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* Beloe's Herodotus.
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PREFACE.
names and achievements of Wouter Van Twiller, William Kieft, and Peter Stuyvesant, be enveloped in doubt and fiction, like those of Romulus and. Remus, of Charlemagne, King Arthur, Rinaldo, and Godfrey of Bologne.
Determined, therefore, to avert if possible this threatened misfortune, I industriously set myself to work, to gather together all the fragments of our infant history which still existed, and like my re- vered prototype, Herodotus, where no written re- cords could be found, I have endeavoured to con- tinue the chain of history by well-authenticated traditions.
In this arduous undertaking, which has been the whole business of a long and solitary life, it is in credible the number of learned authors I have con- sulted ; and all but to little purpose. Strange as i !. may seem, though such multitudes of excellent works have been written about this country, there are none extant which give any full and satisfactory account of the carly history of New-York, or of its three first .Dutch governors. I have, however, gained much valuable and curious matter, from an elaborate man- uscript written in exceeding pure and classic Low Dutch, excepting a few errors in orthography, which; was found in the archives of the Stuyvesant family. Many legends, letters, and other documents, have I likewise gleaned, in my researches among the family chests and lumber garrets of our respectable Dutch citizens ; and I have gathered a host of well-authen- ticated traditions from divers excellent old ladies of
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my acquaintance, who requested that their names might not be mentioned. Nor must I neglect to ac- knowledge how greatly I have been assisted by that admirable and praiseworthy institution, the NEW- YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY, to which I here publicly return my sincere acknowledgments.
In the conduct of this inestimable work, I have adopted no individual model; but, on the contrary, have simply contented myself with combining and concentrating the excellencies of the most approved ancient historians. Like Zenophon, I have maintain- ed the utmost impartiality, and the strictest adherence to truth, throughout my history. I have enriched it, after the manner of Sallust, with various characters of ancient worthies, drawn at full length and faith- fully coloured. I have seasoned it with profound political speculations like Thucydides, sweetened it with the graces of sentiment like Tacitus, and infused into the whole the dignity, the grandeur, and mag nificence of Livy.
I am aware that I shall incur the censure of numerous very learned and judicious critics, for in- dulging too frequently in the bold excursive manner of my favourite Herodotus. And to be candid, I have found it impossible always to resist the allure- ments of those pleasing episodes, which, like flowery banks and fragrant bowers, beset the dusty road of the historian, and entice him to turn aside, and refresh himself from his wayfaring. But I trust it will be found that I have always resumed my staff, and ad dressed myself to my weary journey with renovated
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PREFACE.
spirits, so that both my readers and myself have been benefited by the relaxation.
Indeed, though it has been my constant wish and uniform endeavour to rival Polybius himself, in oh- serving the requisite unity of History, yet the loose and unconnected manner in which many of the facts herein recorded have come to hand, rendered such an attempt extremely difficult. This difficulty was likewise increased, by one of the grand objects con- templated in my work, which was to trace the rise of sundry customs and institutions in this best of cities, and to compare them, when in the germ of infancy, with what they are in the present old age of knowledge and improvement.
But the chief merit on which I value myself, and found my hopes for future regard, is that faithful veracity with which I have compiled this invaluable little work ; carefully winnowing away the chaff of hypothesis, and discarding the tares of fable, which are too apt to spring up and choke the seeds of truth and wholesome knowledge .- Had I been anxious to captivate the superficial throng, who skim like swal- lows over the surface of literature ; or had I been anxious to commend my writings to the pampered palates of literary epicures, I might have availed my- self of the obscurity that overshadows the infant years of our city, to introduce a thousand pleasing fictions. But I have scrupulously discarded many a pithy tale and marvellous adventure, whereby the drowsy ear of summer indolence might be enthralled ; jealously maintaining that fidelity, gravity, and dignity, which
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should ever distinguish the historian. " For a writer of this class," observes an elegant critic, "must sus- tain the character of a wise man, writing for the in- struction of posterity ; one who has studied to inform himself well, who has pondered his subject with care, and addresses himself to our judgment, rather than to our imagination."
Thrice happy, therefore, is this our renowned city, in having.incidents worthy of swelling the theme of history; and doubly thrice happy is it in having such a historian as myself to relate them. For after all, gentle reader, cities of themselves, and, in fact, em- pires of themselves, are nothing without a historian. It is the patient narrator who records their prosperity as they rise-who blazons forth the splendour of their noontide meridian-who props their feeble memorials as they totter to decay-who gathers to- gether their scattered fragments as they rot-and who piously, at length, collects their ashes into the mausoleum of his work, and rears a monument that will transmit their renown to all succeeding ages.
