enduring is sacred truth! It will abide forever.

Johannes Delamontagnie was another Huguenot refugee, who reached
New-Amsterdam in 1773. Governor Kieft appointed him a member of his
council, then the second office in the colonial government. He purchased
a farm of two hundred acres at Harlaem, for seven hundred and twenty
dollars, naming it' Vriedendel', (Valley of Peace.) The land was
situated East of the Eighth Avenue, between Ninety-third street and the
Harlem river. His grandson, named Vincent, died in May, 1773, at the
very advanced age of one hundred and sixteen years. Numerous descendants
are still among us from this early French Protestant emigrant, although
some abbreviations have been made in the name.

THE BANE OF OUR COUNTRY.

While sharing the Provost-Marshal's office, in Portsmouth, Virginia, I
was struck with the almost utter absence of cultivation of the
understanding of the people living there or in the surrounding country,
who entered to obtain passes, or for other purposes. Scarce one of them
at first appreciated the nature of an oath, which they all shrank from
taking, or objected to, when proposed as a condition of obtaining either
the passes or the protection they wished. They were not merely
illiterate and untaught, but showed also an extremely low grade of
reasoning power. There was, indeed, in most cases, but little
development even of those lower grades of intellectual ability which are
so frequently seen in simply 'illiterate' persons. They hung back from
committing themselves, in any way, as friendly to us, though they
evidently did not feel that hatred or ill-feeling characteristic of the
bolder secessionist. I afterward saw many more of these people, in
Norfolk, at our office. With our continued occupancy of the city, and in
the absence of any aggressive action by our Government, they presented
themselves more frequently. Among them there was occasionally one who
avowed himself, without reservation, for the Union. These people are, I
am confident, the only ones in the rebellious States who are other than
secessionists. Love of the Union--that which the reader identifies with
patriotism and nationality--they had not, because this can nowhere be
found in the rebellious States, except in isolated instances. That they
remained silent and subdued under the progress of the acts of the
secessionists, and never raised hand or voice in contradiction to them,
proves in this class an absenc