to a black speck, peering above the western horizon, just in the rear
of Bergen steeple: gradually it augments and overhangs the would-be
cities of Jersey, Harsimus, and Hoboken, which, like three jockeys,
are starting on the course of existence, and jostling each other at
the commencement of the race. Now it skirts the long shore of ancient
Pavonia, spreading its wide shadows from the high settlements of
Weehawk quite to the lazaretto and quarantine erected by the sagacity
of our police, for the embarrassment of commerce; now it climbs the
serene vault of heaven, cloud rolling over cloud, shrouding the orb of
day, darkening the vast expanse, and bearing thunder and hail and
tempest in its bosom. The earth seems agitated at the confusion of the
heavens; the late waveless mirror is lashed into furious waves that
roll in hollow murmurs to the shore; the oyster-boats that erst
sported in the placid vicinity of Gibbet Island, now hurry affrighted
to the land; the poplar writhes and twists and whistles in the blast;
torrents of drenching rain and sounding hail deluge the Battery walks;
the gates are thronged by apprentices, servant-maids, and little
Frenchmen, with pocket-handkerchiefs over their hats, scampering from
the storm; the late beauteous prospect presents one scene of anarchy
and wild uproar, as though old Chaos had resumed his reign, and was
hurling back into one vast turmoil the conflicting elements of nature.
[Illustration: “SCAMPERING FROM THE STORM.”]
Whether I fled from the fury of the storm, or remained boldly at my
post, as our gallant train-band captains who march their soldiers
through the rain without flinching, are points which I leave to the
conjecture of the reader. It is possible he may be a little perplexed
also to know the reason why I introduced this tremendous tempest to
disturb the serenity of my work. On this latter point I will
gratuitously instruct his ignorance. The panorama view of the Battery
was given merely to gratify the reader with a correct description of
that celebrated place and the parts adjacent; secondly, the storm was
played off, partly to give a little bustle and life to this tranquil
part of my work, and to keep my drowsy readers from falling asleep, and
partly to serve as an overture to the tempestuous times which are about
to assail the pacific province of Nieuw Nederlandts, and which overhang
the slumbrous administration of the renowned Wouter Van Twiller. It is
thus the experienced playwright puts all the fiddles, the French-horns,
the kettle-drums, and trumpets of his orchestra in requisition, to usher
in one of those horrible and brimstone uproars called Melodrames,—and it
is thus he discharges his thunder, his lightning, his rosin, and
saltpetre, preparatory to the rising of a ghost or the murdering of a
hero. We will now proceed with our history.
Whatever may be advanced by philosophers to the contrary, I am of
opinion, that, as to nations, the old maxim, that “honesty is the best
policy,” is a sheer and ruinous mistake. It might have answered well
enough in the honest times when it was made; but in these degenerate
days, if a nation pretends to rely merely upon the justice of its
dealings, it will fare something like the honest man who fell among
thieves, and found his honesty a poor protection against bad company.
Such, at least, was the case with the guileless government of the New
Netherlands; which, like a worthy unsuspicious old burgher, quietly
settled itself down in the city of New Amsterdam, as into a snug
elbow-chair, and fell into a comfortable nap, while, in the meantime,
its cunning neighbors stepped in and picked its pockets. In a word, we
may ascribe the commencement of all the woes of this great province, and
its magnificent metropolis, to the tranquil security, or, to speak more
accurately, to the unfortunate honesty of its government. But as I
dislike to begin an important part of my history towards the end of a
chapter, and as my readers, like myself, must doubtless be exceedingly
fatigued with the long walk we have taken, and the tempest we have
sustained, I hold it meet we shut up the book, smoke a pipe, and, having
thus refreshed our spirits, take a fair start in a new chapter.
[Illustration]
=Chapter VII.=
FAITHFULLY DESCRIBING THE INGENIOUS PEOPLE OF CONNECTICUT AND
THEREABOUTS—SHOWING, MOREOVER, THE TRUE MEANING OF LIBERTY OF
CONSCIENCE, AND A CURIOUS DEVICE AMONG THESE STURDY BARBARIANS TO
KEEP UP A HARMONY OF INTERCOURSE, AND PROMOTE POPULATION.
That my readers may the more fully comprehend the extent of the
calamity, at this very moment impending over the honest, unsuspecting
province of Nieuw Nederlandts, and its dubious governor, it is necessary
that I should give some account of a horde of strange barbarians,
bordering upon the eastern frontier.
Now so it came to pass, that, many years previous to the time of which
we are treating, the sage cabinet of England had adopted a certain
national creed, a kind of public walk of faith, or rather a religious
turnpike, in which every loyal subject was directed to travel to
Zion,—taking care to pay the _toll-gatherers_ by the way.
Albeit a certain shrewd race of men, being very much given to indulge
their own opinions on all manner of subjects (a propensity exceedingly
offensive to your free governments of Europe), did most presumptuously
dare to think for themselves in matters of religion, exercising what
they considered a natural and unextinguishable right—the liberty of
conscience.
As, however, they possessed that ingenuous habit of mind which always
thinks aloud, which rides cock-a-hoop on the tongue, and is forever
galloping into other people’s ears, it naturally followed that their
liberty of conscience likewise implied _liberty of speech_, which being
freely indulged, soon put the country in a hubbub, and aroused the pious
indignation of the vigilant fathers of the Church.
The usual methods were adopted to reclaim them, which in those days were
considered efficacious in bringing back stray sheep to the fold; that is
to say, they were coaxed, they were admonished, they were menaced, they
were buffeted,—line upon line, precept upon precept, lash upon lash,
here a little and there a great deal, were exhorted without mercy and
without success,—until the worthy pastors of the Church, wearied out by
their unparalleled stubbornness, were driven, in the excess of their
tender mercy, to adopt the Scripture text, and literally to “heap live
embers on their heads.”
Nothing, however, could subdue that independence of the tongue which has
ever distinguished this singular race, so that, rather than subject that
heroic member to further tyranny, they one and all embarked for the
wilderness of America, to enjoy, unmolested, the inestimable right of
talking. And, in fact, no sooner did they land upon the shore of this
free-spoken country, than they all lifted up their voices, and made such
a clamor of tongues, that we are told they frightened every bird and
beast out of the neighborhood, and struck such mute terror into certain
fish, that they have been called _dumb-fish_ ever since.
This may appear marvellous, but it is nevertheless true; in proof of
which I would observe, that the dumb-fish has ever since become an
object of superstitious reverence, and forms the Saturday’s dinner of
every true Yankee.
[Illustration: THE YANKEE’S SATURDAY’S DINNER OF DUMB-FISH.]
The simple aborigines of the land for a while contemplated these strange
folk in utter astonishment; but discovering that they wielded harmless
though noisy weapons, and were a lively, ingenious, good-humored race of
men, they became very friendly and sociable, and gave them the name of
_Yanokies_, which in the Mais-Tchusaeg (or Massachusetts) language
signifies _silent men_,—a waggish appellation, since shortened into the
familiar epithet of YANKEES, which they retain unto the present day.
True it is, and my fidelity as an historian will not allow me to pass
over the fact, that, having served a regular apprenticeship in the
school of persecution, these ingenious people soon showed that they had
become masters of the art. The great majority were of one particular
mode of thinking in matters of religion; but, to their great surprise
and indignation, they found that divers Papists, Quakers, and
Anabaptists were springing up among them, and all claiming to use the
liberty of speech. This was at once pronounced a daring abuse of the
liberty of conscience, which they now insisted was nothing more than the
liberty to think as one pleased in matters of religion—provided one
thought right; for otherwise it would be giving a latitude to damnable
heresies. Now as they, the majority, were convinced that they alone
thought right, it consequently followed, that whoever thought different
from them thought wrong,—and whoever thought wrong, and obstinately
persisted in not being convinced and converted, was a flagrant violator
of the inestimable liberty of conscience, and a corrupt and infectious
member of the body politic, and deserved to be lopped off and cast into
the fire. The consequence of all which was a fiery persecution of divers
sects, and especially of Quakers.
Now I’ll warrant there are hosts of my readers, ready at once to lift up
their hands and eyes, with that virtuous indignation with which we
contemplate the faults and errors of our neighbors, and to exclaim at
the preposterous idea of convincing the mind by tormenting the body, and
establishing the doctrine of charity and forbearance by intolerant
persecution. But in simple truth what are we doing at this very day, and
in this very enlightened nation, but acting upon the very same principle
in our political controversies? Have we not within but a few years
released ourselves from the shackles of a government which cruelly
denied us the privilege of governing ourselves, and using in full
latitude that invaluable member, the tongue? and are we not at this very
moment striving our best to tyrannize over the opinions, tie up the
tongues, and ruin the fortunes of one another? What are our great
political societies, but mere political inquisitions,—our pot-house
committees, but little tribunals of denunciation,—our newspapers, but
mere whipping-posts and pillories, where unfortunate individuals are
pelted with rotteneggs,—and our council of appointment, but a grand
_auto-da-fé_, where culprits are annually sacrificed for their political
heresies?
Where, then, is the difference in principle between our measures and
those you are so ready to condemn among the people I am treating of?
