to afflict with the neighbourhood 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, the hautboy, or some other soft toned instrument-nor can he leave the street door open, but his house is defiled by the unsavoury visits of a troop of pug dogs, who even sometimes carry their loathsome ravages into the sanctum sanctorum, the parlour!

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 neighbours 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 any body's concerns but their own. Many enormities were committed on the high ways, where several unoffending burghers were brought to a stand, and tortured with questions and gues

ses, which outrages occasioned as much vexation and heart burning as does the modern right of search on the high seas.

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 license, 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 landholders, 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 creditbecoming 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.

CHAPTER VIII.

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-collecting and collating, with painful minuteness, the chronicles of past times, whose events almost defy the powers of research-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 endeavouring to put them scrupulously together, so as to restore them to their original form and connexion-now lugging forth the character of an almost forgotten hero, like a mutilated statue-now decyphering 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 honour and probity of his author, lest, like a cunning antiquarian, he either impose upon him some spurious fabrication of his own, for a precious relick from 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 those 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