In the last two chapters I have regaled the reader with a delectable
picture of the good Peter and his metropolis during an interval of peace.
It was, however, but a bit of blue sky in a stormy day; the clouds are
again gathering up from all points of the compass, and, if I am not
mistaken in my forebodings, we shall have rattling weather in the ensuing
chapters.
It is with some communities, as it is with certain meddlesome
individuals--they have a wonderful facility at getting into scrapes; and I
have always remarked that those are most prone to get in who have the
least talent at getting out again. This is doubtless owing to the
excessive valor of those states; for I have likewise noticed that this
rampant quality is always most frothy and fussy where most confined; which
accounts for its vaporing so amazingly in little states, little men and
ugly little women more especially.
Such is the case with this little province of the Nieuw Nederlands; which,
by its exceeding valor, has already drawn upon itself a host of enemies;
has had fighting enough to satisfy a province twice its size, and is in a
fair way of becoming an exceedingly forlorn, well-belabored, and woebegone
little province. All which was providentially ordered to give interest and
sublimity to this pathetic history.
The first interruption to the halcyon quiet of Peter Stuyvesant was caused
by hostile intelligence from the old belligerent nest of Rensellaersteen.
Killian, the lordly patroon of Rensellaerwick, was again in the field, at
the head of his myrmidons of the Helderberg seeking to annex the whole of
the Catskill mountains to his domains. The Indian tribes of these
mountains had likewise taken up the hatchet, and menaced the venerable
Dutch settlements of Esopus.
Fain would I entertain the reader with the triumphant campaign of Peter
Stuyvesant in the haunted regions of those mountains, but that I hold all
Indian conflicts to be mere barbaric brawls, unworthy of the pen which has
recorded the classic war of Fort Christina; and as to these Helderberg
commotions, they are among the flatulencies which from time to time
afflict the bowels of this ancient province, as with a wind-colic, and
which I deem it seemly and decent to pass over in silence.
The next storm of trouble was from the south. Scarcely had the worthy
Mynheer Beekman got warm in the seat of authority on the South River, than
enemies began to spring up all around him. Hard by was a formidable race
of savages inhabiting the gentle region watered by the Susquehanna, of
whom the following mention is made by Master Hariot in his excellent
history:----
"The Susquesahanocks are a giantly people, strange in proportion, behavior,
and attire--their voice sounding from them as out of a cave. Their
tobacco-pipes were three-quarters of a yard long; carved at the great end
with a bird, beare, or other device, sufficient to beat out the brains of
a horse. The calfe of one of their legges measured three-quarters of a
yard about; the rest of the limbs proportionable."[57]
These gigantic savages and smokers caused no little disquiet in the mind
of Mynheer Beekman, threatening to cause a famine of tobacco in the land;
but his most formidable enemy was the roaring, roistering English colony
of Maryland, or, as it was anciently written, Merryland; so called because
the inhabitants, not having the fear of the Lord before their eyes, were
prone to make merry and get fuddled with mint-julep and apple-toddy. They
were, moreover, great horse-racers and cock-fighters, mighty wrestlers and
jumpers, and enormous consumers of hoe-cake and bacon. They lay claim to
be the first inventors of those recondite beverages, cock-tail,
stone-fence, and sherry-cobbler, and to have discovered the gastronomical
merits of terrapins, soft crabs, and canvas-back ducks.
This rantipole colony, founded by Lord Baltimore, a British nobleman, was
managed by his agent, a swaggering Englishman, commonly called Fendall,
that is to say, "offend all," a name given him for his bullying
propensities. These were seen in a message to Mynheer Beekman, threatening
him, unless he immediately swore allegiance to Lord Baltimore as the
rightful lord of the soil, to come at the head of the roaring boys of
Merryland and the giants of the Susquehanna, and sweep him and his
Nederlanders out of the country.
The trusty sword of Peter Stuyvesant almost leaped from its scabbard, when
he received missives from Mynheer Beekman, informing him of the swaggering
menaces of the bully Fendall; and as to the giantly warriors of the
Susquehanna, nothing would have more delighted him than a bout, hand to
hand, with half a score of them, having never encountered a giant in the
whole course of his campaigns, unless we may consider the stout Risingh as
such, and he was but a little one.
Nothing prevented his marching instantly to the South River, and enacting
scenes still more glorious than those of Fort Christina, but the necessity
of first putting a stop to the increasing aggressions and inroads of the
Yankees, so as not to leave an enemy in his rear; but he wrote to Mynheer
Beekman to keep up a bold front and a stout heart, promising, as soon as
he had settled affairs in the east, that he would hasten to the south with
his burly warriors of the Hudson, to lower the crests of the giants, and
mar the merriment of the Merrylanders.
FOOTNOTES:
[57] Hariot's Journal, Purch. Pilgrims.