There is none; the difference is merely circumstantial. Thus we
_denounce_, instead of banishing,—we _libel_, instead of scourging,—we
_turn out of office_, instead of hanging,—and where they burnt an
offender in proper person, we either tar and feather, or _burn him in
effigy_,—this political persecution being, somehow or other, the grand
palladium of our liberties, and an incontrovertible proof that this is a
_free country_!
But notwithstanding the fervent zeal with which this holy war was
prosecuted against the whole race of unbelievers, we do not find that
the population of this new colony was in any wise hindered thereby; on
the contrary, they multiplied to a degree which would be incredible to
any man unacquainted with the marvellous fecundity of this growing
country.
[Illustration: TARRED AND FEATHERED.]
This amazing increase may, indeed, be partly ascribed to a singular
custom prevalent among them, commonly known by the name of _bundling_,—a
superstitious rite observed by the young people of both sexes, with
which they usually terminated their festivities, and which was kept up
with religious strictness by the more bigoted part of the community.
This ceremony was likewise, in those primitive times, considered as an
indispensable preliminary to matrimony, their courtships commencing
where ours usually finish,—by which means they acquired that intimate
acquaintance with each other’s good qualities before marriage, which has
been pronounced by philosophers the sure basis of a happy union. Thus
early did this cunning and ingenious people display a shrewdness of
making a bargain, which has ever since distinguished them,—and a strict
adherence to the good old vulgar maxim about “buying a pig in a poke.”
To this sagacious custom, therefore, do I chiefly attribute the
unparalleled increase of the Yanokie or Yankee race; for it is a certain
fact, well authenticated by court records and parish registers, that,
wherever the practice of bundling prevailed, there was an amazing number
of sturdy brats annually born unto the State, without the licence of the
law, or the benefit of clergy. Neither did the irregularity of their
birth operate in the least to their disparagement. On the contrary, they
grew up a long-sided, raw-boned, hardy race of whoreson whalers,
wood-cutters, fisherman, and peddlers, and strapping corn-fed
wenches,—who by their united efforts tended marvellously towards
peopling those notable tracts of country called Nantucket, Piscataway,
and Cape Cod.
[Illustration]
=Chapter VIII.=
HOW THESE SINGULAR BARBARIANS TURNED OUT TO BE NOTORIOUS SQUATTERS—HOW
THEY BUILT AIR-CASTLES, AND ATTEMPTED TO INITIATE THE NEDERLANDERS
INTO THE MYSTERY OF BUNDLING.
In the last chapter I have given a faithful and unprejudiced account of
the origin of that singular race of people inhabiting the country
eastward of the Nieuw Nederlandts; but I have yet to mention certain
peculiar habits which rendered them exceedingly annoying to our
ever-honored Dutch ancestors.
The most prominent of these was a certain rambling propensity, with
which, like the sons of Ishmael, they seem to have been gifted by
heaven, and which continually goads them on to shift their residence
from place to place, so that a Yankee farmer is in a constant state of
migration, _tarrying_ occasionally here and there, clearing lands for
other people to enjoy, building houses for others to inhabit, and in a
manner may be considered the wandering Arab of America.
His first thought, on coming to years of manhood, is to _settle_ himself
in the world,—which means nothing more nor less than to begin his
rambles. To this end he takes unto himself for a wife some buxom country
heiress, passing rich in red ribbons, glass beads, and mock
tortoise-shell combs, with a white gown and morocco shoes for Sunday,
and deeply skilled in the mystery of making apple-sweetmeats, long
sauce, and pumpkin-pie.
Having thus provided himself, like a peddler with a heavy knapsack,
wherewith to regale his shoulders through the journey of life, he
literally sets out on the peregrination. His whole family, household
furniture, and farming utensils are hoisted into a covered cart, his own
and his wife’s wardrobe packed up in a firkin,—which done, he shoulders
his axe, takes staff in hand, whistles “Yankee Doodle,” and trudges off
to the woods, as confident of the protection of Providence, and relying
as cheerfully upon his own resources, as ever did a patriarch of yore
when he journeyed into a strange country of the Gentiles. Having buried
himself in the wilderness, he builds himself a log hut, clears away a
corn-field and potato patch, and, Providence smiling upon his labors, is
soon surrounded by a snug farm and some half a score of flaxen-headed
urchins, who, by their size, seem to have sprung all at once out of the
earth, like a crop of toadstools.
But it is not the nature of this most indefatigable of speculators to
rest contented with any state of sublunary enjoyment: _improvement_ is
his darling passion; and having thus improved his lands, the next care
is to provide a mansion worthy the residence of a landholder. A huge
palace of pine boards immediately springs up in the midst of the
wilderness, large enough for a parish church, and furnished with windows
of all dimensions, but so rickety and flimsy withal, that every blast
gives it a fit of the ague.
By the time the outside of this mighty air-castle is completed, either
the funds or the zeal of our adventurer is exhausted, so that he barely
manages to furnish one room within, where the whole family burrow
together,—while the rest of the house is devoted to the curing of
pumpkins, or storing of carrots and potatoes, and is decorated with
fanciful festoons of dried apples and peaches. The outside, remaining
unpainted, grows venerably black with time; the family wardrobe is laid
under contribution for old hats, petticoats, and breeches, to stuff into
the broken windows, while the four winds of heaven keep up a whistling
and howling about this aërial palace, and play as many unruly gambols as
they did of yore in the cave of old Æolus.
The humble log hut, which whilom nestled this _improving_ family snugly
within its narrow but comfortable walls, stands hard by, in ignominious
contrast, degraded into a cow-house or pig-sty; and the whole scene
reminds one forcibly of a fable, which I am surprised has never been
recorded, of an aspiring snail, who abandoned his humble habitation,
which he had long filled with great respectability, to crawl into the
empty shell of a lobster,—where he would no doubt have resided with
great style and splendor, the envy and the hate of all the painstaking
snails in the neighborhood, had he not perished with cold in one corner
of his stupendous mansion.
Being thus completely settled, and, to use his own words, “to rights,”
one would imagine that he would begin to enjoy the comforts of his
situation,—to read newspapers, talk politics, neglect his own business,
and attend to the affairs of the nation, like a useful and patriotic
citizen: but now it is that his wayward disposition begins again to
operate. He soon grows tired of a spot where there is no longer any room
for improvement,—sells his farm, air-castle, petticoat windows and all,
reloads his cart, shoulders his axe, puts himself at the head of his
family, and wanders away in search of new lands,—again to fell
trees,—again to clear corn-fields,—again to build a shingle palace, and
again to sell off and wander. Such were the people of Connecticut, who
bordered upon the eastern frontier of New Netherlands; and my readers
may easily imagine what uncomfortable neighbors this lighthearted but
restless tribe must have been to our tranquil progenitors. If they
cannot, I would ask them if they have ever known one of our regular,
well-organized Dutch families, whom it hath pleased heaven to afflict
with the neighborhood of a French boarding-house? The honest old burgher
cannot take his afternoon’s pipe on the bench before his door, but he is
persecuted with the scraping of fiddles, the chattering of women, and
the squalling of children; he cannot sleep at night for the horrible
melodies of some amateur, who chooses to serenade the moon, and display
his terrible proficiency in _execution_, on the clarionet, hautboy, or
some other soft-toned instrument; nor can he leave the street-door open,
but his house is defiled by the unsavory visits of a troop of pup-dogs,
who even sometimes carry their loathsome ravages into the _sanctum
sanctorum_, the parlor!
If my readers have ever witnessed the sufferings of such a family, so
situated, they may form some idea how our worthy ancestors were
distressed by their mercurial neighbors of Connecticut.
Gangs of these marauders, we are told, penetrated into the New
Netherland settlements, and threw whole villages into consternation by
their unparalleled volubility and their intolerable inquisitiveness,—two
evil habits hitherto unknown in those parts, or only known to be
abhorred; for our ancestors were noted as being men of truly Spartan
taciturnity, and who neither knew nor cared aught about anybody’s
concerns but their own. Many enormities were committed on the highways,
where several unoffending burghers were brought to a stand, and tortured
with questions and guesses,—which outrages occasioned as much vexation
and heart-burning as does the modern right of search on the high seas.
[Illustration: “THE HORRIBLE MELODIES OF SOME AMATEUR, WHO CHOOSES TO
SERENADE THE MOON.”]
Great jealousy did they likewise stir up, by their intermeddling and
successes among the divine sex; for, being a race of brisk, likely,
pleasant-tongued varlets, they soon seduced the light affections of the
simple damsels from their ponderous Dutch gallants. Among other hideous
customs, they attempted to introduce among them that of _bundling_,
which the Dutch lasses of the Nederlandts, with that eager passion for
novelty and foreign fashions natural to their sex, seemed very well
inclined to follow, but that their mothers, being more experienced in
the world, and better acquainted with men and things, strenuously
discountenanced all such outlandish innovations.
