, and
advocated the opposite side of the question, had not
the parties been thus broadly designated by generic
titles.

The wise people of New Amsterdam therefore,
after for some time enduring the evils of confusion,
at length,
like honest dutchmen as they were, soberly
settled down into two distinct parties, known
by the name of Square head and Platter breech--
the former implying that the bearer was deficient in
that rotundity of pericranium, which was considered
as a token of true genius--the latter, that he was
destitute of genuine courage, or good bottom, as it
has since been technically termed--and I defy all

the politicians of this great city to shew me where
any two parties of the present day, have split upon
more important and fundamental points.

These names, to tell the honest truth—and I
scorn to tell any thing else—were not the mere progeny
of whim or accident, as were those of Ten
Breeches and Tough Breeches, in the days of yore,
but took their origin in recondite and scientific deductions
of certain Dutch philosophers. In a word,
they were the dogmas or elementary principia
of those ingenious systems since supported in the
physiognomical tracts of Lavater, who gravely measures
intellect by the length of a nose, or detects it
lurking in the curve of a lip, or the arch of an eye-brow—The
craniology of Dr. Gall, who has found
out the encampments and strong holds of the virtues
and vices, passions and habits among the protuberances
of the skull, and proves that your whorson
jobbernowl, is your true skull of genius—The
Linea Fascialis of Dr. Petrus Camper, anatomical
professor in the college of Amsterdam, which regulates
every thing by the relative position of the
upper and lower jaw; shewing the ancient opinion
to be correct that the owl is the wisest of animals,
and that a pancake face is an unfailing index of
talents, and a true model of beauty—and finally,
the breechology of professor Higgenbottom, which
teaches the surprizing and intimate connection between

the seat of honour, and the seat of intellect—
a doctrine supported by experiments of pedagogues
in all ages, who have found that applications a parte
poste, are marvellously efficacious in quickening the
perceptions of their scholars, and that the most expeditious
mode of instilling knowledge into their
heads, is to hammer it into their bottoms!

Thus then, the enlightened part of the inhabitants
of Nieuw Nederlandts, being comfortably arranged
into parties, went to work with might and
main to uphold the common wealth—assembling
together in separate beer-houses, and smoking at
each other with implacable animosity, to the great
support of the state, and emolument of the tavern-keepers.
Some indeed who were more zealous
than the rest went further, and began to bespatter
one another with numerous very hard names and
scandalous little words, to be found in the dutch
language; every partizan believing religiously that
he was serving his country, when he besmutted the
character, or damaged the pocket of a political adversary.
But however they might differ between
themselves, both parties agreed on one point, to cavil
at and condemn every measure of government
whether right or wrong; for as the governor was
by his station independent of their power, and was
not elected by their choice, and as he had not decided
in favour of either faction, neither of them

were interested in his success, or the prosperity of
the country while under his administration.

“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 people, too wise to be governed!
All his expeditions against his enemies were baffled
and set at naught, and all his measures for the
public safety, were cavilled at by the people.
Did he propose levying an efficient body of
troops for internal defence, the mob, that is to
say, those vagabond members of the community
who have nothing to lose, immediately took the
alarm, vociferated that their interests were in danger—that
a standing army was a legion of moths,
preying on the pockets of society; a rod of iron in
the hands of government; and that a government
with a military force at its command, would inevitably
swell into a despotism. Did he, as was but
too commonly the case, defer preparation until the
moment of emergency, and then hastily collect a
handful of undisciplined vagrants, the measure was
hooted at, as feeble and inadequate, as trifling with
the public dignity and safety, and as lavishing the
public funds on impotent enterprizes.—Did he resort
to the economic measure of proclamation, he
was laughed at by the Yankees, did he back it by
non-intercourse, it was evaded and counteracted by
his own subjects. Whichever way he turned himself

he was beleaguered and distracted by petitions
of “numerous and respectable meetings,” consisting
of some half a dozen scurvy pot-house politicians—all
of which he read, and what is worse, all
of which he attended to. The consequence was,
that by incessantly changing his measures, he gave
none of them a fair trial; and by listening to the
clamours of the mob and endeavouring to do every
thing, he in sober truth did nothing.

