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vince twice its size; and is in a fair way of becoming an exceed ingly forlorn, well-belabored, and woe-begone 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 Stuyve sant was caused by hostile intelligence from the old belligerent nest of Rensellaerstein. Killian, the lordly patroon of Rensel laerwick, was again in the field, at the head of his myrmidons of the Helderberg; seeking to annex the whole of the Kaats-kill mountains to his domains. The Indian tribes of these mountains

had likewise taken up the hatchet and menaced the venerable Dutch settlement of Esopus.

Fain would I entertain the reader with the triumphant campaign of Peter Stuyvesant in the haunted regions of those moun tains; 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 J deem it seemly and decent to pass over in silence.

The next storm of trouble was from the south. Scarcely had he 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 pro portion, 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."*

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, roystering 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 inimediately 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;

Jariot's Journal, Purch. Pilgrims.

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 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.

CHAPTER IV

HOW PETER STUYVESANT ADVENTURED INTO THE EAST COUNTRY AND HOW HE FARED THERE.

To explain the apparently sudden movement of Peter Stuyvesant against the crafty men of the East Country, I would observe that, during his campaigns on the South River, and in the enchanted regions of the Catskill Mountains, the twelve tribes of the East had been more than usually active in prosecuting their subtle scheme for the subjugation of the Nieuw-Nederlands.

Independent of the incessant maraudings among hen-roosts and squattings along the border, invading armies would penetrate, from time to time, into the very heart of the country. As their prototypes of yore went forth into the land of Canaan, with their wives and their children, their men-servants and their maid-servants, their flocks and herds, to settle themselves down in the land and possess it; so these chosen people of modern days would progress through the country in patriarchal style; conducting carts and wagons laden with household furniture, with women and children piled on top, and pots and kettles dangling beneath. At the tail of these vehicles would stalk a crew of long-limbed, lanksided varlets, with axes on their shoulders and packs on their backs, resolutely bent upon "locating" themselves, as they termed

it, and improving the country. These were the most dangerous kind of invaders. It is true they were guilty of no overt acts of hostility; but it was notorious that, wherever they got a footing, the honest Dutchmen gradually disappeared, retiring slowly as do the Indians before the white men; being in some way or other talked and chaffered, and bargained and swapped, and, in plain English, elbowed out of all those rich bottoms and fertile nooks in which our Dutch yeomanry are prone to nestle themselves.

Peter Stuyvesant was at length roused to this kind of war in disguise, by which the Yankees were craftily aiming to subjugat his dominions. He was a man easily taken in, it is true, as al great-hearted men are apt to be; but if he once found it out, Lis wrath was terrible. He now threw diplomacy to the dogs; determined to appear no more by ambassadors, but to repair in person to the great council of the Amphyctions, bearing the sword in one hand and the olive branch in the other; and giving them their choice of sincere and honest peace, or open and iron war.

His privy councillors were astonished and dismayed when he announced his determination. For once they ventured to remonstrate, setting forth the rashness of venturing his sacred person in the midst of a strange and barbarous people. They might as well have tried to turn a rusty weather-cock with a broken-winded bellows. In the fiery heart of the iron-headed Peter sit enthroned the five kinds of courage described by Aristotle, and had the philosopher enumerated five hundred more, I verily believe he would have possessed them all. As to that better part of valor called discretion, it was too cold-blooded a virtue for his tropical temperament.

Summoning, therefore, to his presence his trusty follower, Antony Van Corlear, he commanded him to hold himself in readi

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