of turning a penny. Still, however, a tinge of the old leaven is discernible, even unto this day, in their characters; witches occasionally start up among them in different disguises, as physicians, civilians, and divines. The people at large show a keenness, a cleverness, and a profundity of wisdom, that savours strongly of witchcraft; and it has been remarked, that whenever any stones fall from the moon, the greater part of them are sure to tumble into New England.

CHAP. VII.

Which records the Rise and Renown of a valiant Commander; showing that a Man, like a Bladder, may be puffed up to Greatness and Importance by mere Wind. WHEN treating of those tempestuous times, the unknown writer of the Stuyvesant manuscript breaks out into a vehement apostrophe, in praise of the good St. Nicholas; to whose protecting care he entirely ascribes the strange dissensions that broke out in the council of the Amphyctions, and the direful witchcraft that prevailed in the east country; whereby the hostile machinations against the Nederlanders were for a time frustrated, and his favourite city of New-Amsterdam preserved from imminent peril and deadly warfare. Darkness and louring superstition hung over the fair valleys of the east-the pleasant banks of the Connecticut no longer echoed with the sounds of rustic gaiety-direful phantoms and portentous apparitions were seen in the air-gliding spectrums haunted every wild brook and dreary glen-strange voices, made by viewless forms, were heard in desert solitudes-and the border towns were so occupied in detecting and punishing the knowing old women that had produced these alarming appearances, that for a while the province of Nieuw Nederlandts and its inhabitants were totally forgotten.

The great Peter, therefore, finding that nothing was to be immediately apprehended from his eastern neighbours, turned himself about, with a praise-worthy vigilance that ever distinguished him, to put a stop to the insults of the Swedes. These freebooters, my attentive reader will recollect, had begun to be very troublesome towards the latter part of the reign of William the Testy, having set the proclamations of that doughty little governor at naught, and put the intrepid Jan Jansen Alpendam to a perfect nonplus!

Peter Stuyvesant, however, as has already been shown, was a governor of different habits and turn of mind. Without more ado, he immediately issued orders for raising a corps of troops to be stationed on the southern frontier, under the command of brigadier-general Jacobus Von Poffenburgh. This illustrious warrior had risen to great importance during the reign of Wilhelmus Kieft; and, if histories speak true, was second in command to the hapless Van Curlet, when he and his ragged regiment were inhumanly kicked out of Fort Good Hope by the Yankees. In consequence of having been in such a "memorable affair," and of having received more wounds on a certain honourable part, that shall be nameless, than any of his comrades, he was ever after considered as a hero, who had seen some service." Certain it is, he enjoyed the unlimited confidence and friendship of William the Testy ; who would sit for hours, and listen with wonder to his gunpowder narratives of surprising victories-he had never gained; and dreadful battles-from which he had run away; and the governor was once heard to declare, that had he lived in ancient times, he might unquestionably have claimed the armour of Achilles-being not merely like Ajax, a mighty blustering man of battle; but in the cabinet a second Ulysses, that is to say, very valiant of speech, and long winded—all which, as nobody in New-Amsterdam knew aught of the ancient heroes in question, passed totally uncontradicted.

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It was tropically observed by honest old Socrates, that heaven had infused into some men at their birth a portion of intellectual gold; into others, of intellectual silver; while others were bounteously furnished out with abundance of brass and iron. Now, of this last class was undoubtedly the great General Von Poffenburgh, and, from the display he continually made thereof, I am inclined to think that dame Nature, who will sometimes be partial, had blessed him with enough of those valuable materials to have fitted up a dozen ordinary braziers. But what is most to be admired is, that he contrived to pass off all his brass and copper upon Wilhelmus Kieft, who was no great judge of base coin, as pure and genuine gold. The consequence was, that upon the resignation of Jacobus Van Curlet, who, after the loss of Fort Goed Hoop, retired like a veteran general, to live under the shade of his laurels, the mighty "copper captain" was promoted to his station. This he filled with great importance, always styling himself "commander-in-chief of the armies of the New Netherlands;" though, to tell the truth, the armies, or rather army, consisted of a handful of hen-stealing, bottle-bruising raggamuffins.

