A History of New York (24 page)

Now it happened that at this time there sojourned in New Amsterdam one Anthony Van Corlear
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a jolly fat dutch trumpeter, of a pleasant burley visage—famous for his long wind and his huge whiskers, and who as the story goes, could twang so potently upon his instrument, as to produce an effect upon all within hearing, as though ten thousand bagpipes were singing most lustly i' the nose. Him did the illustrious Kieft pick out as the man of all the world, most fitted to be the champion of New Amsterdam, and to garrison its fort; making little doubt but that his instrument would be as effectual and offensive in war as was that of the Paladin Astolpho, or the more classic horn of Alecto. It would have done one's heart good to have seen the governor snapping his fingers and fidgetting with delight, while his sturdy trumpeter strutted up and down the ramparts, fearlessly twanging his trumpet in the face of the whole world, like a thrice valorous editor daringly insulting all the principalities and powers—on the other side of the Atlantic.

Nor was he content with thus strongly garrisoning the fort, but he likewise added exceedingly to its strength by furnishing it with a formidable battery of quaker guns—rearing a stupendous flag-staff in the centre which overtopped the whole city—and moreover by building a great windmill on one of the bastions.
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This last to be sure, was somewhat of a novelty in the art of fortification, but as I have already observed William Kieft was notorious for innovations and experiments, and traditions do affirm that he was much given to mechanical inventions—constructing patent smoke-jacks—carts that went before the horses, and especially erecting windmills, for which machines he had acquired a singular predilection in his native town of Saardam.

All these scientific vagaries of the little governor were cried up with ecstasy by his adherents as proofs of his universal genius—but there were not wanting ill natured grumblers who railed at him as employing his mind in frivolous pursuits, and devoting that time to smoke-jacks and windmills, which should have been occupied in the more important concerns of the province. Nay they even went so far as to hint once or twice, that his head was turned by his experiments, and that he really thought to manage his government, as he did his mills—by mere wind!—such is the illiberality and slander to which your enlightened rulers are ever subject.

Notwithstanding all the measures therefore of William the Testy to place the city in a posture of defence, the inhabitants continued in great alarm and despondency. But fortune, who seems always careful, in the very nick of time, to throw a bone for hope to gnaw upon, that the starveling elf may be kept alive; did about this time crown the arms of the province with success in another quarter, and thus cheered the drooping hearts of the forlorn Nederlanders; otherwise there is no knowing to what lengths they might have gone in the excess of their sorrowing—“for grief,” says the profound historian of the seven champions of Christendom, “is companion with despair, and despair a procurer of infamous death!”

Among the numerous inroads of the Moss-troopers of Connecticut, which for some time past had occasioned such great tribulation, I should particularly have mentioned a settlement made on the eastern part of Long Island, at a place which, from the peculiar excellence of its shell fish, was called Oyster Bay. This was attacking the province in a most sensible part, and occasioned a great agitation at New Amsterdam.

It is an incontrovertible fact, well known to your skilful physiologists, that the high road to the affections, is through the throat; and this may be accounted for on the same principles which I have already quoted, in my strictures on fat aldermen. Nor is this fact unknown to the world at large; and hence do we observe, that the surest way to gain the hearts of the million, is to feed them well—and that a man is never so disposed to flatter, to please and serve another, as when he is feeding at his expense; which is one reason why your rich men, who give frequent dinners, have such abundance of sincere and faithful friends. It is on this principle that our knowing leaders of parties secure the affections of their partizans, by rewarding them bountifully with loaves and fishes; and entrap the suffrages of the greasy mob, by treating them with bull feasts and roasted oxen. I have known many a man, in this same city, acquire considerable importance in society, and usurp a large share of the good will of his enlightened fellow citizens, when the only thing that could be said in his eulogium was, that “he gave a good dinner, and kept excellent wine.”