What has been the fate of many fair cities of an- tiquity, whose nameless ruins encumber the plains of Europe and Asia, and awaken the fruitless inquiry of the traveller? They have sunk into dust .and silence-they have perished from remembrance, for want of a historian ! The philanthropist may weep over their desolation -- the poet may wander among their mouldering arches and broken columns, and indulge the visionary flights of his fancy -- but alas ! alas ! the modern historian, whose pen, like my own,
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is doomed to confine itself to Gull matter of Fact, seeks in vain among their oblivious remains for some memorial that may tell the instructive tale of their glory and their ruin.
" Wars, conflagrations, deluges," says Aristotle. " destroy nations, and with them all their monuments their discoveries, and their vanities .- The torch or science has more than once been extinguished and rekindled-a few individuals, who have escaped by accident, reunite the thread of generations."
The same sad misfortune which has happened to so many ancient cities, will happen again, and from the same sad cause, to nine-tenths of those which now flourish on the face of the globe. With most of them, the time for recording their early history is gone by; their origin, their foundation, together with the eventful period of their youth, are for ever buried in the rubbish of years ; and the same would have been the case with this fair portion of the earth, if I had not snatched it from obscurity in the very nick of time, at the moment that those matters here- in recorded were about entering into the wide-spread insatiable maw of oblivion -- if I had not dragged them out, as it were, by the very locks, just as the monster's adamantine fangs were closing upon them for ever ! And here have I, as before observed, care- fully collected, collated, and arranged them, scrip and scrap, " punt en punt, gat en gat," and com- menced, in this little work, a history to serve as a foundation, on which other historians may hereafter raise a noble superstructure, swelling in process of
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time, until Knickerbocker's New-York may be equally voluminous with Gibbon's Rome, or Hume and Smol- let's England !
. And now indulge me for a moment, while I lay down my pen, skip to some little eminence at the distance of two or three hundred years ahead ; and casting back a birds's-eye glance over the waste of years that is to roll between, discover myself-little J !- at this moment the progenitor, prototype, and precursor of them all, posted at the head of this host . of literary worthies, with my book under my arm, and New-York on my back, pressing forward, like a gallant commander, to honour and immortality.
Such are the vain-glorious imaginings that will now and then enter into the brain of the author --- that irradiate, as with celestial light, his solitary · chamber, cheering his weary spirits, and animating him to persevere in his labours. And I have freely given utterance to these rhapsodies, whenever they have occurred ; not, I trust, from an unusual spirit of egotism, but 'merely that the reader may for once have an idea, how an author thinks and feels while he is writing-a kind of knowledge very rare and curious, and much to be desired.
VOL. I.
C
1
BOOK I.
CONTAINING DIVERS INGENIOUS THEORIES AND PHILOSOPHIC SPECULATIONS, CONCERNING THE CREATION AND POPULA- TION OF THE WORLD, AS CONNECTED WITH THE HISTORY OF NEW-YORK
CHAPTER I.
Description of the World.
ACCORDING to the best authorities, the world in which we dwell is a huge, opaque, reflecting, inani- mate mass, floating in the vast ethereal ocean of infinite space. It has the form of an orange, being an oblate spheroid, curiously flattened at opposite parts, for the insertion of two imaginary poles, which are supposed to penetrate and unite at the centre ; thus forming an axis on which the mighty orange turns with a regular diurnal revolution.
The transitions of light and darkness, whence pro- ceed the alternations of day and night, are produced by this diurnal revolution successively presenting the different parts of the earth to the rays of the sun, The latter is, according to the best, that is to say, the latest accounts, a luminous or fiery body, of a pro- digious magnitude, from which this world is driven by a centrifugal or repelling power, and to which it is drawn by a centripetal or attractive force, other- wvise called the attraction of gravitation ; the combi-
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A HISTORY
nation, or rather the counteraction, of these two opposing impulses producing a circular and annual revolution. Hence result the different seasons of the ycar, viz. spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
This I believe to be the most approved modern theory on the subject-though there be many phi- losophers who have entertained very different opin- ions ; some, too, of them entitled to much deference from their great antiquity and illustrious characters. Thus it was advanced by some of the ancient sages, that the earth was an extended plain, supported by vast pillars ; and by others, that it rested on the head of a snake, or the back of a huge tortoise-but as they did not provide a resting-place for either the pillars or the tortoise, the whole theory fell to the ground, for want of proper foundation.