I would not have it supposed however, that he
took all these memorials and interferences good naturedly,
for such an idea would do injustice to his
valiant spirit; on the contrary he never received a
piece of advice in the whole course of his life, without
first getting into a passion with the giver. But
I have ever observed that your passionate little
men, like small boats with large sails, are the
easiest upset or blown out of their course; and this
is demonstrated by governor Kieft, who though
in temperament as hot as an old radish, and with
a mind, the territory of which was subjected to perpetual
whirl-winds and tornadoes, yet never failed
to be carried away by the last piece of advice that
was blown into his ear. Lucky was it for him
that his power was not dependant upon the greasy
multitude, and that as yet the populace did not
possess the important privilege of nominating their
chief magistrate. They, however, like a true mob,

did their best to help along public affairs; pestering
their governor incessantly, by goading him on with
harangues and petitions, and then thwarting his
fiery spirit with reproaches and memorials, like a
knot of sunday jockies, managing an unlucky devil
of a hack horse—so that Wilhelmus Kieft, may be
said to have been kept either on a worry or a
hand gallop, throughout the whole of his administration.

7. CHAP. VII.

Among the many perils and mishaps that surround
your hardy historian, there is one that in
spite of my unspeakable delicacy, and unbounded
good will towards all my fellow creatures, I have
no hopes of escaping. While raking with curious
hand, but pious heart, among the rotten remains of
former days, I may fare somewhat like that doughty
fellow Sampson, who in meddling with the carcass
of a dead Lion, drew a swarm of bees about
his ears. Thus I am sensible that in detailing the
many misdeeds of the Yanokie, or Yankee tribe, it
is ten chances to one but I offend the morbid sensibilities
of certain of their unreasonable descendants,
who will doubtless fly out, and raise such a buzzing
about this unlucky pate of mine, that I shall need
the tough hide of an Achilles, or an Orlando Furioso,
to protect me from their stings. Should such
be the case I should deeply and sincerely lament—
not my misfortune in giving offence—but the wrong-headed
perverseness of this most ill natured and uncharitable

age, in taking offence at any thing I say.
—My good, honest, testy sirs, how in heaven's name,
can I help it, if your great grandfathers behaved in a
scurvy manner to my great grandfathers?—I'm very
sorry for it, with all my heart, and wish a thousand
times, that they had conducted themselves a thousand
times better. But as I am recording the sacred
events of history, I'd not bate one nail's
breadth of the honest truth, though I were sure the
whole edition of my work, should be bought up and
burnt by the common hangman of Connecticut.—
And let me tell you, masters of mine! this is one of
the grand purposes for which we impartial historians
were sent into the world—to redress wrongs
and render justice on the heads of the guilty—So
that though a nation may wrong their neighbours,
with temporary impunity, yet some time or another
an historian shall spring up, who shall give them a
hearty rib-roasting in return. Thus your ancestors,
I warrant them, little thought, when they were kicking
and cuffing the worthy province of Nieuw Nederlandts,
and setting its unlucky little governor at
his wits ends, that such an historian as I should ever
arise, and give them their own, with interest—Body-o'me!
but the very talking about it makes my
blood boil! and I have as great a mind as ever I
had for my dinner, to cut a whole host of your ancestors
to mince meat, in my very next page!—but
out of the bountiful affection which I feel towards
their descendants, I forbear—and I trust when you
perceive how completely I have them all in my power,
and how, with one flourish of my pen I could
make every mother's son of ye grandfatherless, you
will not be able enough to applaud my candour and
magnanimity.—To resume then, with my accustomed
calmness and impartiality, the course of my
history.

It was asserted by the wise men of ancient
times, intimately acquainted with these matters,
that at the gate of Jupiter's palace lay two huge
tuns, the one filled with blessings, the other with
misfortunes—and it verily seems as if the latter
had been set a tap, and left to deluge the unlucky
province of Nieuw Nederlandts. Among other
causes of irritation, the incessant irruptions and
spoliations of his eastern neighbours upon his frontiers,
were continually adding fuel to the naturally
inflammable temperament of William the Testy.
Numerous accounts of them may still be found
among the records of former days; for the commanders
on the frontiers were especially careful to
evince their vigilance and soldierlike zeal, by striving
who should send home the most frequent and
voluminous budgets of complaints, as your faithful
servant is continually running with complaints to
the parlour, of all the petty squabbles and misdemeanours
of the kitchen.

All these valiant tale-bearings were listened to
with great wrath by the passionate little governor,
and his subjects, who were to the full as eager to
hear, and credulous to believe these frontier fables,
as are my fellow citizens to swallow those amusing
stories with which our papers are daily filled, about
British aggressions at sea, French sequestrations
on shore, and Spanish infringements in the promised
land of Louisiana—all which proves what I
have before asserted, that your enlightened people
love to be miserable.

Far be it from me to insinuate however, that our
worthy ancestors indulged in groundless alarms;
on the contrary they were daily suffering a repetition
of cruel wrongs, not one of which, but was a
sufficient reason, according to the maxims of national
dignity and honour, for throwing the whole
universe into hostility and confusion.

From among a host of these bitter grievances
still on record, I select a few of the most atrocious,
and leave my readers to judge, if our progenitors
were not justifiable in getting into a very valiant
passion on the occasion.

