University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

It is easy to foresee that this country is destined to undergo
great and rapid changes. Those that more properly
belong to history, history will doubtless attempt to record,
and probably with the questionable veracity and prejudice
that are apt to influence the labours of that particular muse;
but there is little hope that any traces of American society,
in its more familiar aspects, will be preserved among us,
through any of the agencies usually employed for such purposes.
Without a stage, in a national point of view at least,
with scarcely such a thing as a book of memoirs that relates
to a life passed within our own limits, and totally without
light literature, to give us simulated pictures of our manners
and the opinions of the day, I see scarcely a mode by which the
next generation can preserve any memorials of the distinctive
usages and thoughts of this. It is true, they will have traditions
of certain leading features of the colonial society,
but scarcely any records; and, should the next twenty years
do as much as the last, towards substituting an entirely new
race for the descendants of our own immediate fathers, it is
scarcely too much to predict that even these traditions will
be lost in the whirl and excitement of a throng of strangers.
Under all the circumstances, therefore, I have come to a determination
to make an effort, however feeble it may prove,
to preserve some vestiges of household life in New York,
at least; while I have endeavoured to stimulate certain
friends in New Jersey, and farther south, to undertake similar
tasks in those sections of the country. What success

will attend these last applications, is more than I can say;
but, in order that the little I may do myself shall not be lost
for want of support, I have made a solemn request in my
will, that those who come after me will consent to continue
this narrative, committing to paper their own experience, as
I have here committed mine, down as low at least as my
grandson, if I ever have one. Perhaps, by the end of the
latter's career, they will begin to publish books in America,
and the fruits of our joint family labours may be thought
sufficiently matured to be laid before the world.

It is possible that which I am now about to write will be
thought too homely, to relate to matters much too personal
and private, to have sufficient interest for the public eye;
but it must be remembered that the loftiest interests of man
are made up of a collection of those that are lowly; and,
that he who makes a faithful picture of only a single important
scene in the events of single life, is doing something
towards painting the greatest historical piece of his day.
As I have said before, the leading events of my time will
find their way into the pages of far more pretending works
than this of mine, in some form or other, with more or less
of fidelity to the truth, and real events, and real motives;
while the humbler matters it will be my office to record,
will be entirely overlooked by writers who aspire to enrol
their names among the Tacituses of former ages. It may
be well to say here, however, I shall not attempt the historical
mood at all, but content myself with giving the feelings,
incidents, and interests of what is purely private life, connecting
them no farther with things that are of a more
general nature, than is indispensable to render the narrative
intelligible and accurate. With these explanations, which
are made in order to prevent the person who may happen
first to commence the perusal of this manuscript from throwing
it into the fire, as a silly attempt to write a more silly
fiction, I shall proceed at once to the commencement of my
proper task.

I was born on the 3d May, 1737, on a neck of land, called
Satanstoe, in the county of West Chester, and in the
colony of New York; a part of the widely extended empire
that then owned the sway of His Sacred Majesty, George II.,
King of Great Britain, Ireland, and France; Defender

of the Faith; and, I may add, the shield and panoply of the
Protestant Succession; God bless him! Before I say
anything of my parentage, I will first give the reader some
idea of the locus in quo, and a more precise notion of the
spot on which I happened first to see the light.

A “neck,” in West Chester and Long Island parlance,
means something that might be better termed a “head and
shoulders,” if mere shape and dimensions are kept in view.
Peninsula would be the true word, were we describing things
on a geographical scale; but, as they are, I find it necessary
to adhere to the local term, which is not altogether
peculiar to our county, by the way. The “neck” or peninsula
of Satanstoe, contains just four hundred and sixty-three
acres and a half of excellent West Chester land; and
that, when the stone is hauled and laid into wall, is saying
as much in its favour as need be said of any soil on earth.
It has two miles of beach, and collects a proportionate
quantity of sea-weed for manure, besides enjoying near a
hundred acres of salt-meadow and sedges, that are not included
in the solid ground of the neck proper. As my
father, Major Evans Littlepage, was to inherit this estate
from his father, Capt. Hugh Littlepage, it might, even at the
time of my birth, be considered old family property, it having
indeed, been acquired by my grandfather, through his wife,
about thirty years after the final cession of the colony to
the English by its original Dutch owners. Here we had
lived, then, near half a century, when I was born, in the
direct line, and considerably longer if we included maternal
ancestors; here I now live, at the moment of writing these
lines, and here I trust my only son is to live after me.