Such was the character of the warrior appointed by Peter Stuyvesant to defend his southern frontier; nor may it be uninteresting to my reader to have a glimpse of his person. He was not very tall, but notwithstanding, a huge full bodied man, whose bulk did not so much arise from his being fat as windy; being so completely inflated with his own importance that he resembled one of those bags of wind which Eolus, in an incredible fit of generosity, gave to that wandering warrior Ulysses.

His dress comported with his character, for he had almost as much brass and copper without, as nature had stored away within. His coat was crossed and slashed, and carbonadoed with stripes of copper lace, and swathed round the body with a crimson sash, of the size and texture of a fishing net, doubtless to keep his valiant heart

from bursting through his ribs. His head and whiskers. were profusely powdered, from the midst of which his full blooded face glowed like a fiery furnace; and his magnanimous soul seemed ready to bounce out at a pair of large glassy blinking eyes, which projected like those of a lobster.

I swear to thee, worthy reader, if report belie not this warrior, I would give all the money in my pocket to have seen him accoutred cap-à-pie, in martial array— booted to the middle-sashed to the chin-collared to the ears-whiskered to the teeth-crowned with an overshadowing cocked hat, and girded with a leathern belt ten inches broad, from which trailed a falchion, of a length that I dare not mention. Thus equipped, he strutted about as bitter looking a man of war as the far famed More of More Hall, when he sallied forth, armed at all points, to slay the dragon of Wantley 9.

Notwithstanding all the great endowments and transcendent qualities of this renowned general, I must confess he was not exactly the kind of man that the gallant Peter would have chosen to command his troops-but the truth is, that in those days the province did not abound, as at present, in great military characters; who, like so many Cincinnatuses, people every little village-marshalling out cabbages instead of soldiers, and signalizing themselves in the corn field instead of the field of battle: who have surrendered the toils of war for the more useful but inglorious arts of peace! and so blended the laurel with the olive that you may have a general for a landlord,

9" Had you but seen him in this dress,

How fierce he look'd and how big;
You would have thought him for to be
Some Egyptian Porcupig.

"He frighted all, cats, dogs, and all,

Each cow, each horse, and each hog;
For fear they did flee, for they took him to be
Some strange outlandish hedge-bog."

Ballad of Drag, of Want.

a colonel for a stage-driver, and your horse shod by a valiant " captain of volunteers."- Neither had Peter Stuyvesant an opportunity of choosing, like modern rulers, from a loyal band of editors of newspapers-no mention being made in the histories of the times of any such class of mercenaries being retained in pay by government, either as trumpeters, champions, or body guards. The redoubtable General Von Poffenburgh, therefore, was appointed to the command of the new levied troops, chiefly because there were no competitors for the station, and partly because it would have been a breach of military etiquette, to have appointed a younger officer over his head—an injustice which the great Peter would have rather died than have committed.

No sooner did this thrice valiant copper captain receive marching orders than he conducted his army undauntedly to the southern frontier; through wild lands and savage deserts; over insurmountable mountains, across impassable floods, and through impenetrable forests; encountering more perils, according to his own account, than did ever the great Xenophon in his far famed retreat with his ten thousand Grecians. All this accomplished, he established on the South (or Delaware) river a redoubtable redoubt, named FORT CASIMIR, in honour of a favourite pair of brimstone-coloured trunk breeches of the governor. As this fort will be found to give rise to very important and interesting events, it may be worth while to notice that it was afterwards called Nieuw-Amstel, and was the original germ of the present flourishing town of NEWCASTLE, an appellation erroneously substituted for No Castle, there neither being nor ever having been a castle or any thing of the kind upon the premises.

The Swedes did not suffer tamely this menacing movement of the Nederlanders; on the contrary Jan Printz, at that time governor of New Sweden, issued a protest against what he termed an encroachment upon his jurisdiction. But the valiant Von Puffenburgh had become