n
meetings, without the permission of the governor. Indeed the mass of
the settlers were no longer to decide upon their local affairs, but a
committee of seven persons was to decide all such questions. All who
were dissatisfied with these arrangements were ordered to sell their
property and leave the town.

It is not necessary to continue the record of this disgraceful
persecution. The governor was unrelenting. Whoever ventured to oppose
his will felt the weight of his chastising hand.

New Amsterdam consisted of wooden houses clustered together. The
danger from fire was very great. The governor imposed a tax of a
beaver skin, or its equivalent upon each householder to pay for two
hundred and fifty leather fire buckets and hooks and ladders, to be
procured in Holland. He also established a "rattle watch" to traverse
the streets from nine o'clock in the evening until morning drum-beat.

Stuyvesant would allow nothing to be done which he did not control.
The education of the young was greatly neglected. Jacob Corlaer opened
a school. The governor peremptorily closed it, because he had presumed
to take the office without governmental permission. To establish a
place of amusement the governor formed a village called Haarlem, at
the northern extremity of Manhattan island. He also constructed a good
road over the island, through the forest, "so that it may be made easy
to come hither, and return to that village on horseback or in a
wagon." A ferry was also established to Long Island.

Staten Island was a dreary waste. It had not recovered from the
massacre of 1655. Efforts were made to encourage the former settlers
to return to their desolated homes, and to encourage fresh colonists
to take up their residence upon the island. To promote the settlement
of the west side of the North river, Stuyvesant purchased from the
Indians, all the territory now known as Bergen, in New Jersey.

This purchase comprised the extensive region,

"beginning from the great rock above Wiehackan, and from
there right through the land, until above the island
Sikakes, and from there to the Kill van Col, and so along to
the Constables Hook, and thence again to the rock above
Wiehackan."

The settlement at Esopus, was in many respects in a flourishing
condition. But it was so much more convenient for the farmers to have
their dwellings in the midst of the fields they cultivated, instead of
clustering them together in a