Before I enter into a more minute description of Satanstoe,
it may be well, perhaps, to say a word concerning its
somewhat peculiar name. The neck lies in the vicinity of
a well-known pass that is to be found in the narrow arm of
the sea that separates the island of Manhattan from its
neighbour, Long Island, and which is called Hell Gate.
Now, there is a tradition, that I confess is somewhat confined
to the blacks of the neighbourhood, but which says that the
Father of Lies, on a particular occasion, when he was violently
expelled from certain roystering taverns in the New
Netherlands, made his exit by this well-known dangerous

pass, and drawing his foot somewhat hastily from among
the lobster-pots that abound in those waters, leaving behind
him as a print of his passage by that route, the Hog's Back,
the Pot, and all the whirlpools and rocks that render navigation
so difficult in that celebrated strait, he placed it hurriedly
upon the spot where there now spreads a large bay
to the southward and eastward of the neck, just touching
the latter with the ball of his great toe, as he passed Down-East;
from which part of the country some of our people
used to maintain he originally came. Some fancied resemblance
to an inverted toe (the devil being supposed to turn
everything with which he meddles, upside-down,) has been
imagined to exist in the shape and swells of our paternal
acres; a fact that has probably had its influence in perpetuating
the name.

Satanstoe has the place been called, therefore, from
time immemorial; as time is immemorial in a country in
which civilized time commenced not a century and a half
ago: and Satanstoe it is called to-day. I confess I am
not fond of unnecessary changes, and I sincerely hope this
neck of land will continue to go by its old appellation, as
long as the House of Hanover shall sit on the throne of these
realms; or as long as water shall run and grass shall grow.
There has been an attempt made to persuade the neighbourhood,
quite lately, that the name is irreligious and unworthy
of an enlightened people, like this of West Chester; but it
has met with no great success. It has come from a Connecticut
man, whose father they say is a clergyman of the
“standing order;” so called, I believe, because they stand
up at prayers; and who came among us himself in the character
of a schoolmaster. This young man, I understand,
has endeavoured to persuade the neighbourhood that Satanstoe
is a corruption introduced by the Dutch, from Devil's
Town; which, in its turn, was a corruption from Dibbleston;
the family from which my grandfather's father-in-law purchased
having been, as he says, of the name of Dibblee.
He has got half-a-dozen of the more sentimental part of our
society to call the neck Dibbleton; but the attempt is not
likely to succeed in the long run, as we are not a people much
given to altering the language, any more than the customs
of our ancestors. Besides, my Dutch ancestors did not

purchase from any Dibblee, no such family ever owning the
place, that being a bold assumption of the Yankee to make
out his case the more readily.

Satanstoe, as it is little more than a good farm in extent,
so it is little more than a particularly good farm in
cultivation and embellishment. All the buildings are of
stone, even to the hog-sties and sheds, with well-pointed
joints, and field walls that would do credit to a fortified
place. The house is generally esteemed one of the best in
the Colony, with the exception of a few of the new school.
It is of only a story and a half in elevation, I admit; but the
rooms under the roof are as good as any of that description
with which I am acquainted, and their finish is such as
would do no discredit to the upper rooms of even a York
dwelling. The building is in the shape of an L, or two
sides of a parallelogram, one of which shows a front of
seventy-five, and the other of fifty feet. Twenty-six feet
make the depth, from outside to outside of the walls. The
best room had a carpet, that covered two-thirds of the entire
dimensions of the floor, even in my boyhood, and there were
oil-cloths in most of the better passages. The buffet in the
dining-room, or smallest parlour, was particularly admired;
and I question if there be, at this hour, a handsomer in the
county. The rooms were well-sized, and of fair dimensions,
the larger parlours embracing the whole depth of the
house, with proportionate widths, while the ceilings were
higher than common, being eleven feet, if we except the
places occupied by the larger beams of the chamber floors.