The Brahmins assert, that the heavens rest upon the earth, and the sun and moon swim therein like fishes in the water, moving from east to west by day, and gliding along the edge of the horizon to their original stations during the night ;* while, according to the Pauranicas of India, it is a vast plain, encircled by seven oceans of milk, nectar, and other delicious liquids ; that it is studded with seven mountains, and ornamented in the centre by a mountainous rock of burnished gold; and that a great dragon occasion- ally swallows up the moon, which accounts for the phenomena of lunar eclipses.t
* Faria y Souza. Mick. Lus. note b. 7.
+ Sir W. Jones, Diss. Antiq. Ind. Zod.
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6
OF NEW-YORK.
Beside these, and many other equally sage opin- ions, we have the profound conjectures of ABOUL- HASSAN-ALY, son of Al Khan, son of Aly, son of Abderrahman, son of Abdallah, son of Masoud-el- Had-heli, who is commonly called MASOUDI, and sur named Cothbeddin, but who takes the humble title of Laheb-ar-rasoul, which means the companion of the ambassador of God. He has written a univer- sal history, entitled "Mouroudge-ed-dharab, or the Golden Meadows, and the Mines of Precious Stones."* In this valuable work he has related the history of the world, from the creation down to the moment of writing ; which was under the Caliphate of Mothi Billah, in the month Dgioumadi-el-aoual of the 336th year of the Hegira or flight of the Prophet. He informs us that the earth is a huge bird, Mecca and Medina constituting the head, Persia and India the right wing, the land of Gog the left wing, and Africa the tail. He informs us, moreover, that an earth has existed before the present, (which he considers as a mere chicken of 7000 years) that it has undergone divers deluges, and that, according to the opinion of some well-informed Brahmins of his acquaintance, it will be renovated every seventy- thousandth hazarouam ; each hazarouam consisting of 12,000 years. .
These are a few of the many contradictory opinions of philosophers concerning the earth, and we find that the learned have had equal perplexity as to the
* Mss. Bibliot, Roi. Fr.
C 2
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A HISTORY
nature of the sun. Some of the ancient philosophers have affirmed that it is a vast wheel of brilliant fire ;* others, that it is merely a mirror or sphere of trans- parent crystal;t and a third class, at the head of whom stands Anaxagoras, maintained that it was nothing but a huge ignited mass of iron or stone --- indeed, he declared the heavens to be merely a vault of stone -- and that the stars were stones whirled up- ward from the earth, and set on fire by the velocity of its revolutions .¿ But I give little attention to the doctrines of this philosopher, the people of Athens having fully refuted them, by banishing him from their city; a concise mode of answering unwelcome doctrines, much resorted to in former days. Another ", sect of philosophers do declare, that certain fiery particles exhale constantly from the earth, which concentrating in a single point of the firmament by day, constitute the sun, but being scattered and ram- bling about in the dark at night, collect in various points, and form stars. These are regularly burnt out and extinguished, not unlike to the lamps in our streets, and require a fresh supply of exhalations for the next occasion.§
It is even recorded, that at certain remote and obscure periods, in consequence of a great scarcity
* Plutarch de Placitis Philosoph. lib. iii. cap. 20.
¡ Achill. Tat. Isag. cap. 19. Ap. Petav. t. iii. p. 31. Stob. Eclog. Phys. lib. i. p. 56. Plut. de Plac. Phi.
Į Diogenes Laertius in Anaxag. l. ii. sec. 8. Plat. Apol. t. i. p. 26. Plut. de Plac. Philo. Xenoph. Mem. l. iv. p. 815. § Aristot. Meteor. I. ii. c. 2. Idem. Probl. sec. 15. Stob. Ecl. Phys. I. i. p. 55. Bruck. Hist. Phil. t. i. p. 1154, &c.
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OF NEW YORK,
of fuel, the sun has been completely burnt out, and sometimes not rekindled for a month at a time ;- a most melancholy circumstance, the very idea of which gave vast concern to Heraclitus, that worthy weeping philosopher of antiquity. In addition to · these various speculations, it was the opinion of Herschel, that the sun is a magnificent, habitable abode; the light it furnishes arising from certain empyreal, luminous or phosphoric clouds, swimming in its transparent atmosphere .*
But we will not enter farther at present into the nature of the sun, that being an inquiry not imme- diately necessary to the developement of this history ; neither will we embroil ourselves in any more of the endless disputes of philosophers touching the form of this globe, but content ourselves with the theory advanced in the beginning of this chapter, and will proceed to illustrate, by experiment, the complexity of motion therein ascribed to this our rotatory planet.