“24 June 1641. Some of Hartford haue taken
a hogg out of the vlact or common and shut it vp
out of meer hate or other prejudice, causing it to
starve for hunger in the stye!

26 July. The foremencioned English did againe
driue the companies hoggs out of the vlact of Sico

joke into Hartford; contending daily with reproaches,
blows, beating the people with all disgrace
that they could imagine.

May 20, 1642. The English of Hartford haue
violently cut loose a horse of the honored companies,
that stood bound vpon the common or vlact.

May 9, 1643. The companies horses pastured
vpon the companies ground, were driven away by
them of Connecticott or Hartford, and the heards-man
was lustily beaten with hatchets and sticks.

16. Again they sold a young Hogg belonging
to the Companie which piggs had pastured on the
Companies land.”[8]

Oh ye powers! into what indignation did
every one of these outrages throw the philosophic
Kieft! Letter after letter; protest after protest;
proclamation after proclamation; bad Latin,[9]
worse English, and hideous low dutch were exhausted
in vain upon the inexorable Yankees; and
the four-and-twenty letters of the alphabet, which
except his champion, the sturdy trumpeter Van
Corlear, composed the only standing army he had
at his command, were never off duty, throughout
the whole of his administration.—Nor did Antony
the trumpeter, remain a whit behind his patron,

the gallant William in his fiery zeal; but like a
faithful champion and preserver of the public safety,
on the arrival of every fresh article of news, he
was sure to sound his trumpet from the ramparts
with most disasterous notes, throwing the people
into violent alarms and disturbing their rest at all
times and seasons—which caused him to be held in
very great regard, the public paying and pampering
him, as we do brawling editors, for similar important
services.

Appearances to the eastward began now to assume
a more formidable aspect than ever—for I
would have you note that bitherto the province had
been chiefly molested by its immediate neighbours,
the people of Connecticut, particularly of Hartford,
which, if we may judge from ancient chronicles,
was the strong hold of these sturdy moss troopers;
from whence they sallied forth, on their daring incursions,
carrying terror and devastation into the
barns, the hen-roosts and pig-styes of our revered
ancestors.

Albeit about the year 1643, the people of the
east country, inhabiting the colonies of Massachusetts,
Connecticut, New Plymouth and New Haven,
gathered together into a mighty conclave, and
after buzzing and turmoiling for many days, like a
political hive of bees in swarming time, at length
settled themselves into a formidable confederation,
under the title of the United Colonies of New England.

By this union they pledged themselves to
stand by one another in all perils and assaults, and
to co-operate in all measures offensive and defensive
against the surrounding savages, among which
were doubtlessly included our honoured ancestors
of the Manhattoes; and to give more strength and
system to this confederation, a general assembly
or grand council was to be annually held, composed
of representatives from each of the provinces.

On receiving accounts of this puissant combination,
the fiery Wilhelmus was struck with vast
consternation, and for the first time in his whole
life, forgot to bounce, at hearing an unwelcome
piece of intelligence—which a venerable historian
of the times observes, was especially noticed among
the sage politicians of New Amsterdam. The
truth was, on turning over in his mind all that he
had read at the Hague, about leagues and combinations,
he found that this was an exact imitation
of the famous Amphyctionic council, by which the
states of Greece were enabled to attain to such
power and supremacy, and the very idea made his
heart to quake for the safety of his empire at the
Manhattoes.

He strenuously insisted, that the whole object
of this confederation, was to drive the Nederlanders
out of their fair domains; and always flew into
a great rage if any one presumed to doubt the
probability of his conjecture. Nor, to speak my

mind freely, do I think he was wholly unwarranted
in such a suspicion; for at the very first annual
meeting of the grand council, held at Boston
(which governor Kieft denominated the Delphos of
this truly classic league) strong representations
were made against the Nederlanders, for as much
as that in their dealings with the Indians they
carried on a traffic in “guns, powther and shott—
a trade damnable and injurious to the colonists.”
Not but what certain of the Connecticut traders
did likewise dabble a little in this “damnable traffic”
—but then they always sold the Indians such
scurvy guns, that they burst at the first discharge—
and consequently hurt no one but these pagan
savages.

The rise of this potent confederacy was a death
blow to the glory of William the Testy, for from
that day forward, it was remarked by many,
he never held up his head, but appeared quite crest
fallen. His subsequent reign therefore, affords but
scanty food for the historic pen—we find the grand
council continually augmenting in power, and threatening
to overwhelm the mighty but defenceless
province of Nieuw Nederlandts; while Wilhelmus
Kieft kept constantly firing off his proclamations
and protests, like a sturdy little sea captain, firing
off so many carronades and swivels, in order to
break and disperse a water spout—but alas! they
had no more effect than if they had been so many
blank cartridges.