As there was money in the family, besides the Neck, and
the Littlepages had held the king's commissions, my father
having once been an ensign, and my grandfather a captain,
in the regular army, each in the earlier portion of his life,
we always ranked among the gentry of the county. We
happened to be in a part of Westchester in which were none
of the very large estates, and Satanstoe passed for property
of a certain degree of importance. It is true, the Morrises
were at Morrisania, and the Felipses, or Philipses, as these
Bohemian counts were then called, had a manor on the
Hudson, that extended within a dozen miles of us, and a
younger branch of the de Lanceys had established itself
even much nearer, while the Van Cortlandts, or a branch

of them, too, dwelt near Kingsbridge; but these were all
people who were at the head of the Colony, and with whom
none of the minor gentry attempted to vie. As it was,
therefore, the Littlepages held a very respectable position
between the higher class of the yeomanry and those who,
by their estates, education, connections, official rank, and
hereditary consideration, formed what might be justly
called the aristocracy of the Colony. Both my father and
grandfather had sat in the Assembly, in their time, and, as
I have heard elderly people say, with credit, too. As for
my father, on one occasion, he made a speech that occupied
eleven minutes in the delivery,—a proof that he had something
to say, and which was a source of great, but, I trust,
humble felicitation in the family, down to the day of his
death, and even afterwards.

Then the military services of the family stood us in for a
great deal. In that day it was something to be an ensign
even in the militia, and a far greater thing to have the same
rank in a regular regiment. It is true, neither of my predecessors
served very long with the King's troops, my father
in particular selling out at the end of his second campaign;
but the military experience, and I may add the military
glory each acquired in youth, did them good service for all
the rest of their days. Both were commissioned in the
militia, and my father actually rose as high as major in
that branch of the service, that being the rank he held, and
the title he bore, for the last fifteen years of his life.

My mother was of Dutch extraction on both sides, her
father having been a Blauvelt, and her mother a Van Busser.
I have heard it said that there was even a relationship between
the Stuyvesants and the Van Cortlandts, and the
Van Bussers; but I am not able to point out the actual
degree and precise nature of the affinity. I presume it was
not very near, or my information would have been more
minute. I have always understood that my mother brought
my father thirteen hundred pounds for dowry (currency,
not sterling), which, it must be confessed, was a very genteel
fortune for a young woman in 1733. Now, I very well
know that six, eight, and ten thousand pounds sometimes
fall in, in this manner, and even much more in the high
families; but no one need be ashamed, who looks back fifty

years, and finds that his mother brought a thousand pounds
to her husband.

I was neither an only child, nor the eldest-born. There
was a son who preceded me, and two daughters succeeded,
but they all died in infancy, leaving me in effect the only
offspring for my parents to cherish and educate. My little
brother monopolised the name of Evans, and living for
some time after I was christened, I got the Dutch appellation
of my maternal grandfather, for my share of the family
nomenclature, which happened to be Cornelius — Corny
was consequently the diminutive by which I was known to
all the whites of my acquaintance, for the first sixteen or
eighteen years of my life, and to my parents as long as
they lived. Corny Littlepage is not a bad name, in itself,
and I trust they who do me the favour to read this manuscript,
will lay it down with the feeling that the name is
none the worse for the use I have made of it.

I have said that both my father and grandfather, each in
his day, sat in the assembly; my father twice, and my
grandfather only once. Although we lived so near the
borough of West Chester, it was not for that place they sat,
but for the county, the de Lanceys and the Morrises contending
for the control of the borough, in a way that left
little chance for the smaller fishes to swim in the troubled
water they were so certain to create. Nevertheless, this
political elevation brought my father out, as it might be,
before the world, and was the means of giving him a personal
consideration he might not have otherwise enjoyed.
The benefits, and possibly some of the evils of thus being
drawn out from the more regular routine of our usually
peaceable lives, may be made to appear in the course of this
narrative.

I have ever considered myself fortunate in not having
been born in the earlier and infant days of the colony,
when the interests at stake, and the events by which they
were influenced, were not of a magnitude to give the mind
and the hopes the excitement and enlargement that attend
the periods of a more advanced civilization, and of more
important incidents. In this respect, my own appearance
in this world was most happily timed, as any one will see
who will consider the state and importance of the colony in

the middle of the present century. New York could not
have contained many less than seventy thousand souls, including
both colours, at the time of my birth, for it is supposed
to contain quite a hundred thousand this day on
which I am now writing. In such a community, a man
has not only the room, but the materials on which to figure;
whereas, as I have often heard him say, my father, when
he was born, was one of less than half of the smallest
number I have just named. I have been grateful for this
advantage, and I trust it will appear, by evidence that will
be here afforded, that I have not lived in a quarter of the
world, or in an age, when and where, and to which great
events have been altogether strangers.