But what chiefly operated to embroil our ancestors with these strange
folk, was an unwarrantable liberty which they occasionally took of
entering in hordes into the territories of the New Netherlands, and
settling themselves down, without leave or licence, to _improve_ the
land, in the manner I have before noticed. This unceremonious mode of
taking possession of _new land_ was technically termed _squatting_, and
hence is derived the appellation of _squatters_,—a name odious in the
ears of all great land-holders, and which is given to those enterprising
worthies who seize upon land first, and take their chance to make good
their title to it afterwards.
All these grievances, and many others which were constantly
accumulating, tended to form that dark and portentous cloud, which, as I
observed in a former chapter, was slowly gathering over the tranquil
province of New Netherlands. The pacific cabinet of Van Twiller,
however, as will be perceived in the sequel, bore them all with a
magnanimity that redounds to their immortal credit, becoming by passive
endurance inured to this increasing mass of wrongs,—like that mighty man
of old, who, by dint of carrying about a calf from the time it was born,
continued to carry it without difficulty when it had grown to be an ox.
[Illustration: “BRISK, LIKELY, PLEASANT-TONGUED VARLETS.”]
=Chapter IX.=
HOW THE FORT GOED HOOP WAS FEARFULLY BELEAGUERED—HOW THE RENOWNED
WOUTER FELL INTO A PROFOUND DOUBT, AND HOW HE FINALLY EVAPORATED.
By this time my readers must fully perceive what an arduous task I have
undertaken,—exploring a little kind of Herculaneum of history, which had
lain nearly for ages buried under the rubbish of years, and almost
totally forgotten,—raking up the limbs and fragments of disjointed
facts, and endeavoring to put them scrupulously together, so as to
restore them to their original form and connection,—now lugging forth
the character of an almost forgotten hero, like a mutilated statue, now
deciphering a half-defaced inscription, and now lighting upon a
mouldering manuscript, which, after painful study scarce repays the
trouble of perusal.
In such case, how much has the reader to depend upon the honor and
probity of his author, lest, like a cunning antiquarian, he either
impose upon him some spurious fabrication of his own for a precious
relic of antiquity, or else dress up the dismembered fragment with such
false trappings, that it is scarcely possible to distinguish the truth
from the fiction with which it is enveloped. This is a grievance which I
have more than once had to lament, in the course of my wearisome
researches among the works of my fellow-historians, who have strangely
disguised and distorted the facts respecting this country; and
particularly respecting the great province of New Netherlands; as will
be perceived by any who will take the trouble to compare their romantic
effusions, tricked out in the meretricious gauds of fable, with this
authentic history.
I have had more vexations of the kind to encounter, in those parts of my
history which treat of the transactions on the eastern border, than in
any other, in consequence of the troops of historians who have infested
these quarters, and have shown the honest people of Nieuw Nederlandts no
mercy in their works. Among the rest, Mr. Benjamin Trumbull arrogantly
declares, that “the Dutch were always mere intruders.” Now, to this I
shall make no other reply than to proceed in the steady narration of my
history, which will contain not only proofs that the Dutch had clear
title and possession in the fair valleys of the Connecticut, and that
they were wrongfully dispossessed thereof, but likewise, that they have
been scandalously maltreated ever since by the misrepresentations of the
crafty historians of New England. And in this I shall be guided by a
spirit of truth and impartiality, and a regard to immortal fame; for I
would not wittingly dishonor my work by a single falsehood,
misrepresentation, or prejudice, though it should gain our forefathers
the whole country of New England.
I have already noticed, in a former chapter of my history, that the
territories of the Nieuw Nederlandts, extended on the east, quite to the
Varsche or fresh, or Connecticut River. Here, at an early period, had
been established a frontier post on the bank of the river, and called
Fort Goed Hoop, not far from the site of the present fair city of
Hartford. It was placed under the command of Jacobus Van Curlet, or
Curlis, as some historians will have it,—a doughty soldier, of that
stomachful class famous for eating all they kill. He was long in the
body and short in the limb, as though a tall man’s body had been mounted
on a little man’s legs. He made up for this turnspit construction by
striding to such an extent, that you would have sworn he had on the
seven-leagued boots of Jack the Giant-killer; and so high did he tread
on parade, that his soldiers were sometimes alarmed lest he should
trample himself under foot.
[Illustration: JACOBUS VAN CURLET.]
But notwithstanding the erection of this fort, and the appointment of
this ugly little man of war as commander, the Yankees continued the
interlopings hinted at in my last chapter, and at length had the
audacity to _squat_ themselves down within the jurisdiction of Fort Goed
Hoop.
The long-bodied Van Curlet protested with great spirit against these
unwarrantable encroachments, couching his protest in Low Dutch, by way
of inspiring more terror, and forthwith despatched a copy of the protest
to the governor at New Amsterdam, together with a long and bitter
account of the aggressions of the enemy. This done, he ordered his men,
one and all, to be of good cheer, shut the gate of the fort, smoked
three pipes, went to bed, and awaited the result with a resolute and
intrepid tranquillity, that greatly animated his adherents, and no doubt
struck sore dismay and affright into the hearts of the enemy.
Now it came to pass, that about this time the renowned Wouter Van
Twiller, full of years and honors, and council-dinners, had reached that
period of life and faculty which, according to the great Gulliver,
entitles a man to admission into the ancient order of Struldbruggs. He
employed his time in smoking his Turkish pipe, amid an assemblage of
sages, equally enlightened and nearly as venerable as himself, and who,
for their silence, their gravity, their wisdom, and their cautious
averseness to coming to any conclusion in business, are only to be
equalled by certain profound corporations which I have known in my time.
Upon reading the protest of the gallant Jacobus Van Curlet, therefore,
his excellency fell straightway into one of the deepest doubts that ever
he was known to encounter; his capacious head gradually drooped on his
chest, he closed his eyes, and inclined his ear to one side, as if
listening with great attention to the discussion that was going on in
his belly,—and which all who knew him declared to be the huge
court-house or council-chamber of his thoughts, forming to his head what
the house of representatives does to the Senate. An inarticulate sound,
very much resembling a snore, occasionally escaped him; but the nature
of this internal cogitation was never known, as he never opened his lips
on the subject to man, woman, or child. In the meantime, the protest of
Van Curlet lay quietly on the table, where it served to light the pipes
of the venerable sages assembled in council; and in the great smoke
which they raised, the gallant Jacobus, his protest, and his mighty Fort
Goed Hoop were soon as completely beclouded and forgotten as is a
question of emergency swallowed up in the speeches and resolutions of a
modern session of Congress.
There are certain emergencies when your profound legislators and sage
deliberative councils are mightily in the way of a nation, and when an
ounce of hare-brained decision is worth a pound of sage doubt and
cautious discussion. Such, at least, was the case at present; for, while
the renowned Wouter Van Twiller was daily battling with his doubts, and
his resolution growing weaker and weaker in the contest, the enemy
pushed farther and farther into his territories, and assumed a most
formidable appearance in the neighborhood of Fort Goed Hoop. Here they
founded the mighty town of _Pyquag_, or, as it has since been called,
_Weathersfield_, a place which, if we may credit the assertions of that
worthy historian, John Josselyn, Gent., “hath been infamous by reason of
the witches therein.” And so daring did these men of Pyquag become, that
they extended those plantations of onions, for which their town is
illustrious, under the very noses of the garrison of Fort Goed Hoop,
insomuch that the honest Dutchmen could not look toward that quarter
without tears in their eyes.
[Illustration: THE PROTEST OF JACOBUS VAN CURLET.]
This crying injustice was regarded with proper indignation by the
gallant Jacobus Van Curlet. He absolutely trembled with the violence of
his choler and the exacerbations of his valor, which were the more
turbulent in their workings from the length of the body in which they
were agitated. He forthwith proceeded to strengthen his redoubts,
heighten his breastworks, deepen his fosse, and fortify his position
with a double row of abatis; after which he despatched a fresh courier
with accounts of his perilous situation.
The courier chosen to bear the despatches was a fat, oily little man, as
being less liable to be worn out, or to lose leather on the journey; and
to insure his speed, he was mounted on the fleetest wagon-horse in the
garrison, remarkable for length of limb, largeness of bone, and hardness
of trot, and so tall, that the little messenger was obliged to climb on
his back by means of his tail and crupper. Such extraordinary speed did
he make, that he arrived at Fort Amsterdam in a little less than a
month, though the distance was full two hundred pipes, or about one
hundred and twenty miles.
With an appearance of great hurry and business, and smoking a short
travelling-pipe, he proceeded on a long swing-trot through the muddy
lanes of the metropolis, demolishing whole batches of dirt pies, which
the little Dutch children were making in the road; and for which kind of
pastry the children of this city have ever been famous. On arriving at
the governor’s house he climbed down from his steed, roused the
gray-headed door-keeper, old Skaats, who, like his lineal descendant and
faithful representative, the venerable crier of our court, was nodding
at his post, rattled at the door of the council-chamber, and startled
the members as they were dozing over a plan for establishing a public
market.
[Illustration: “HE PROCEEDED ON A LONG SWING-TROT THROUGH THE MUDDY
LANES.”]