Professor Von Poddingcoft (or Puddinghead, as the name may be rendered into English,) was long celebrated in the university of Leyden, for profound gravity of deportment, and a talent of going to sleep in the midst of examinations, to the infinite relief of his hopeful students, who thereby worked their way through college with great ease and little study. In the course of one of his lectures, the learned pro-
* Philos. Trans. 1795 p. 72. Idem. 1801. p. 265. Nich Philos. Journ. i. p. 13
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A HISTORY
fessor, seizing a bucket of water, swung it round his head at arm's-length. The impulse with which he threw the vessel from him, being a centrifugal force, the retention of his arm operating as a centripetal power, and the bucket, which was a substitute for the earth, describing a circular orbit round about the glob- ular head and ruby visage of Professor Von Podding- coft, which formed no bad representation of the sun. All of these particulars were duly explained to the class of gaping students around him. He apprized them, moreover, that the same principle of gravita- tion, which retained the water in the bucket, re- strains the ocean from flying from the earth in its rapid revolutions ; and he farther informed them, that should the motion of the earth be suddenly checked, it would incontinently fall into the sun, through the centripetal force of gravitation ; a most ruinous event to this planet, and one which would also obscure, though it most probably would not extinguish, the solar luminary. An unlucky stripling, one of those vagrant geniuses who seem sent into the world merely to annoy worthy men of the pud- dinghead order, desirous of ascertaining the correct- ness of the experiment, suddenly arrested the arm of the professor, just at the moment that the bucket was in its zenith, which immediately descended with astonishing precision upon the head of the philosopher. A hollow sound, and a red-hot hiss, attended the contact; but the theory was in the amplest manner illustrated, for the unfortunate buck- et perished in the conflict; but the blazing coun-
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OF NEW-YORK.
tenance of Professor Von Poddingcoft emerged from amidst the waters, glowing fiercer than ever with unutterable indignation, whereby the students were marvellously edified, and departed considerably wiser than before.
It is a mortifying circumstance, which greatly perplexes many a philosopher, that Nature often refuses to second his efforts ; so that after having in- vented one of the most ingenious and natural theo- ries imaginable, she will have the perverseness to act directly in the teeth of it. This is a manifest and unmerited grievance, since it throws the censure of the vulgar and unlearned entirely upon the philoso- pher; whereas the fault is to be ascribed to dame Nature, who, with the proverbial fickleness of her sex, is continually indulging in coquetries and ca- prices; and who seems to take pleasure in violating all philosophic rules, and jilting the most learned and indefatigable of her adorers. Thus it happened with respect to the foregoing explanation of the motion of our planet; it appears that the centrifugal force has long since ceased to operate, while its antagonist remains in undiminished potency : the world, therefore, ought in strict propriety to tumble into the sun; philosophers were convinced that it would do so, and awaited in anxious impatience the fulfilment of their prognostics. But the untoward planet pertinaciously continued her course, notwith standing that she had reason, philosophy, and a whole university of learned professors, opposed to her conduct. The philosophers took this in very
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A HISTORY
ill part, and it is thought they would never have pardoned the slight which they conceived put upon them by the world, had not a good-natured professor kindly officiated as a mediator between the parties, and effected a reconciliation.
Finding the world would not accommodate itself to the theory, he wisely accommodated the theory to the world : he informed his brother philosophers, that the circular motion of the earth round the sun was no sooner engendered by the conflicting impulses above described, than it became a regular revolution, independent of the causes which gave it origin. His learned brethren readily joined in the opinion, hearti- ly glad of any explanation that would decently extri- cate them from their embarrassment -- and ever since that era the world has been left to take her own course, and to revolve around the sun in such orbit as she thinks proper.
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OF NEW-YORK.
CHAPTER II.
Cosmogony, or Creation of the World ; with a multi- tude of excellent theories, by which the creation of a world is shown to be no such difficult matter as common folk would imagine.
HAVING thus briefly introduced my reader to the world, and given him some idea of its form and situa . tion, he will naturally be curious to know from whence it came, and how it was created. And, in- deed, the clearing up of these points is absolutely essential to my history, inasmuch as if this world had not been formed, it is more than probable, that this renowned island on which is situated the city of New-York, would never have had an existence. The regular course of my history, therefore, requires that I should proceed to notice the cosmogony, or forma- tion of this our globe.
