How Peter Stuyvesant was much molested by the moss-troopers of the East, and the Giants of Merryland—and how a dark and horrid conspiracy was carried on in the British Cabinet against the prosperity of the Manhattoes.

WE are now approaching towards the crisis of our work, and if I be not mistaken in my forebodings, we shall have a world of business to despatch in the ensuing chapters.

It is with some communities as it is with certain meddlesome individuals, they have a wonderful facility at getting into scrapes; and I have always remarked that those are most liable to get in who have the least talent at getting out again. This is, doubtless, owing to the excessive valour of those states; for I have likewise noticed that this rampant and ungovernable quality is always most unruly where most confined; which accounts for its vapouring so amazingly in little states, little men, and ugly little women especially.

Thus, when one reflects that the province of the Manhattoes, though of prodigious importance in the eyes of its inhabitants and its historian, was really of no very great consequence in the eyes of the rest of the world; that it had but little wealth or other spoils to reward the trouble of

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assailing it; and that it had nothing to expect from running wantonly into war, save an exceeding good beating-On pondering these things, I say, one would utterly despair of finding in its history either battles or bloodshed, or any other of those calamities which give importance to a nation, and entertainment to the reader. But, on the contrary, we find, so valiant is this province, that it has already drawn upon itself a host of enemies; has had as many buffetings as would gratify the ambition of the most warlike nation; and is, in sober sadness, a very forlorn, distressed, and woebegone little province !-all which was, no doubt, kindly ordered by Providence, to give interest and sublimity to this pathetic history.

But I forbear to enter into a detail of the pitiful maraudings and harassments, that for a long while after the victory on the Delaware continued to insult the dignity and disturb the repose of the Nederlanders. Suffice it in brevity to say, that the implacable hostility of the people of the east, which had so miraculously been prevented from breaking out, as my readers must remember, by the sudden prevalence of witchcraft, and the dis sensions in the council of Amphyctions, now again displayed itself in a thousand grievous and bitter scourings upon the borders.

Scarcely a month passed but what the Dutch settlements on the frontiers were alarmed by the sudden appearance of an invading army from Connecticut. This would advance resolutely

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INVASIONS FROM CONNECTICUT.

through the country, like a puissant caravan of the deserts, the women and children mounted in carts loaded with pots and kettles, as though they meant to boil the honest Dutchmen alive, and devour them like so many lobsters. At the tail of these carts would stalk a crew of long-limbed, lank-sided varlets, with axes on their shoulders and packs on their backs, resolutely bent upon improving the country in despite of its proprietors. These settling themselves down would in a short time completely dislodge the unfortunate Nederlanders; elbowing them out of those rich bottoms and fertile valleys, in which our Dutch yeomanry are so famous for nestling themselves-For it is notorious, that wherever these shrewd men of the east get a footing, the honest Dutchmen do gradually disappear, retiring slowly, like the Indians before the whites; being totally discomfited by the talking, chaffering, swapping, bargaining disposition of their new neighbours.

All these audacious infringements on the territories of their High Mightinesses were accompanied, as has before been hinted, by a world of rascally brawls, ribroastings and bundlings, which would doubtless have incensed the valiant Peter to wreak immediate chastisement, had he not at the very same time been perplexed by distressing accounts from Mynher Beckman, who commanded the territories at South river.

The restless Swedes, who had so graciously been suffered to remain about the Delaware, al

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ready began to show signs of mutiny and disaffection. But what was worse, a peremptory claim was laid to the whole territory, as the rightful property of Lord Baltimore, by Fendal, a chieftain who ruled over the colony of Maryland, or Merryland, as it was anciently called, because that the inhabitants, not having the fear of the Lord before their eyes, were notoriously prone to get fuddled and make merry with mint julep and apple toddy. Nay, so hostile was this bully Fendal, that he threatened, unless his claim were instantly complied with, to march incontinently at the head of a potent force of the roaring boys of Merryland, together with a great and mighty train of giants, who infested the banks of the Susquehanna *— and to lay waste and depopulate the whole country of South river.

By this it is manifest, that this boasted colony,

• We find very curious and wonderful accounts of these strange people (who were doubtless the ancestors of the present Marylanders) made by Master Hariot, in his interesting history. "The Susquesahanocks"-observes he-" are a giantly people, strange in proportion, behaviour, and attire-their voice sounding from them as if out a cave. Their tobacco-pipes were three-quarters of a yard long, carved at the great end with a bird, beare, or other device, sufficient to beat out the braines of a horse (and how many asses braines are beaten out, or rather men's braines smoked out, and asses braines haled in, by our lesser pipes at home). The calfe of one of their legges measured three-quarters of a yard about, the rest of his limbs proportionable."

Master Hariot's Journ. Purch. Pil.

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DANGER OF EXTENDED CONQUESTS.

like all great acquisitions of territory, soon became a greater evil to the conqueror than the loss of it was to the conquered; and caused greater uneasiness and trouble than all the territory of the New-Netherlands besides. Thus Providence wisely orders that one evil shall balance another. The conqueror who wrests the property of his neighbour, who wrongs a nation and desolates a country, though he may acquire increase of empire, and immortal fame, yet ensures his own inevitable punishment. He takes to himself a cause of endless anxiety-he incorporates with his late sound domain a loose part-a rotten disaffected member; which is an exhaustless source of internal treason and disunion, and external altercation and hostility-Happy is that nation, which, compact, united, loyal in all its parts, and concentrated in its strength, seeks no idle acquisition of unprofitable and ungovernable territory-which, content to be prosperous and happy, has no ambition to be great. It is like a man well organized in his system, sound in health, and full of vigour; unincumbered by useless trappings, and fixed in an unshaken attitude. But the nation insatiable of territory, whose domains are scattered, feebly united, and weakly organized, is like a senseless miser sprawling among golden stores, open to every attack, and unable to defend the riches he vainly endeavours to overshadow.

At the time of receiving the alarming despatches from South river, the great Peter was busily em