At that very moment a gentle grunt, or rather a deep-drawn snore, was
heard from the chair of the governor; a whiff of smoke was at the same
instant observed to escape from his lips, and a light cloud to ascend
from the bowl of his pipe. The council, of course, supposed him engaged
in deep sleep, for the good of the community, and, according to custom
in all such cases established, every man bawled out silence, when, of a
sudden, the door flew open, and the little courier straddled into the
apartment, cased to the middle in a pair of Hessian boots, which he had
got into for the sake of expedition. In his right hand he held forth the
ominous despatches, and with his left he grasped firmly the waistband of
his galligaskins, which had unfortunately given way in the exertion of
descending from his horse. He stumped resolutely up to the governor, and
with more hurry than perspicuity delivered his message. But fortunately
his ill tidings came too late to ruffle the tranquillity of this most
tranquil of rulers. His venerable excellency had just breathed and
smoked his last,—his lungs and his pipe having been exhausted together,
and his peaceful soul having escaped in the last whiff that curled from
his tobacco-pipe. In a word, the renowned Walter the Doubter, who had so
often slumbered with his contemporaries, now slept with his fathers, and
Wilhelmus Kieft governed in his stead.
=Book IV.=
CONTAINING THE CHRONICLES OF THE REIGN OF WILLIAM THE TESTY.
[Illustration]
=Chapter I.=
SHOWING THE NATURE OF HISTORY IN GENERAL; CONTAINING FURTHERMORE THE
UNIVERSAL ACQUIREMENTS OF WILLIAM THE TESTY, AND HOW A MAN MAY LEARN
SO MUCH AS TO RENDER HIMSELF GOOD FOR NOTHING.
When the lofty Thucydides is about to enter upon his description of the
plague that desolated Athens, one of his modern commentators assures the
reader, that the history is now going to be exceeding solemn, serious,
and pathetic, and hints, with that air of chuckling gratulation with
which a good dame draws forth a choice morsel from a cupboard to regale
a favorite, that this plague will give his history a most agreeable
variety.
In like manner did my heart leap within me, when I came to the dolorous
dilemma of Fort Goed Hoop, which I at once perceived to be the
forerunner of a series of great events and entertaining disasters. Such
are the true subjects for the historic pen. For what is history, in
fact, but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and
miseries that man has inflicted on his fellowman? It is a huge libel on
human nature, to which we industriously add page after page, volume
after volume, as if we were building up a monument to the honor, rather
than the infamy of our species. If we turn over the pages of these
chronicles that man has written of himself, what are the characters
dignified by the appellation of great, and held up to the admiration of
posterity? Tyrants, robbers, conquerors, renowned only for the magnitude
of their misdeeds, and the stupendous wrongs and miseries they have
inflicted on mankind,—warriors, who have hired themselves to the trade
of blood, not from motives of virtuous patriotism, or to protect the
injured and defenceless, but merely to gain the vaunted glory of being
adroit and successful in massacring their fellow-beings! What are the
great events that constitute a glorious era?—The fall of empires; the
desolation of happy countries; splendid cities smoking in their ruins;
the proudest works of art tumbled in the dust; the shrieks and groans of
whole nations ascending unto heaven!
It is thus the historian may be said to thrive on the miseries of
mankind, like birds of prey which hover over the field of battle to
fatten on the mighty dead. It was observed by a great projector of
inland lock-navigation, that rivers, lakes, and oceans were only formed
to feed canals. In like manner I am tempted to believe that plots,
conspiracies, wars, victories, and massacres are ordained by Providence
only as food for the historian.
[Illustration: THE POET AND HISTORIAN.]
It is a source of great delight to the philosopher, in studying the
wonderful economy of nature, to trace the mutual dependencies of things,
how they are created reciprocally for each other, and how the most
noxious and apparently unnecessary animal has its uses. Thus those
swarms of flies, which are so often execrated as useless vermin, are
created for the sustenance of spiders; and spiders, on the other hand,
are evidently made to devour flies. So those heroes, who have been such
scourges to the world, were bounteously provided as themes for the poet
and historian, while the poet and the historian were destined to record
the achievements of heroes!
These, and many similar reflections, naturally arose in my mind as I
took up my pen to commence the reign of William Kieft: for now the
stream of our history, which hitherto has rolled in a tranquil current,
is about to depart forever from its peaceful haunts, and brawl through
many a turbulent and rugged scene.
As some sleek ox, sunk in the rich repose of a clover-field, dozing and
chewing the cud, will bear repeated blows before it raises itself, so
the province of Nieuw Nederlandts, having waxed fat under the drowsy
reign of the Doubter, needed cuffs and kicks to rouse it into action.
The reader will now witness the manner in which a peaceful community
advances towards a state of war; which is apt to be like the approach of
a horse to a drum, with much prancing and little progress, and too often
with the wrong end foremost.
Wilhelmus Kieft, who in 1634 ascended the gubernatorial chair (to borrow
a favorite though clumsy appellation of modern phraseologists), was of a
lofty descent, his father being inspector of wind-mills in the ancient
town of Saardam; and our hero, we are told, when a boy, made very
curious investigations into the nature and operation of these machines,
which was one reason why he afterwards came to be so ingenious a
governor. His name, according to the most authentic etymologists, was a
corruption of Kyver, that is to say, a _wrangler_ or _scolder_, and
expressed the characteristic 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 he inherit this family peculiarity, that he had not been a
year in the government of the province, before he was universally
denominated William the Testy. His appearance answered to his name. He
was a brisk, wiry, waspish little old gentleman; such a one as may now
and then be seen stumping about our city in a broad-skirted coat with
huge buttons, a cocked hat stuck on the back of his head, and a cane as
high as his chin. His face was broad, but his features were sharp; his
cheeks were scorched into a dusky red by two fiery little gray eyes; his
nose turned up, and the corners of his mouth turned down, pretty much
like the muzzle of an irritable pug-dog.
I have heard it observed by a profound adept in human physiology, that
if a woman waxes fat with the progress of years, her tenure of life is
somewhat precarious, but if haply she withers as she grows old, she
lives forever. Such promised to be the case with William the Testy, who
grew tough in proportion as he dried. He had withered, in fact, not
through the process of years, but through the tropical fervor of his
soul, which burnt like a vehement rush-light in his bosom, inciting him
to incessant broils and bickerings. Ancient traditions speak much of his
learning, and of the gallant inroads he had made into the dead
languages, in which he had made captive a host of Greek nouns and Latin
verbs, and brought off rich booty in ancient saws and apothegms, which
he was wont to parade in his public harangues, as a triumphant general
of yore his _spolia opima_. Of metaphysics he knew enough to confound
all hearers and himself into the bargain. In logic, he knew the whole
family of syllogisms and dilemmas, and was so proud of his skill that he
never suffered even a self-evident fact to pass unargued. It was
observed, however, that he seldom got into an argument without getting
into a perplexity, and then into a passion with his adversary for not
being convinced gratis.
[Illustration: WILLIAM THE TESTY.]
He had, moreover, skirmished smartly on the frontiers of several of the
sciences, was fond of experimental philosophy, and prided himself upon
inventions of all kinds. His abode, which he had fixed at a Bowerie or
country-seat at a short distance from the city, just at what is now
called Dutch Street, soon abounded with proofs of his ingenuity: patent
smoke-jacks that required a horse to work them; Dutch ovens that roasted
meat without fire; carts that went before the horses; weathercocks that
turned against the wind; and other wrong-headed contrivances that
astonished and confounded all beholders. The house, too, was beset with
paralytic cats and dogs, the subjects of his experimental philosophy;
and the yelling and yelping of the latter unhappy victims of science,
while aiding in the pursuit of knowledge, soon gained for the place the
name of “Dog’s Misery,” by which it continues to be known at the present
day.
It is in knowledge as in swimming; he who flounders and splashes on the
surface makes more noise, and attracts more attention, than the
pearl-diver who quietly dives in quest of treasures at the bottom. The
vast acquirements of the new governor were the theme of marvel among the
simple burghers of New Amsterdam; he figured about the place as learned
a man as a Bonze at Pekin, who has mastered one half of the Chinese
alphabet, and was unanimously pronounced a “universal genius?”
I have known in my time many a genius of this stamp; but, to speak my
mind freely, I never knew one who, for the ordinary purposes of life,
was worth his weight in straw. In this respect, a little sound judgment
and plain common sense is worth all the sparkling genius that ever wrote
poetry or invented theories. Let us see how the universal acquirements
of William the Testy aided him in the affairs of government.
[Illustration]
=Chapter II.=
HOW WILLIAM THE TESTY UNDERTOOK TO CONQUER BY PROCLAMATION—HOW HE WAS
A GREAT MAN ABROAD, BUT A LITTLE MAN IN HIS OWN HOUSE.
No sooner had this bustling little potentate been blown by a whiff of
fortune into the seat of government than he called his council together
to make them a speech on the state of affairs.
Caius Gracchus, it is said, when he harangued the Roman populace,
modulated his tone by an oratorical flute or pitch-pipe; Wilhelmus
Kieft, not having such an instrument at hand, availed himself of that
musical organ or trump which nature has implanted in the midst of a
man’s face: in other words, he preluded his address by a sonorous blast
of the nose,—a preliminary flourish much in vogue among public orators.
