University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER I.

My great grandfather, by the mother's
side, Hermanus Van Clattercop, when
employed to build the large stone church
at Rotterdam, which stands about three
hundred yards to your left, after you
turn off from the Boomkeys, and which
is so conveniently constructed, that all
the zealous Christians of Rotterdam prefer
sleeping through a sermon there to
any other church in the city—my great
grandfather, I say, when employed to
build that famous church, did in the first
place send to Delft for a box of long
pipes; then having purchased a new
spitting-box and a hundred weight of the
best Virginia, he sat himself down, and did
nothing for the space of three months
but smoke most laboriously. Then did
he spend full three months more in trudging
on foot, and voyaging in trekschuyt,
from Rotterdam to Amsterdam—to Delft
—to Haerlem—to Leyden—to the Hague,
knocking his head and breaking his pipe
against every church in his road. Then
did he advance gradually nearer and
nearer to Rotterdam, until he came in
full sight of the identical spot whereon
the church was to be built. Then did
he spend three months longer in walking
round it and round it, contemplating it,
first from one point of view, and then
from another—now would he be paddled
by it on the canal—now would be peep
at it through a telescope from the other
side of the Meuse—and now would he
take a bird's-eye glance at it from the
top of one of those gigantic wind-mills
which protect the gates of the city. The
good folks of the place were on the tiptoe
of expectation and impatience—notwithstanding
all the turmoil of my great
grandfather, not a symptom of the church
was yet to be seen; they even began to
fear it would never be brought into the
world, but that its great projector would
lie down and die in labour of the mighty
plan he had conceived. At length, having
occupied twelve good months in puffing
and paddling, and talking and walking—
having travelled over all Holland, and
even taken a peep into France and Germany—having
smoked five hundred and
ninety-nine pipes, and three hundred
weight of the best Virginia tobacco—my
great grandfather gathered together all
that knowing and industrious class of
citizens who prefer attending to any
body's business sooner than their own;
and having pulled off his coat and five
pair of breeches, he advanced sturdily
up, and laid the corner stone of the
church, in the presence of the whole
multitude—just at the commencement of
the thirteenth month.

In a similar manner, and with the example
of my worthy ancestor full before
my eyes, have I proceeded in writing
this most authentic history. The honest
Rotterdamers no doubt thought my great
grandfather was doing nothing at all to
the purpose, while he was making such
a world of prefatory bustle, about the
building of his church—and many of the
ingenious inhabitants of this fair city will
unquestionably suppose that all the preliminary
chapters, with the discovery,
population, and final settlement of America,
were totally irrelevant and superfluous—and
that the main business, the
history of New York, is not a