ALL THE UGLY OLD. WOMEN. DESTROYED. 333 so far as to expire under the torture, protesting their innocence to the last; but these were looked upon as thoroughly and absolutely possessed by the devil, and the pious bystanders only lamented that they had not lived a little longer, to have perished in the flames. In the city of Ephesus, we are told, that the plague was expelled by stoning a ragged old beggar to death, whom Apollonius pointed out as being the evil spirit that caused it, and who actually showed himself to be a demon, by changing into a shagged dog. In like manner, and by measures equally sagacious, a salutary check was given to this growing evil. The witches were all burnt, banished, or panic-struck, and in a little while there was not an ugly old woman to be found throughout New-England-which is doubtless one reason why all the young women there are so handsome. Those honest folk who had suffered from their incantations gradually recovered, excepting such as had been afflicted with twitches and aches, which, however, assumed the less alarming aspects of rheumatisms, sciatics, and lumbagos-and the good people of New-England, abandoning the study of the occult sciences, turned their attention to the more profitable hocus pocus of trade, and soon became expert in the legerdemain art 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 dis 334 REMARKABLE CIRCUMSTANCE. guises, 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 is sure to tumble into NewEngland! PROTECTING CARE OF ST. NICHOLAS. 335 CHAPTER 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 these 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 lowering 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 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 every 336 JACOBUS VON POFFENBURGH. Nederlandt 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 praiseworthy 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. : 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 Good Hope, 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 ragamuffins. Such was the character of the warrior appointed by Peter Stuyvesant to defend his southern fron Ꮓ |