He then commenced by expressing his humble sense of his utter
unworthiness of the high post to which he had been appointed; which made
some of the simple burghers wonder why he undertook it, not knowing that
it is a point of etiquette with a public orator never to enter upon a
public office without declaring himself unworthy to cross the threshold.
He then proceeded in a manner highly classic and erudite to speak of
government generally, and of the governments of ancient Greece in
particular, together with the wars of Rome and Carthage, and the rise
and fall of sundry outlandish empires which the worthy burghers had
never read nor heard of. Having thus, after the manner of your learned
orator, treated things in general, he came, by a natural, roundabout
transition, to the matter in hand, namely, the daring aggressions of the
Yankees.
As my readers are well aware of the advantage a potentate has in
handling his enemies as he pleases in his speeches and bulletins, where
he has the talk all on his own side, they may rest assured that William
the Testy did not let such an opportunity escape of giving the Yankees
what is called “a taste of his quality.” In speaking of their inroads
into the territories of their High Mightinesses, he compared them to the
Gauls who desolated Rome, the Goths and Vandals who overran the fairest
plains of Europe; but when he came to speak of the unparalleled audacity
with which they of Weathersfield had advanced their patches up to the
very walls of Fort Goed Hoop, and threatened to smother the garrison in
onions, tears of rage started into his eyes, as though he nosed the very
offence in question.
Having thus wrought up his tale to a climax, he assumed a most
belligerent look, and assured the council that he had devised an
instrument, potent in its effects, and which he trusted would soon drive
the Yankees from the land. So saying, he thrust his hand into one of the
deep pockets of his broad-skirted coat and drew forth, not an infernal
machine, but an instrument in writing, which he laid with great emphasis
upon the table.
The burghers gazed at it for a time in silent awe, as a wary housewife
does at a gun, fearful it may go off half-cocked. The document in
question had a sinister look, it is true; it was crabbed in text, and
from a broad red ribbon dangled the great seal of the province, about
the size of a buckwheat pancake. Still, after all, it was but an
instrument in writing. Herein, however, existed the wonder of the
invention. The document in question was a PROCLAMATION, ordering the
Yankees to depart instantly from the territories of their High
Mightinesses, under pain of suffering all the forfeitures and
punishments in such a case made and provided. It was on the moral effect
of this formidable instrument that Wilhelmus Kieft calculated, pledging
his valor as a governor that, once fulminated against the Yankees, it
would, in less than two months, drive every mother’s son of them across
the borders.
[Illustration: THE GREAT SEAL OF THE PROVINCE.]
The council broke up in perfect wonder; and nothing was talked of for
some time among the old men and women of New Amsterdam but the vast
genius of the governor, and his new and cheap mode of fighting by
proclamation.
As to Wilhelmus Kieft, having despatched his proclamation to the
frontiers, he put on his cocked hat and corduroy small-clothes, and
mounting a tall raw-boned charger, trotted out to his rural retreat of
Dog’s Misery. Here, like the good Numa, he reposed from the toils of
state, taking lessons in government, not from the nymph Egeria, but from
the honored wife of his bosom; who was one of that class of females sent
upon the 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 Wilhelmus the Testy, though one of the most potent little
men that ever breathed, yet submitted 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 familiarly
denominated _petticoat government_—an absolute sway, which, although
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 alleging that it was a government of his own election,
to which he submitted through choice, adding at the same time a profound
maxim which he had found in an ancient author, that “he who would aspire
to _govern_, should first learn to _obey_.”
[Illustration]
=Chapter III.=
IN WHICH ARE RECORDED THE SAGE PROJECTS OF A RULER OF UNIVERSAL
GENIUS—THE ART OF FIGHTING BY PROCLAMATION—AND HOW THAT THE VALIANT
JACOBUS VAN CURLET CAME TO BE FOULLY DISHONORED AT FORT GOED HOOP.
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 gentle and humane,
there were ten chances to one in favor 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; and thus did the first warlike
proclamation come to a shameful end,—a fate which I am credibly informed
has befallen but too many of its successors.
[Illustration: KIDNAPPING HOGS.]
So far from abandoning the country, those varlets continued their
encroachments, squatting along the green banks of the Varsche River, and
founding Hartford, Stamford, New Haven, and other border-towns. I have
already shown how the onion patches of Pyquag were an eye-sore to
Jacobus Van Curlet and his garrison; but now these moss-troopers
increased in their atrocities, kidnapping hogs, impounding horses, and
sometimes grievously rib-roasting their owners. Our worthy forefathers
could scarcely stir abroad without danger of being out-jockeyed in
horse-flesh, or taken in in bargaining; while, in their absence, some
daring Yankee peddler would penetrate to their household, and nearly
ruin the good housewives with tin ware and wooden bowls.[34]
I am well aware of the perils which environ me in this part of my
history. While raking with curious hand but pious heart, among the
mouldering remains of former days, anxious to draw therefrom the honey
of wisdom, I may fare somewhat like that valiant worthy, Samson, who, in
meddling with the carcass of a dead lion, drew a swarm of bees about his
ears. Thus, while narrating the many misdeeds of the Yanokie or Yankee
race, it is ten chances to one but I offend the morbid sensibilities of
certain of their unreasonable descendants, who may fly out and raise
such a buzzing about this unlucky head 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 an
ill-natured generation, in taking offence at anything I say. That their
ancestors did use my ancestors ill is true, and I am very sorry for it.
I would, with all my heart, the fact were otherwise; 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
would be bought up and burnt by the common hangman of Connecticut. And
in sooth, now that these testy gentlemen have drawn me out, I will make
bold to go further, and observe that this is one of the grand purposes
for which we impartial historians are sent into the world, to redress
wrongs and render justice on the heads of the guilty. So that, though a
powerful nation may wrong its neighbors with temporary impunity, yet
sooner or later an historian springs up, who wreaks ample chastisement
on it in return.
Thus these moss-troopers of the east little thought, I’ll warrant it,
while they were harassing the inoffensive province of Nieuw Nederlandts,
and driving its unhappy governor to his wit’s end, that an historian
would ever arise, and give them their own, with interest. Since, then, I
am but performing my bounden duty as an historian, in avenging the
wrongs of our revered ancestors, I shall make no further apology; and,
indeed, when it is considered that I have all these ancient borderers of
the east in my power, and at the mercy of my pen, I trust that it will
be admitted I conduct myself with great humanity and moderation.
It was long before William the Testy could be persuaded that his
much-vaunted war-measure was ineffectual; on the contrary, he flew in a
passion whenever it was doubted, swearing that, though slow in
operation, yet when it once began to work, it would soon purge the land
of these invaders. When convinced, at length, of the truth, like a
shrewd physician he attributed the failure to the quantity, not the
quality of the medicine, and resolved to double the dose. He fulminated,
therefore, a second proclamation, more vehement than the first,
forbidding all intercourse with these Yankee intruders, ordering the
Dutch burghers on the frontiers to buy none of their pacing horses,
measly pork, apple-sweetmeats, Weathersfield onions, or wooden bowls,
and to furnish them with no supplies of gin, gingerbread, or sourkrout.
Another interval elapsed, during which the last proclamation was as
little regarded as the first; and the non-intercourse was especially set
at naught by the young folks of both sexes, if we may judge by the
active bundling which took place along the borders.
At length, one day the inhabitants of New Amsterdam were aroused by a
furious barking of dogs, great and small, and beheld, to their surprise,
the whole garrison of Fort Goed Hoop straggling into town all tattered
and wayworn, with Jacobus Van Curlet at their head, bringing the
melancholy intelligence of the capture of Fort Goed Hoop by the Yankees.
The fate of this important fortress is an impressive warning to all
military commanders. It was neither carried by storm nor famine; nor was
it undermined; nor bombarded; nor set on fire by red-hot shot; but was
taken by a stratagem no less singular than effectual, and which can
never fail of success, whenever an opportunity occurs of putting it in
practice.
It seems that the Yankees had received intelligence that the garrison of
Jacobus Van Curlet had been reduced nearly one eighth by the death of
two of his most corpulent soldiers, who had overeaten themselves on fat
salmon caught in the Varsche River. A secret expedition was immediately
set on foot to surprise the fortress. The crafty enemy, knowing the
habits of the garrison to sleep soundly after they had eaten their
dinners and smoked their pipes, stole upon them at the noontide of a
sultry summer’s day, and surprised them in the midst of their slumbers.
[Illustration: “THE WHOLE GARRISON OF FORT GOED HOOP STRAGGLING INTO
TOWN ALL TATTERED AND WAYWORN.”]
In an instant the flag of their High Mightinesses was lowered, and the
Yankee standard elevated in its stead, being a dried codfish, by way of
a spread eagle. A strong garrison was appointed, of long-sided,
hard-fisted Yankees, with Weathersfield onions for cockades and
feathers. As to Jacobus Van Curlet and his men, they were seized by the
nape of the neck, conducted to the gate, and one by one dismissed by a
kick in the crupper, as Charles XII. dismissed the heavy-bottomed
Russians at the battle of Narva; Jacobus Van Curlet receiving two kicks
in consideration of his official dignity.
