His wonderful prophecy of the founding of
New York City and its marvelous
fulfilment
Washington Irving now recalls and recites to us at our request the
“Dream of Oloffe Van Kortlandt” and its early fulfilment which he
also at times refers to, when speaking of New York, as “A lively and
wonderful chicken hatched from the egg of old Communipaw” so he now
relates to us how (some two hundred years ago) the sage Oloffe voyaged
from Communipaw Bay to the Battery where he had a most remarkable dream
now completely fulfilled that the good St. Nicholas came riding over
the tops of the trees, and descended upon the island of Manhattan and
sat himself down and smoked, “and the smoke ascended in the sky, and
formed a cloud overhead; and Oloffe bethought him, and he hastened and
climbed up to the top of one of the tallest trees, and saw that the
smoke spread over a great extent of country; and, as he considered it
more attentively, he fancied that the great volume assumed a variety of
marvelous forms, where, in dim obscurity, he saw shadowed out palaces
and domes and lofty spires, all of which lasted but a moment, and then
passed away.” So New York, like Alba Longa and Rome, and other cities
of antiquity, was under the immediate care of its tutelar saint. Its
destiny was foreshadowed, for now the palaces and domes and lofty
spires are real and genuine, and something more than dreams are made of.