The last document on record of this learned,
philosophic, but unfortunate little man is a long
letter to the council of the Amphyctions, wherein
in the bitterness of his heart he rails at the people
of New Haven, or red hills, for their uncourteous
contempt of his protest levelled at them for squatting
within the province of their high mightinesses.
From this letter, which is a model of epistolary
writing, abounding with pithy apophthegms and
classic figures, my limits will barely allow me to
extract the following recondite passage:-“Certainly
when we heare the Inhabitants of New Hartford
complayninge of us, we seem to heare Esop's wolfe
complayninge of the lamb, or the admonition of the
younge man, who cryed out to his mother, chideing
with her neighboures, `Oh Mother revile her, lest
she first take up that practice against you.' But being
taught by precedent passages we received such
an answer to our protest from the inhabitants of
New Haven as we expected: the Eagle always
despiseth the Beetle fly; yet notwithstanding we
doe undauntedly continue on our purpose of pursuing
our own right, by just arms and righteous
means, and doe hope without scruple to execute
the express commands of our superiours.” To
shew that this last sentence was not a mere empty
menace he concluded his letter, by intrepidly protesting
against the whole council, as a horde of
squatters and interlopers, inasmuch as they held

their meeting at New Haven, or the Red Hills,
which he claimed as being within the province of
the New Netherlands.

Thus end the authenticated chronicles of the
reign of William the Tety—for henceforth, in the
trouble, the perplexities and the confusion of the
times he seems to have been totally overlooked, and
to ahve slipped forever through the fingers of scrupulous
history. Indeed from some cause or another,
which I cannot divine, there appears to have
been a combination among historians to sink his
very name into oblivion, in consequence of which
they have one and all forborne even to speak of his
exploits; and though I have disappointed the caitiffs
in this their nefarious conspiracy, yet I much
question whether some one or other of their adherents
may not even yet have the hardihood to rise
up, and question the authenticity of certain of the
well established and incontrovertible facts, I have
herein recorded—but let them do it at their peril;
for may I perish, if ever I catch any slanderous incendiaries
contradicting a word of this immaculate
history, or robbing my heroes of any particle of that
renown they have gloriously acquired, if I do not
empty my whole ink-horn upon them—even though
it should equal in magnitude that of the sage Gargantua;
which according to the faithful chronicle of
his miraculous atchievements, weighted seven thousand
quintals.

It has been a matter of deep concern to me, that
such darkness and obscurity should hang over the
latter days of the illustrious Kieft—for he was a
mighty and great little man 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 windmills—an economic and humane
mode of warfare, since revived with great applause,
and which promises, if it can ever be carried into
full effect, to save great trouble and treasure, and
spare infinitely more bloodshed than either the
discovery of gunpowder, or the invention of torpedoes.

It is true that certain of the early provincial poets,
of whom there were great numbers in the Nieuw
Nederlandts, taking advantage of the mysterious
exit of William the Testy, have fabled, that like
Romulus he was translated to the skies, and forms
a very fiery little star, some where 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
fairy land, where he still exists, in pristine worth
and vigour, and will one day or another return to
rescue poor old England from the hands of paltry,
flippant, pettifogging cabinets, and restore the gallantry,
the honour and the immaculate probity,

which prevailed in the glorious days of the Round
Table.[10]

All these however are but pleasing fantasies, the
cobweb visions of those dreaming varlets the poets,
to which I would not have my judicious reader attach
any credibility. Neither am I disposed to yield
any credit to the assertion of an ancient and rather
apocryphal historian, who alledges that the ingenious
Wilhelmus was annihilated by the blowing down of
one of his windmills—nor to that of a writer of later
times, who affirms that he fell a victim to a philosophical
experiment, which he had for many
years been vainly striving to accomplish; having
the misfortune to break his neck from the garret
window of the Stadt house, in an ineffectual attempt
to catch swallows, by sprinkling fresh salt
upon their tails.

The most probable account, and to which I am
inclined to give my implicit faith, is contained in a
very obscure tradition, which 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 from divers respectable
meetings of the sovereign people, together with
the refractory disposition of his council, who were
sure to differ from him on every point and uniformly
to be in the wrong—all these I say, did eternally
operate to keep his mind in a kind of furnace heat,
until he at length became as completly burnt out, as
a dutch family pipe which has passed through three
generations of hard smokers. In this manner did
the choleric but magnanimous William the Testy
undergo a kind of animal combustion, consuming
away like a farthing rush light—so that when grim
death finally snuffed him out, there was scarce left
enough of him to bury!