t those of Tirante the White, Don Belianis of
Greece, or St. George and the Dragon quite in the background. Having
been promoted by William Kieft to the command of his whole disposable
forces, he gave importance to his station by the grandiloquence of his
bulletins, always styling himself Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of
the New Netherlands, though in sober truth these armies were nothing
more than a handful of hen-stealing, bottle-bruising ragamuffins.

In person he was not very tall, but exceedingly round; neither did his
bulk proceed from his being fat, but windy, being blown up by a
prodigious conviction of his own importance, until he resembled one of
those bags of wind given by AEolus, in an incredible fit of generosity,
to that vagabond warrior Ulysses. His windy endowments had long excited
the admiration of Antony Van Corlear, who is said to have hinted more
than once to William the Testy that in making Van Poffenburgh a general
he had spoiled an admirable trumpeter.

As it is the practice in ancient story to give the reader a description
of the arms and equipments of every noted warrior, I will bestow a word
upon the dress of this redoubtable commander. It comported with his
character, being so crossed and slashed, and embroidered with lace and
tinsel, that he seemed to have as much brass without as nature had
stored away within. He was swathed, too, in a crimson sash, of the size
and texture of a fishing-net--doubtless to keep his swelling heart from
bursting through his ribs. His face glowed with furnace-heat from
between a huge pair of well-powdered whiskers, and his valorous soul
seemed ready to bounce out of a pair of large, glassy, blinking eyes,
projecting like those of a lobster.

I swear to thee, worthy reader, if history and tradition belie not this
warrior, I would give all the money in my pocket to have seen him
accoutred _cap-a-pie_--booted to the middle, sashed to the chin,
collared to the ears, whiskered to the teeth, crowned with an
overshadowing cocked hat, and girded with a leathern belt ten inches
broad, from which trailed a falchion, of a length that I dare not
mention. Thus equipped, he strutted about, as bitter-looking a man of
war as the far-famed More, of Morehall, when he sallied forth to slay
the dragon of Wantley. For what says the ballad?

"Had you but seen him in this dress,
How fierce he looked and how big,
You would have thought him for to be
Some Egyptian porc