[Illustration]
=Chapter IV.=
CONTAINING THE FEARFUL WRATH OF WILLIAM THE TESTY, AND THE ALARM OF
NEW AMSTERDAM—HOW THE GOVERNOR DID STRONGLY FORTIFY THE CITY—OF THE
RISE OF ANTONY THE TRUMPETER, AND THE WINDY ADDITION TO THE ARMORIAL
BEARINGS OF NEW AMSTERDAM.
Language cannot express the awful ire of William the Testy on hearing of
the catastrophe at Fort Goed Hoop. For three good hours his rage was too
great for words, or rather the words were too great for him (being a
very small man), and he was nearly choked by the misshapen,
nine-cornered Dutch oaths and epithets which crowded at once into his
gullet. At length his words found vent, and for three days he kept up a
constant discharge, anathematizing the Yankees, man, woman, and child,
for a set of dieven, schobbejacken, deugenieten, twistzoekeren,
blaes-kaken, loosen-schalken, kakken-bedden, and a thousand other names,
of which, unfortunately for posterity, history does not 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 midsummer. Great
despondency now fell upon the city of New Amsterdam. It was feared that
the conquerors of Fort Goed Hoop, flushed with victory and apple-brandy,
might march on to the capital, take it by storm, and annex the whole
province to Connecticut. The name of Yankee became as terrible among the
Nieuw Nederlanders as was that of Gaul among the ancient Romans;
insomuch that the good wives of the Manhattoes used it as a bugbear
wherewith to frighten their unruly children.
Everybody clamored around the governor, imploring him to put the city in
a complete posture of defence; and he listened to their clamors. Nobody
could accuse William the Testy of being idle in time of danger, or at
any other time. He was never idle, but then he was often busy to very
little purpose. When a youngling, he had been impressed with the words
of Solomon, “Go to the ant, thou sluggard, observe her ways and be
wise”; in conformity to which he had ever been of a restless, ant-like
turn, hurrying hither and thither, nobody knew why or wherefore, busying
himself about small matters with an air of great importance and anxiety,
and toiling at a grain of mustard-seed in the full conviction that he
was moving a mountain. In the present instance, he called in all his
inventive powers to his aid, and was continually pondering over plans,
making diagrams, and worrying about with a troop of workmen and
projectors at his heels. At length, after a world of consultation and
contrivance, his plans of defence ended in rearing a great flag-staff in
the centre of the fort, and perching a wind-mill on each bastion.
These warlike preparations in some measure allayed the public alarm,
especially after an additional means of securing the safety of the city
had been suggested by the governor’s lady. It has already been hinted in
this most authentic history, that in the domestic establishment of
William the Testy “the gray mare was the better horse”; in other words,
that his wife “ruled the roast,” and in governing the governor, governed
the province, which might thus be said to be under petticoat government.
Now it came to pass, that about this time there lived in Manhattoes a
jolly, robustious trumpeter, named Antony Van Corlear, famous for his
long wind; and who, as the story goes, could twang so potently upon his
instrument, that the effect upon all within hearing was like that
ascribed to the Scotch bagpipe when it sings right lustily i’ the nose.
This sounder of brass was moreover a lusty bachelor, with a pleasant,
burly visage, a long nose, and huge whiskers. He had his little
_bowerie_, or retreat, in the country, where he led a roistering life,
giving dances to the wives and daughters of the burghers of the
Manhattoes, insomuch that he became a prodigious favorite with all the
women, young and old. He is said to have been the first to collect that
famous toll levied on the fair sex at Kissing Bridge, on the highway to
Hell-gate.[35]
To this sturdy bachelor the eyes of all the women were turned in this
time of darkness and peril, as the very man to second and carry out the
plans of defence of the governor. A kind of petticoat council was
forthwith held at the government house, at which the governor’s lady
presided; and this lady, as has been hinted, being all potent with the
governor, the result of these councils was the elevation of Antony the
Trumpeter to the post of commandant of wind-mills and champion of New
Amsterdam.
The city being thus fortified and garrisoned, it would have done one’s
heart good to see the governor snapping his fingers and fidgeting with
delight, as the trumpeter strutted up and down the ramparts, twanging
defiance to the whole Yankee race, as does a modern editor to all the
principalities and powers on the other side of the Atlantic. In the
hands of Antony Van Corlear this windy instrument appeared to him as
potent as the horn of the paladin Astolpho, or even the more classic
horn of Alecto; nay, he had almost the temerity to compare it with the
rams’ horns celebrated in Holy Writ, at the very sound of which the
walls of Jericho fell down.
Be all this as it may, the apprehensions of hostilities from the east
gradually died away. The Yankees made no further invasion; nay, they
declared that they had only taken possession of Fort Goed Hoop as being
erected within their territories. So far from manifesting hostility,
they continued to throng to New Amsterdam with the most innocent
countenances imaginable, filling the market with their notions, being as
ready to trade with the Nederlanders as ever, and not a whit more prone
to get to the windward of them in a bargain.
The old wives of the Manhattoes, who took tea with the governor’s lady,
attributed all this affected moderation to the awe inspired by the
military preparations of the governor, and the windy prowess of Antony
the Trumpeter.
There were not wanting illiberal minds, however, who sneered at the
governor for thinking to defend his city as he governed it, by mere
wind; but William Kieft was not to be jeered out of his wind-mills: he
had seen them perched upon the ramparts of his native city of Saardam,
and was persuaded they were connected with the great science of defence;
nay, so much piqued was he by having them made a matter of ridicule,
that he introduced them into the arms of the city, where they remain to
this day, quartered with the ancient beaver of the Manhattoes, an emblem
and memento of his policy.
[Illustration: ANTONY THE TRUMPETER.]
I must not omit to mention that certain wise old burghers of the
Manhattoes, skilful in expounding signs and mysteries, after events have
come to pass, consider this early intrusion of the wind-mill into the
escutcheon of our city, which before had been wholly occupied by the
beaver, as portentous of its after fortune, when the quiet Dutchman
would be elbowed aside by the enterprising Yankee, and patient industry
overtopped by windy speculation.
[Illustration]
=Chapter V.=
ON THE JURISPRUDENCE OF WILLIAM THE TESTY, AND HIS ADMIRABLE
EXPEDIENTS FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF POVERTY.
Among the wrecks and fragments of exalted wisdom, which have floated
down the stream of time from venerable antiquity, and been picked up by
those humble but industrious wights who ply along the shores of
literature, we find a shrewd ordinance of Charondas the Locrian
legislator. Anxious to preserve the judicial code of the State from the
additions and amendments of country members and seekers of popularity,
he ordained that, whoever proposed a new law, should do it with a halter
about his neck; whereby, in case his proposition were rejected, they
just hung him up—and there the matter ended.
The effect was, that for more than two hundred years there was but one
trifling alteration in the judicial code; and legal matters were so
clear and simple that the whole race of lawyers starved to death for
want of employment. The Locrians, too, being freed from all incitement
to litigation, lived very lovingly together, and were so happy a people
that they make scarce any figure in history; it being only your
litigious, quarrelsome, rantipole nations who make much noise in the
world.
I have been reminded of these historical facts in coming to treat of the
internal policy of William the Testy. Well would it have been for him
had he in the course of his universal acquirements stumbled upon the
precaution of the good Charondas, or had he looked nearer home at the
protectorate of Oloffe the Dreamer, when the community was governed
without laws. Such legislation, however, was not suited to the busy,
meddling mind of William the Testy. On the contrary, he conceived that
the true wisdom of legislation consisted in the multiplicity of laws. He
accordingly had great punishments for great crimes, and little
punishments for little offences. By degrees the whole surface of society
was cut up by ditches and fences, and quickset hedges of the law, and
even the sequestered paths of private life so beset by petty rules and
ordinances, too numerous to be remembered, that one could scarce walk at
large without the risk of letting off a spring-gun or falling into a
man-trap.
In a little while the blessings of innumerable laws became apparent; a
class of men arose to expound and confound them. Petty courts were
instituted to take cognizance of petty offences, pettifoggers began to
abound; and the community was soon set together by the ears.
Let me not be thought as intending anything derogatory to the profession
of the law, or to the distinguished members of that illustrious order.
Well am I aware that we have in this ancient city innumerable worthy
gentlemen, the knights-errant of modern days, who go about redressing
wrongs and defending the defenceless, not for the love of filthy lucre,
nor the selfish cravings of renown, but merely for the pleasure of doing
good. Sooner would I throw this trusty pen into the flames, and cork up
my ink-bottle forever, than infringe even for a nail’s breadth upon the
dignity of these truly benevolent champions of the distressed. On the
contrary, I allude merely to those caitiff scouts who, in these latter
days of evil, infest the skirts of the profession, as did the recreant
Cornish knights of yore the honorable order of chivalry,—who, under its
auspices, commit flagrant wrongs,—who thrive by quibbles, by quirks and
chicanery, and like vermin increase the corruption in which they are
engendered.
