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. At that very moment a gentle grunt, or rather a deepdrawn 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, in order to maintain tranquillity; 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 waist-band 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. .i. Book Fourth. CONTAINING THE CHRONICLES OF THE REIGN OF WILLIAM THE TESTY. 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 on his description of the plague that desolated Athens, one of his modern commentators assures the reader, that his 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 favourite, 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 Good Hope, 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 kalendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow man. It is a huge libel on human nature, to which we industriously add page after page, volume after volume, as if we were * Smith's Thucyd. Vol. I. HISTORY OF NEW-YORK. 145 building up a monument to the honour 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 historians may be said to thrive on the miseries of mankind-they are like the birds of prey that 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. 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 pests in the world, were bounteously provided as themes for the poet and the his T torian, while the poet and 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 for ever from its peaceful haunts, and brawl through many a turbulent and rugged scene. Like some sleek OX, which, having fed and fattened in a rich clover field, lies sunk in luxurious repose, and will bear repeated taunts and blows, before it heaves its unwieldy limbs, and clumsily arouses from its slumbers; so the province of the Nieuw Nederlandts, having long thriven and grown corpulent under the prosperous reign of the Doubter, was reluctantly awakened to a melancholy conviction, that, by patient sufferance, its grievances had become so numerous and aggravating, that it was preferable to repel than endure them. The reader will now witness the manner in which a peaceful community advances towards a state of war; which it is too apt to approach, as a horse does a drum, with much prancing and parade, but with little progress, and too often with the wrong end foremost. WILHELMUS KIEFT, who in 1634 ascended the Guber natorial chair, (to borrow a favourite though clumsy appellation of modern phraseologists,) was in form, feature and character, the very reverse of Wouter Van Twiller, his renowned predecessor. He was of very respectable descent, his father being Inspector of Windmills in the ancient town of Saardam; and our hero, we are told, made very curious investigations into the nature and operations of those machines when a boy, which is one reason why he afterwards came to be so ingenious a governor. His name, according to the most ingenious etymologists, was a corruption of Kyver, that is to say, a wrangler or scolder, and expressed the hereditary disposition 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 Wilhelmus Kieft inherit this family endowment, that he had scarcely been a year in the discharge of his government, before he was universally known by the appellation of WILLIAM THE TESTY. He was a brisk, waspish, little old gentleman, who had dried and withered away, partly through the natural process of years, and partly from being parched and burnt up by his fiery soul, which blazed like a vehement rushlight in his bosom, constantly inciting him to most valorous broils, altercations, and misadventures. I have heard it observed by a profound and philosophical judge of human nature, that if a woman waxes fat as she grows old, the tenure of her life is very precarious; but if haply she withers, she lives for ever: such likewise was the case with William the Testy, who grew tougher in proportion as he dried. He was some such a little Dutchman as we may now and then see, stumping briskly about the streets of our city, in a broad-skirted coat, with buttons nearly as large as the shield of Ajax, an old-fashioned cocked hat stuck on the back of his head, and a cane as high as his chin. His visage was broad, but his features sharp; his nose turned up with a most petulant curl; his cheeks, like the regions of Terra del Fuego, were scorched into a dusky red-doubtless, in consequence of the neighbourhood of two fierce little grey eyes, through which his torrid soul beamed as fervently, as a tropical sun blazing through a pair of burning glasses. The corners of his mouth were curiously modelled into a kind of fret-work, not a little resembling the wrinkled proboscis of an irritable pug dog; in a word, he was one of the most positive, restless, ugly, little men, that ever put himself in a passion about nothing. Such were the personal endowments of William the Testy ; but it was the sterling riches of his mind that raised |