My earliest recollections, as a matter of course, are of
Satanstoe and the domestic fireside. In my childhood and
youth, I heard a great deal said of the Protestant Succession,
the House of Hanover, and King George II.; all mixed up
with such names as those of George Clinton, Gen. Monckton,
Sir Charles Hardy, James de Lancey, and Sir Danvers
Osborne, his official representatives in the colony. Every
age has its old and its last wars, and I can well remember
that which occurred between the French in the Canadas
and ourselves, in 1744. I was then seven years old, and it
was an event to make an impression on a child of that
tender age. My honoured grandfather was then living, as
he was long afterwards, and he took a strong interest in the
military movements of the period, as was natural for an
old soldier. New York had no connection with the celebrated
expedition that captured Louisbourg, then the Gibraltar
of America, in 1745; but this could not prevent an old
soldier like Capt. Littlepage from entering into the affair
with all his heart, though forbidden to use his hand. As
the reader may not be aware of all the secret springs that
set public events in motion, it may be well here to throw in
a few words in the way of explanation.

There was and is little sympathy, in the way of national
feeling, between the colonies of New England and those
which lie farther south. We are all loyal, those of the
east as well as those of the south-west and south; but there
is, and ever has been, so wide a difference in our customs,
origins, religious opinions, and histories, as to cause a broad

moral line, in the way of feeling, to be drawn between the
colony of New York and those that lie east of the Byram
river. I have heard it said that most of the emigrants to
the New England states came from the west of England,
where many of their social peculiarities and much of their
language are still to be traced, while the colonies farther
south have received their population from the more central
counties, and those sections of the island that are supposed
to be less provincial and peculiar. I do not affirm that such
is literally the fact, though it is well known that we of New
York have long been accustomed to regard our neighbours
of New England as very different from ourselves, whilst, I
dare say, our neighbours of New England have regarded
us as different from themselves, and insomuch removed
from perfection.

Let all this be as it may, it is certain New England is a
portion of the empire that is set apart from the rest, for
good or for evil. It got its name from the circumstance
that the English possessions were met, on its western
boundary, by those of the Dutch, who were thus separated
from the other colonies of purely Anglo-Saxon origin, by
a wide district that was much larger in surface than the
mother country itself. I am afraid there is something in
the character of these Anglo-Saxons that predisposes them
to laugh and turn up their noses at other races; for I have
remarked that the natives of the parent land itself, who
come among us, show this disposition even as it respects
us of New York and those of New England, while the
people of the latter region manifest a feeling towards us,
their neighbours, that partakes of anything but the humility
that is thought to grace that christian character to which
they are particularly fond of laying claim.

My grandfather was a native of the old country, however,
and he entered but little into the colonial jealousies. He
had lived from boyhood, and had married in New York, and
was not apt to betray any of the overweening notions of
superiority that we sometimes encountered in native-born
Englishmen, though I can remember instances in which he
would point out the defects in our civilization, and others in
which he dwelt with pleasure on the grandeur and power
of his own island. I dare say this was all right, for few

among us have ever been disposed to dispute the just
supremacy of England in all things that are desirable, and
which form the basis of human excellence.

I well remember a journey Capt. Hugh Littlepage made
to Boston, in 1745, in order to look at the preparations that
were making for the great expedition. Although his own
colony had no connection with this enterprise, in a military
point of view, his previous service rendered him an object
of interest to the military men then assembled along the
coast of New England. It has been said the expedition
against Louisbourg, then the strongest place in America,
was planned by a lawyer, led by a merchant, and executed
by husbandmen and mechanics; but this, though true as a
whole, was a rule that had its exceptions. There were many
old soldiers who had seen the service of this continent in
the previous wars, and among them were several of my
grandfather's former acquaintances. With these he passed
many a cheerful hour, previously to the day of sailing, and
I have often thought since, that my presence alone prevented
him from making one in the fleet. The reader will think I
was young, perhaps, to be so far from home on such an
occasion, but it happened in this wise: My excellent mother
thought I had come out of the small-pox with some symptoms
that might be benefited by a journey, and she prevailed
on her father-in-law to let me be of the party when
he left home to visit Boston in the winter of 1744-5. At
that early day moving about was not always convenient in
these colonies, and my grandfather travelling in a sleigh
that was proceeding east with some private stores that had
been collected for the expedition, it presented a favourable
opportunity to send me along with my venerable progenitor,
who very good-naturedly consented to let me commence my
travels under his own immediate auspices.