Since then the heart and the stomach are so nearly allied, it follows conclusively that what affects the one, must sympathetically affect the other. Now it is an equally incontrovertible fact, that of all offerings to the stomach, there is none more grateful than the testaceous marine animal, called by naturalists the Ostea, but known commonly by the vulgar name of Oyster. And in such great reverence has it ever been held, by my gormandizing fellow citizens, that temples have been dedicated to it, time out of mind, in every street, lane and alley throughout this well fed city. It is not to be expected therefore, that the seizing of Oyster Bay, a place abounding with their favourite delicacy, would be tolerated by the inhabitants of New Amsterdam. An attack upon their honour they might have pardoned; even the massacre of a few citizens might have been passed over in silence; but an outrage that affected the larders of the great city of New Amsterdam, and threatened the stomachs of its corpulent Burgomasters, was too serious to pass unrevenged. The whole council were unanimous in opinion, that the intruders should be immediately driven by force of arms, from Oyster Bay, and its vicinity, and a detachment was accordingly dispatched for the purpose, under command of one Stoffel Brinkerhoff, or Brinkerhoofd (i.e. Stoffel, the head-breaker) so called because he was a man of mighty deeds, famous throughout the whole extent of Nieuw Nederlandts for his skill at quarterstaff, and for size would have been a match for Colbrand, that famous Danish champion, slain by little Guy of Warwick.

Stoffel Brinckerhoff was a man of few words, but prompt actions—one of your straight going officers, who march directly forward, and do their orders without making any parade about it. He used no extraordinary speed in his movements, but trudged steadily on, through Nineveh and Babylon, and Jericho and Patchog, and the mighty town of Quag, and various other renowned cities of yore, which have by some unaccountable witchcraft of the Yankees, been strangely transplanted to Long Island, until he arrived in the neighbourhood of Oyster Bay.

Here was he encountered by a tumultuous host of valiant warriors, headed by Preserved Fish, and Habbakuk Nutter, and Return Strong, and Zerubbabel Fisk, and Jonathan Doolittle and Determined Cock!—at the sound of whose names the courageous Stoffel verily believed that the whole parliament of Praise God Barebones had been let loose to discomfit him. Finding however that this formidable body was composed merely of the “select men” of the settlement, armed with no other weapons but their tongues, and that they had issued forth with no other intent, than to meet him on the field of argument—he succeeded in putting them to the rout with little difficulty, and completely broke up their settlement. Without waiting to write an account of his victory on the spot, and thus letting the enemy slip through his fingers while he was securing his own laurels, as a more experienced general would have done, the brave Stoffel thought of nothing but completing his enterprize, and utterly driving the Yankees from the island. This hardy enterprize he performed in much the same manner as he had been accustomed to drive his oxen; for as the Yankees fled before him, he pulled up his breeches and trudged steadily after them, and would infallibly have driven them into the sea, had they not begged for quarter, and agreed to pay tribute.

The news of this achievement was a seasonable restorative to the spirits of the citizens of New Amsterdam. To gratify them still more, the governor resolved to astonish them with one of those gorgeous spectacles, known in the days of classic antiquity, a full account of which had been flogged into his memory, when a school-boy at the Hague. A grand triumph therefore was decreed to Stoffel Brinckerhoff, who made his triumphant entrance into town riding on a Naraganset pacer; five pumpkins, which like Roman eagles had served the enemy for standards, were carried before him—ten cart loads of oysters, five hundred bushels of Weathersfield onions, a hundred quintals of codfish, two hogsheads of molasses and various other treasures, were exhibited as the spoils and tribute of the Yankees; while three notorious counterfeiters of Manhattan notes,
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were led captive to grace the hero's triumph. The procession was enlivened by martial music, from the trumpet of Antony Van Corlear the champion, accompanied by a select band of boys and negroes, performing on the national instruments of rattle bones and clam shells. The citizens devoured the spoils in sheer gladness of heart—every man did honour to the conqueror, by getting devoutly drunk on New England rum—and learned Wilhelmus Kieft calling to mind, in a momentary fit of enthusiasm and generosity, that it was customary among the ancients to honour their victorious generals with public statues, passed a gracious decree, by which every tavernkeeper was permitted to paint the head of the intrepid Stoffel on his sign!

