om my own experience, that on a clear still summer evening you
may hear from the battery of New York the obstreperous peals of
broad-mouthed laughter of the Dutch negroes at Communipaw, who, like most
other negroes, are famous for their risible powers. This is peculiarly the
case on Sunday evenings, when, it is remarked by an ingenious and
observant philosopher, who has made great discoveries in the neighborhood
of this city, that they always laugh loudest, which he attributes to the
circumstance of their having their holiday clothes on.

These negroes, in fact, like the monks in the dark ages, engross all the
knowledge of the place, and, being infinitely more adventurous, and more
knowing than their masters, carry on all the foreign trade, making
frequent voyages to town in canoes loaded with oysters, buttermilk and
cabbages. They are great astrologers, predicting the different changes of
weather almost as accurately as an almanac; they are, moreover, exquisite
performers on three-stringed fiddles; in whistling they almost boast the
far-famed powers of Orpheus' lyre, for not a horse nor an ox in the place,
when at the plough or before the wagon, will budge a foot until he hears
the well known whistle of his black driver and companion. And from their
amazing skill at casting up accounts upon their fingers they are regarded
with as much veneration as were the disciples of Pythagoras of yore when
initiated into the sacred quaternary of numbers.

As to the honest burghers of Communipaw, like wise men and sound
philosophers, they never look beyond their pipes, nor trouble their heads
about any affairs out of their immediate neighborhood; so that they live
in profound and enviable ignorance of all the troubles, anxieties, and
revolutions of this distracted planet. I am even told that many among them
do verily believe that Holland, of which they have heard so much from
tradition, is situated somewhere on Long Island; that Spiking-devil and
the Narrows are the two ends of the world; that the country is still under
the dominion of their High Mightinesses, and that the city of New York
still goes by the name of Nieuw Amsterdam. They meet every Saturday
afternoon at the only tavern in the place, which bears as a sign a
square-headed likeness of the Prince of Orange, where they smoke a silent
pipe by way of promoting social conviviality, and invariably drink a mug
of cider to the success of Admiral Van Tromp, whom they imagine is s