Nothing so soon awakes the malevolent passions as the facility of
gratification. The courts of law would never be so crowded with petty,
vexatious, and disgraceful suits, were it not for the herds of
pettifoggers. These tamper with the passions of the poorer and more
ignorant classes, who, as if poverty were not a sufficient misery in
itself, are ever ready to imbitter it by litigation. These, like quacks
in medicine, excite the malady to profit by the cure, and retard the
cure to augment the fees. As the quack exhausts the constitution, the
pettifogger exhausts the purse; and as he who has once been under the
hands of a quack is forever after prone to dabble in drugs, and poison
himself with infallible prescriptions, so the client of the pettifogger
is ever after prone to embroil himself with his neighbors, and
impoverish himself with successful lawsuits. My readers will excuse this
digression into which I have been unwarily betrayed; but I could not
avoid giving a cool and unprejudiced account of an abomination too
prevalent in this excellent city, and with the effects of which I am
ruefully acquainted: having been nearly ruined by a lawsuit which was
decided against me; and my ruin having been completed by another, which
was decided in my favor.
To return to our theme. There was nothing in the whole range of moral
offences against which the jurisprudence of William the Testy was more
strenuously directed than the crying sin of poverty. He pronounced it
the root of all evil, and determined to cut it up, root and branch, and
extirpate it from the land. He had been struck, in the course of his
travels in the old countries of Europe, with the wisdom of those notices
posted up in country towns, that “any vagrant found begging there would
be put in the stocks,” and he had observed that no beggars were to be
seen in these neighborhoods; having doubtless thrown off their rags and
their poverty, and become rich under the terror of the law. He
determined to improve upon this hint. In a little while a new machine,
of his own invention, was erected hard by Dog’s Misery. This was nothing
more nor less than a gibbet, of a very strange, uncouth, and unmatchable
construction, far more efficacious, as he boasted, than the stocks, for
the punishment of poverty. It was for 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
kept dangling and sprawling between heaven and earth for an hour or two
at a time—to the infinite entertainment and edification of the
respectable citizens who usually attend exhibitions of the kind.
It is incredible how the little governor chuckled at beholding caitiff
vagrants and sturdy beggars thus swinging by the crupper, and cutting
antic gambols in the air. He had a thousand pleasantries and mirthful
conceits to utter upon these occasions. He called them his
dandelions—his wild-fowl—his high-fliers—his spread-eagles—his
goshawks—his scarecrows—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 continues to be worn at the present day.
[Illustration: WILLIAM THE TESTY’S CURE FOR VAGRANCY.]
Such was the punishment of all petty delinquents, vagrants, and beggars
and others detected in being guilty of poverty in a small way; as to
those who had offended on a great scale, who had been guilty of flagrant
misfortunes and enormous backslidings of the purse, and who stood
convicted of large debts, which they were unable to pay, William Kieft
had them straightway inclosed within the stone walls of a prison, there
to remain until they should reform and grow rich. This notable
expedient, however, does not appear to have been more efficacious under
William the Testy than in more modern days: it being found that the
longer a poor devil was kept in prison the poorer he grew.
[Illustration]
=Chapter VI.=
PROJECTS OF WILLIAM THE TESTY FOR INCREASING THE CURRENCY—HE IS
OUTWITTED BY THE YANKEES—THE GREAT OYSTER WAR.
Next to his projects for the suppression of poverty may be classed those
of William the Testy for increasing the wealth of New Amsterdam.
Solomon, of whose character for wisdom the little governor was somewhat
emulous, had made gold and silver as plenty as the stones in the streets
of Jerusalem. William Kieft could not pretend to vie with him as to the
precious metals, but he determined, as an equivalent, to flood the
streets of New Amsterdam with Indian money. This was nothing more nor
less than strings of beads wrought of clams, periwinkles, and other
shell-fish, and called seawant or wampum. These had formed a native
currency among the simple savages, who were content to take them of the
Dutchmen in exchange for peltries. In an unlucky moment, William the
Testy, seeing this money of easy production, conceived the project of
making it the current coin of the province. It is true it had an
intrinsic value among the Indians, who used it to ornament their robes
and moccasins, but among the honest burghers it had no more intrinsic
value than those rags which form the paper currency of modern days. This
consideration, however, had no weight with William Kieft. He began by
paying all the servants of the company, and all the debts of government,
in strings of wampum. He sent emissaries to sweep the shores of Long
Island, which was the Ophir of this modern Solomon, and abounded in
shell-fish. These were transported in loads to New Amsterdam, coined
into Indian money, and launched into circulation.
And now, for a time, affairs went on swimmingly; money became as
plentiful as in the modern days of paper currency, and, to use the
popular phrase, “a wonderful impulse was given to public prosperity.”
Yankee traders poured into the province, buying everything they could
lay their hands on, and paying the worthy Dutchmen their own price—in
Indian money. If the latter, however, attempted to pay the Yankees in
the same coin for their tin ware and wooden bowls, the case was altered;
nothing would do but Dutch guilders and such like “metallic currency.”
What was worse, the Yankees introduced an inferior kind of wampum made
of oyster-shells, with which they deluged the province, carrying off in
exchange all the silver and gold, the Dutch herrings, and Dutch cheeses:
thus early did the knowing men of the east manifest their skill in
bargaining the New Amsterdammers out of the oyster, and leaving them the
shell.[36]
It was a long time before William the Testy was made sensible how
completely his grand project of finance was turned against him by his
eastern neighbors; nor would he probably have ever found it out, had not
tidings been brought him that the Yankees had made a descent upon Long
Island, and had established a kind of mint at Oyster Bay, where they
were coining up all the oyster-banks.
Now this was making a vital attack upon the province in a double sense,
financial and gastronomical. Ever since the council-dinner of Oloffe the
Dreamer at the founding of New Amsterdam, at which banquet the oyster
figured so conspicuously, this divine shell-fish has been held in a kind
of superstitious reverence at the Manhattoes; as witness the temples
erected to its cult in every street and lane and alley. In fact, it is
the standard luxury of the place, as is the terrapin at Philadelphia,
the soft crab at Baltimore, or the canvas-back at Washington.
The seizure of Oyster Bay, therefore, was an outrage not merely on the
pockets, but the larders of the New Amsterdammers; the whole community
was aroused, and an oyster crusade was immediately set on foot against
the Yankees. Every stout trencherman hastened to the standard; nay, some
of the most corpulent burgomasters and schepens joined the expedition as
a _corps de reserve_, only to be called into action when the sacking
commenced.
The conduct of the expedition was intrusted to a valiant Dutchman, who
for size and weight might have matched with Colbrand the Danish
champion, slain by Guy of Warwick. He was famous throughout the province
for strength of arm and skill at quarter-staff, and hence was named
Stoffel Brinkerhoff, or rather Brinkerhoofd, that is to say Stoffel, the
head-breaker.
This sturdy commander, who was a man of few words but vigorous deeds,
led his troops resolutely on through Nineveh, and Babylon, and Jericho,
and Patch-hog, and other Long Island towns, without encountering any
difficulty of note; though it is said that some of the burgomasters gave
out at Hardscramble Hill and Hungry Hollow, and that others lost heart
and turned back at Pusspanick. With the rest he made good his march
until he arrived in the neighborhood of Oyster Bay.
Here he was encountered by a host of Yankee warriors, headed by
Preserved Fish, and Habakkuk Nutter, and Return Strong, and Zerubabbel
Fisk, and Determined Cock! at the sound of whose names Stoffel
Brinkerhoff verily believed the whole parliament of Praise-God Barebones
had been let loose upon him. He soon found, however, that they were
merely the “selectmen” of the settlement, armed with no weapon but the
tongue, and disposed only to meet him on the field of argument. Stoffel
had but one mode of arguing, that was, with the cudgel; but he used it
with such effect that he routed his antagonists, broke up the
settlement, and would have driven the inhabitants into the sea if they
had not managed to escape across the Sound to the mainland by the
Devil’s stepping-stones, which remain to this day monuments of this
great Dutch victory over the Yankees.
Stoffel Brinkerhoff made great spoil of oysters and clams, coined and
uncoined, and then set out on his return to the Manhattoes. A grand
triumph, after the manner of the ancients, was prepared for him by
William the Testy. He entered new Amsterdam as a conqueror, mounted on a
Narraganset pacer. Five dried codfish on poles, standards taken from the
enemy, were borne before him, and an immense store of oysters and clams,
Weathersfield onions, and Yankee “notions” formed the _spolia opima_;
while several coiners of oyster-shells were led captive to grace the
hero’s triumph.
[Illustration: STOFFEL BRINKERHOFF.]
The procession was accompanied by a full band of boys and negroes,
performing on the popular instruments of rattle-bones and clam-shells,
while Antony Van Corlear sounded his trumpet from the ramparts.
A great banquet was served up in the stadthouse from the clams and
oysters taken from the enemy; while the governor sent the shells
privately to the mint, and had them coined into Indian money, with which
he paid his troops.
It is moreover said that the governor, calling to mind the practice
among the ancients to honor their victorious general with public
statutes, passed a magnanimous decree, by which every tavern-keeper was
permitted to paint the head of Stoffel Brinkerhoff upon his sign!