The things I saw on this occasion have had a material
influence on my future life. I got a love of adventure, and
particularly of military parade and grandeur, that has since
led me into more than one difficulty. Capt. Hugh Littlepage,
my grandfather, was delighted with all he saw until
after the expedition had sailed, when he began to grumble
on the subject of the religious observances that the piety of
the Puritans blended with most of their other movements.

On the score of religion there was a marked difference; I
may say there is still a marked difference between New
England and New York. The people of New England
certainly did, and possibly may still, look upon us of New
York as little better than heathens; while we of New York
assuredly did, and for anything I know to the contrary
may yet, regard them as canters, and by necessary connection,
hypocrites. I shall not take it on myself to say which
party is right; though it has often occurred to my mind that
it would be better had New England a little less self-righteousness,
and New York a little more righteousness,
without the self. Still, in the way of pounds, shillings and
pence, we will not turn our backs upon them any day, being
on the whole rather the most trustworthy of the two as
respects money; more especially in all such cases in which
our neighbour's goods can be appropriated without having
recourse to absolutely direct means. Such, at any rate, is
the New York opinion, let them think as they please about
it on the other side of Byram.

My grandfather met an old fellow-campaigner, at Boston,
of the name of Hight, Major Hight, as he was called, who
had come to see the preparations, too; and the old soldiers
passed most of the time together. The Major was a Jerseyman,
and had been somewhat of a free-liver in his time,
retaining some of the propensities of his youth in old age,
as is apt to be the case with those who cultivate a vice as
if it were a hot-house plant. The Major was fond of his
bottle, drinking heavily of Madeira, of which there was
then a good stock in Boston, for he brought some on himself;
and I can remember various scenes that occurred between
him and my grandfather, after dinner, as they sat
discoursing in the tavern on the progress of things, and the
prospects for the future. Had these two old soldiers been
of the troops of the province in which they were, it would
have been “Major” and “Captain” at every breath; for no
part of the earth is fonder of titles than our eastern brethren;[1]
whereas, I must think we had some claims to more true
simplicity of character and habits, notwithstanding New

York has ever been thought the most aristocratical of all
the northern colonies. Having been intimate from early
youth, my two old soldiers familiarly called each other Joey
and Hodge, the latter being the abbreviation of one of my
grandfather's names, Roger, when plain Hugh was not
used, as sometimes happened between them. Hugh Roger
Littlepage, I ought to have said, was my grandfather's
name.

“I should like these Yankees better, if they prayed less,
my old friend,” said the Major, one day, after they had been
discussing the appearances of things, and speaking between
the puffs of his pipe. “I can see no great use in losing
so much time, by making these halts to pray, when the campaign
is fairly opened.”

“It was always their way, Joey,” my grandfather answered,
taking his time, as is customary with smokers. “I
remember when we were out together, in the year '17, that
the New England troops always had their parsons, who
acted as a sort of second colonels. They tell me His Excellency
has ordered a weekly fast, for public prayers, during
the whole of this campaign.”

“Ay, Master Hodge, praying and plundering; so they
go on,” returned the Major, knocking the ashes out of his
pipe, preparatory to filling it anew; an employment that
gave him an opportunity to give vent to his feelings, without
pausing to puff.—“Ay, Master Hodge, praying and plundering;
so they go on. Now, do you remember old Watson,
who was in the Massachusetts Levies, in the year '12?—old
Tom Watson; he that was a sub under Barnwell, in our
Tuscarora expedition?”

My grandfather nodded his head in assent, that being the
only reply the avocation of smoking rendered convenient,
just at that moment, unless a sort of affirmatory grunt could
be construed into an auxiliary.

“Well, he has a son going in this affair; and old Tom,
or Colonel Watson, as he is now very particular to be called,
is down here with his wife and two daughters, to see the
ensign off. I went to pay the old fellow a visit, Hodge; and
found him, and the mother and sisters, all as busy as bees
in getting young Tom's baggage ready for a march. There

lay his whole equipment before my eyes, and I had a favourable
occasion to examine it at my leisure.”