 

 

 

If we could but get a peep at the tally of dame Fortune, where, like a notable landlady, she regularly chalks up the debtor and creditor accounts of mankind, we should find that, upon the whole, good and evil are pretty nearly balanced in this world; and that though we may for a long while revel in the very lap of prosperity, the time will at length come, when we must ruefully pay off the reckoning. Fortune, in fact, is a pestilent shrew, and withal a most inexorable creditor; for though she may indulge her favourites in long credits, and overwhelm them with her favours; yet sooner or later, she brings up her arrears, with the rigour of an experienced publican, and washes out her scores with their tears. “Since,” says good old Bœtius in his consolations of philosophy, “since no man can retain her at his pleasure, and since her flight is so deeply lamented, what are her favours but sure prognostications of approaching trouble and calamity.”

There is nothing that more moves my contempt at the stupidity and want of reflection in my fellow men, than to behold them rejoicing, and indulging in security and self confidence, in times of prosperity. To a wise man, who is blessed with the light of reason, those are the very moments of anxiety and apprehension; well knowing that according to the system of things, happiness is at best but transient—and that the higher a man is elevated by the capricious breath of fortune, the lower must be his proportionate depression. Whereas, he who is overwhelmed by calamity, has the less chance of encountering fresh disasters, as a man at the bottom of a hill, runs very little risk of breaking his neck by tumbling to the top.

This is the very essence of true wisdom, which consists in knowing when we ought to be miserable; and was discovered much about the same time with that invaluable secret, that “every thing is vanity and vexation of spirit;” in consequence of which maxim your wise men have ever been the unhappiest of the human race; esteeming it as an infallible mark of genius to be distressed without reason—since any man may be miserable in time of misfortune, but it is the philosopher alone who can discover cause for grief in the very hour of prosperity.

According to the principle I have just advanced, we find that the colony of New Netherlands, which under the reign of the renowned Van Twiller, had flourished in such alarming and fatal serenity; is now paying for its former welfare, and discharging the enormous debt of comfort which it contracted. Foes harass it from different quarters; the city of New Amsterdam, while yet in its infancy is kept in constant alarm; and its valiant commander little William the Testy answers the vulgar, but expressive idea of “a man in a peck of troubles.”

While busily engaged repelling his bitter enemies the Yankees, on one side, we find him suddenly molested in another quarter, and by other assailants. A vagrant colony of Swedes, under the conduct of Peter Minnewits, and professing allegience to that redoubtable virago, Christina queen of Sweden; had settled themselves and erected a fort on south (or Delaware) river—within the boundaries, claimed by the Government of the New Netherlands. History is mute as to the particulars of their first landing, and their real pretensions to the soil, and this is the more to be lamented; as this same colony of Swedes will hereafter be found most materially to affect, not only the interests of the Nederlanders, but of the world at large!

In whatever manner therefore, this vagabond colony of Swedes first took possession of the country, it is certain that in 1638, they established a fort, and Minnewits, according to the off hand usage of his contemporaries, declared himself governor of all the adjacent country, under the name of the province of NEW SWEDEN. No sooner did this reach the ears of the choleric Wilhelmus, than, like a true spirited chieftan, he immediately broke into a violent rage, and calling together his council, belaboured the Swedes most lustily in the longest speech that had ever been heard in the colony, since the memorable dispute of Ten breeches and Tough breeches. Having thus given vent to the first ebullitions of his indignation, he had resort to his favourite measure of proclamation, and dispatched one, piping hot, in the first year of his reign, informing Peter Minnewits that the whole territory, bordering on the south river, had, time out of mind, been in possession of the Dutch colonists, having been “beset with forts, and sealed with their blood.”