And now I give my readers fair warning, that I am about to plunge, for a chapter or two, into as com- plete a labyrinth as ever historian was perplexed withal : therefore, I advise them to take fast hold of my skirts, and keep close at my heels, venturing neither to the right hand nor to the left, lest they get bemired in a slough of unintelligible learning, or have their brains knocked out by some of those hard Greek names which will be flying about in all direc tions. But should any of them be too indolent or chicken-hearted to acccompany me in this perilous
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A HISTORY
undertaking, they had better take a. short cut round, and wait for me at the beginning of some smoother chapter.
Of the creation of the world, we have a thousand contradictory accounts ; and though a very satisfac- tory one is furnished us by divine revelation, yet every philosopher feels himself in honour bound to furnish us with a better. As an impartial historian, I consider it my duty to notice their several theories, by which mankind have been so exceedingly cdified and instructed.
Thus it was the opinion of certain ancient sages, that the earth and the whole system of the universe was the deity himself ;* a doctrine most strenuously maintained by Zenophanes and the whole tribe of Eleatics, as also by Strabo and the sect of peripate- tic philosophers. Pythagoras likewise inculcated the famous numerical system of the monad, dyad, and triad, and by means of his sacred quaternary elucida- ted the formation of the world, the arcana of nature, and the principles both of music and morals.t Other sages adhered to the mathematical system of squares and triangles ; the cube, the pyramid, and the sphere , the tetrahedron, the octahedron, the icosahedron, and the dodecahedron.} While others advocated the great elementary theory, which refers the construc-
* Aristot. ap. Cic. lib. i. cap. 3.
+ Aristot. Metaph. lib. i. c. 5. Idem. de Cœlo, 1. iii. c. 1 Rousseau mem. sur Musique ancien. p. 39. Plutarch de Plac Philos. lib. i. cap. 3.
# Tim. Locr. ap. Plato. t. iii. p. 90.
OF NEW-YORK. 37
tion of our globe, and all that it contains, to the com- bination of four material elements-air, earth, fire, and water; with the assistance of a fifth, an immate- rial and vivifying principle.
Nor must I omit to mention the great atomic sys- tem, taught by old Moschus, before the siege of Troy; revived by Democritus, of laughing memory; im proved by Epicurus, that king of good fellows, and modernized by the fanciful Descartes.
But I decline inquiring, whether the atoms, of which the earth is said to be composed, are eternal or recent; whether they are animate or inanimate ; whether, agreeably to the opinion of the atheists, they were fortuitously aggregated, or, as the theists main- tain, were arranged by a supreme intelligence .* Whether, in fact, the earth be an insensate clod, or whether it be animated by a soul ; f which opinion was strenuously maintained by a host of philosophers, at the head of whom stands the great Plato, that temperate sage, who threw the cold water of philos- ophy on the form of sexual intercourse, and inculca- ted the doctrine of Platonic love-an exquisitely re- fined intercourse, but much better adapted to the ideal inhabitants of his imaginary island of Atlantis than to the sturdy race, composed of rebellious flesh
* Aristot. Nat. Auscult. I. ii. cap. 6. Aristoph. Metaph. lib. i. cap. 3. Cic. de Nat. Deor. lib. i. cap. 10. Justin. Mart. orat. ad gent. p. 20.
+ Mosheim in Cudw. lib. i. cap. 4. Tim. de anim, mund ap. Plat. lib. iii. Mem. de l'Acad. des Belles Lettr. t. xxxii. p, 19. et al. VOL. I. D
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A HISTORY
and blood, which populates the little matter-of-fact island we inhabit.
Beside these systems, we have, moreover, the poetical theogony of old Hesiod, who generated the whole universe in the regular mode of procreation ; and the plausible opinion of others, that the earth was hatched from the great egg of night, which float- ed in chaos, and was cracked by the horns of the celestial bull. To illustrate this last doctrine, Bur- net, in his theory of the earth," has favoured us with an accurate drawing and description, both of the form and texture of this mundane egg; which is found to bear a marvellous resemblance to that of a goose. Such of my readers as take a proper interest in the origin of this our planet, will be pleased to learn, that the most profound sages of antiquity, among the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks and Latins, have alternately assisted at the hatching of this strange bird, and that their cacklings have been caught, and continued in different tones and inflec- tions, from philosopher to philosopher, unto the present day.
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