“Which you did with all your might, or you're not the
Joe Hight of the year '10,” said my grandfather, taking his
turn with the ashes and the tobacco-box.

Old Hight was now puffing away like a blacksmith who
is striving to obtain a white heat, and it was some time before
he could get out the proper reply to this half-assertion, half-interrogatory
sort of remark.

“You may be sure of that,” he at length ejaculated; when,
certain of his light, he proceeded to tell the whole story,
stopping occasionally to puff, lest he should lose the “vantage
ground” he had just obtained. “What d'ye think of half-a-dozen
strings of red onions, for one item in a subaltern's
stores!”

My grandfather grunted again, in a way that might very
well pass for a laugh.

“You 're certain they were red, Joey?” he finally asked.

“As red as his regimentals. Then there was a jug, filled
with molasses, that is as big as yonder demijohn;” glancing
at the vessel which contained his own private stores. “But
I should have thought nothing of these, a large empty sack
attracting much of my attention. I could not imagine what
young Tom could want of such a sack; but, on broaching
the subject to the Major, he very frankly gave me to understand
that Louisbourg was thought to be a rich town, and
there was no telling what luck, or Providence—yes, by
George!—he called it Providence!—might throw in his son
Tommy's way. Now that the sack was empty, and had an
easy time of it, the girls would put his bible and hymn-book in
it, as a place where the young man would be likely to look
for them. I dare say, Hodge, you never had either bible
or hymn-book, in any of your numerous campaigns?”

“No, nor a plunder-sack, nor a molasses-jug, nor strings
of red onions,” growled my grandfather in reply.

How well I remember that evening! A vast deal of colonial
prejudice and neighbourly antipathy made themselves
apparent in the conversation of the two veterans; who
seemed to entertain a strange sort of contemptuous respect
for their fellow-subjects of New England; who, in their
turn, I make not the smallest doubt, paid them off in kind—

with all the superciliousness and reproach, and with many
grains less of the respect.

That night, Major Hight and Capt. Hugh Roger Littlepage,
both got a little how-come-you-so, drinking bumpers
to the success of what they called “the Yankee expedition,”
even at the moment they were indulging in constant side
hits at the failings and habits of the people. These marks
of neighbourly infirmity are not peculiar to the people of
the adjacent provinces of New York and of New England.
I have often remarked that the English think and talk very
much of the French, as the Yankees speak of us; while the
French, so far as I have been able to understand their somewhat
unintelligible language—which seems never to have a
beginning nor an end—treat the English as the Puritans of the
Old World. As I have already intimated, we were not very
remarkable for religion in New York, in my younger days;
while it would be just the word, were I to say that religion
was conspicuous among our eastern neighbours. I remember
to have heard my grandfather say, he was once acquainted
with a Col. Heathcote, an Englishman, like himself,
by birth, and a brother of a certain Sir Gilbert Heathcote,
who was formerly a leading man in the Bank of England.
This Col. Heathcote came among us young, and married
here, leaving his posterity behind him; and was lord of the
manor of Scarsdale and Mamaroneck, in our county of
West Chester. Well, this Col. Heathcote told my grandfather,
speaking on the subject of religion, that he had been
much shocked, on arriving in this country, at discovering
the neglected condition of religion in the colony; more
especially on Long Island, where the people lived in a sort
of heathenish condition. Being a man of mark, and connected
with the government, The Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, applied to him to aid it in
spreading the truths of the bible in the colony. The Colonel
was glad enough to comply; and I remember my grandfather
said, his friend told him of the answer he returned to
these good persons in England. “I was so struck with the
heathenish condition of the people, on my arriving here,”
he wrote to them, “that, commanding the militia of the
colony, I ordered the captains of the different companies to
call their men together, each Sunday at sunrise, and to drill

them until sunset; unless they would consent to repair to
some convenient place, and listen to morning and evening
prayer, and to two wholesome sermons, read by some suitable
person, in which case the men were to be excused from
drill.”[2] I do not think this would be found necessary in
New England at least, where many of the people would be
likely to prefer drilling to preaching.

But all this gossip about the moral condition of the adjacent
colonies of New York and New England is leading me
from the narrative, and does not promise much for the connection
and interest of the remainder of the manuscript.