END OF VOLUME I.
[Illustration]
-----
Footnote 1:
Beloe’s _Herodotus_.
Footnote 2:
Faria y Souza. _Mick. Lus._, note b. 7.
Footnote 3:
Sir W. Jones, _Diss. Antiq. Ind. Zod._
Footnote 4:
MSS. Bibliot. Roi Fr.
Footnote 5:
Plutarch, _De Placitis Philosoph._, lib. ii., cap. 20.
Footnote 6:
Achill. _Tat._, _Isag._, cap. 19. _Ap. Petav._, t. iii., p. 81. Stob.,
_Eclog. Phys._, lib. i., p. 56. Plut., _De Plac. Phil._
Footnote 7:
Diogenes Laetius in Anaxag., lib., ii., sec. 8. Plat., _Apol._, t. i.,
p. 26. Plut., _De Plac. Phil._ Xenoph., _Mem._, lib. iv., p. 815.
Footnote 8:
Aristot., _Meteor._, lib. ii., cap. 2. _Idem._, _Probl._, sec. 15,
Stob., _Ecl. Phys._, lib. i., p. 55. Bruck., _Hist. Phil._, t. i., p.
1154, etc.
Footnote 9:
_Philos. Trans._, 1795, p. 72. _Idem_, 1801, p. 265. Nich., _Philos.
Journ._, i., p. 13.
Footnote 10:
Aristot., _Ap. Cic._, lib. i., cap. 3.
Footnote 11:
Aristot., _Metaph._, lib. i., cap. 5. Idem, _De Cœlo_, lib. iii., cap
1. Rousseau, _Mem. sur Musique Ancien_, p. 39. Plutarch, _De Plac.
Phil._, lib. i., cap. 3.
Footnote 12:
Tim., _Locr. ap. Plato._, t. iii., p. 90.
Footnote 13:
Aristot., _Nat. Auscult._, lib. ii., cap. 6. Aristoph., _Metaph._,
lib. i., cap. 3. Cic., _De Nat. Deor._, lib. i., cap. 10. Justin
Mart., _Prat. ad Gent._, p. 20.
Footnote 14:
Mosheim in Cudw., lib. i., cap. 4. Tim., _De Anim. Mund. sp. Plat._,
lib. iii. _Mem. de l’Acad. des Belles-Lettr._, t. xxxii., p. 19, _et
al._
Footnote 15:
Book i., ch. 5.
Footnote 16:
Holwell, _Gent. Philosophy_.
Footnote 17:
Johannes Megapolensis, Jun., _Account of Maquaas or Mohawk Indians_.
Footnote 18:
Darw., _Bot. Garden_, Part I., Cant. i., 1, 105.
Footnote 19:
Grotius. Puffendorff, b. v., cap. 4. Vattel, b. i., cap. 18, etc.
Footnote 20:
Vattel, b. i., ch. 17.
Footnote 21:
Blackstone, _Com._, b. ii., cap. 1.
Footnote 22:
True it is—and I am not ignorant of the fact—that in a certain
apocryphal book of voyages, compiled by one Hakluyt, is to be found a
letter written to Francis the First, by one Giovanne, or John
Verazzani, on which some writers are inclined to found a belief that
this delightful bay had been visited nearly a century previous to the
voyage of the enterprising Hudson. Now this (albeit it has met with
the countenance of certain very judicious and learned men) I hold in
utter disbelief, and that for various good and substantial reasons:
_First_, Because on strict examination it will be found, that the
description given by this Verazzani applies about as well to the bay
of New York as it does to my nightcap. _Secondly_, Because that this
John Verazzani, for whom I already begin to feel a most bitter enmity,
is a native of Florence; and everybody knows the crafty wiles of these
losel Florentines, by which they filched away the laurels from the
brows of the immortal Colon, (vulgarly called Columbus,) and bestowed
them on their officious townsman, Amerigo Vespucci; and I make no
doubt they are equally ready to rob the illustrious Hudson of the
credit of discovering this beautiful island, adorned by the city of
New York, and placing it beside their usurped discovery of South
America. And, _thirdly_, I award my decision in favor of the
pretensions of Hendrick Hudson, inasmuch as his expedition sailed from
Holland, being truly and absolutely a Dutch enterprise;—and though all
the proofs in the world were introduced on the other side, I would set
them at naught, as undeserving my attention. If these three reasons be
not sufficient to satisfy every burgher of this ancient city, all I
can say is, they are degenerate descendants from their venerable Dutch
ancestors, and totally unworthy the trouble of convincing. Thus,
therefore, the title of Hendrick Hudson to his renowned discovery is
fully vindicated.
Footnote 23:
This river is likewise laid down in Ogilvy’s map as Manhattan—Noordt
Montaigne and Mauritius River.
Footnote 24:
_Juet’s Journ._, Purch. Pil.
Footnote 25:
“Men by inaction degenerate into oysters.”—Kaimes.
Footnote 26:
Pavonia, in the ancient maps, is a tract of country extending from
about Hoboken to Amboy.
Footnote 27:
It is a matter long since established by certain of our
philosophers,—that is to say, having been often advanced, and never
contradicted, it has grown to be pretty nigh equal to a settled
fact,—that the Hudson was originally a lake dammed up by the mountains
of the Highlands. In process of time, however, becoming very mighty
and obstreperous, and the mountains waxing pursy, dropsical, and weak
in the back, by reason of their extreme old age, it suddenly rose upon
them, and after a violent struggle effected its escape. This is said
to have come to pass in very remote time, probably before rivers had
lost the art of running uphill. The foregoing is a theory in which I
do not pretend to be skilled, notwithstanding that I do fully give it
my belief.
Footnote 28:
A promontory in the Highlands.
Footnote 29:
Properly spelt _hoeck_ (_i. e._, a point of land).
Footnote 30:
This is a narrow strait in the Sound, at the distance of six miles
above New York. It is dangerous to shipping, unless under the care of
skilful pilots, by reason of numerous rocks, shelves, and whirlpools.
These have received sundry appellations, such as the Gridiron,
Frying-pan, Hog’s Back, Pot, etc., and are very violent and turbulent
at certain times of tide. Certain mealy-mouthed men, of squeamish
consciences, who are loth to give the Devil his due, have softened the
above characteristic name into _Hurl-gate_, forsooth! Let those take
care how they venture into the Gate, or they may be hurled into the
Pot before they are aware of it. The name of this strait, as given by
our author, is supported by the map in Vander Donck’s _History_,
published in 1656,—by Ogilvie’s _History of America_, 1671,—as also by
a journal still extant, written in the sixteenth century, and to be
found in Hazard’s _State Papers_. And an old MS. written in French,
speaking of various alterations in names about this city, observes,
“_De Hell-gate_, trou d’Enfer ils ont fait _Hell-gate_, Porte
d’Enfer.”
Footnote 31:
_Vide_, Hazard’s _Col. Stat. Pap._
Footnote 32:
MSS. of the Rev. John Heckwelder, in the archives of the New York
Historical Society.
Footnote 33:
MSS. of the Rev. John Heckwelder; New York Historical Society.
Footnote 34:
The following cases in point appear in Hazard’s _Collection of State
Papers_.
“In the meantime, 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 own
purchased broken up lands, but have also sowed them with corne in the
night, which the Nederlanders had broken up and intended to sowe: and
have beaten the servants of the high and mighty the honored companie,
which were laboring upon theire master’s lands, from theire lands,
with sticks and plow staves in hostile manner laming, and among the
rest, struck Ever Duckings [Evert Duyckink] a hole in his head, with a
stick, so that the bloode ran downe very strongly downe upon his
body.”
“Those of Hartford sold a hogg, that belonged to the honored companie,
under pretence that he had eaten of theire grounde grass, when they
had not any foot of inheritance. They proffered the hogg for 5_s._ if
the commissioners would have given 5_s._ for damage; which the
commissioners denied, because noe man’s own hogg (as men used to say)
can trespass upon his owne master’s grounde.”
Footnote 35:
The bridge here mentioned by Mr. Knickerbocker still exists; but it is
said that the toll is seldom collected nowadays, excepting on
sleighing parties, by the descendants of the patriarchs, who still
preserve the traditions of the city.
Footnote 36:
In a manuscript record of the province, dated, 1659, Library of the
New York Historical Society, is the following mention of Indian money:
“_Seawant_ alias wampum. Beads manufactured from the _Quahaug_ or
_wilk_: a shell-fish formerly abounding on our coasts, but lately of
more rare occurrence, of two colors, black and white; the former twice
the value of the latter. Six beads of the white and three of the black
for an English penny. The seawant depreciates from time to time. The
New England people make use of it as a means of barter, not only to
carry away the best cargoes which we send thither, but to accumulate a
large quantity of beavers and other furs; by which the company is
defrauded of her revenues, and the merchants disappointed in making
returns with that speed with which they might wish to meet their
engagements; while their commissioners and the inhabitants remain
overstocked with seawant,—a sort of currency of no value except with
the New Netherland savages, etc.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last
chapter.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
● Enclosed blackletter font in =equals=.
● Images without captions use HTML alt text.