ves; grain would rot in the granaries;
grass would grow in the marketplace. In a word, no one who has not heard
the outcries and howlings of a modern Tarshish, at any check upon "paper
money," can have any idea of the clamor against Peter the Headstrong for
checking the circulation of oyster-shells.

In fact, trade did shrink into narrower channels; but then the stream was
deep as it was broad. The honest Dutchman sold less goods; but then they
got the worth of them, either in silver and gold, or in codfish, tinware,
apple-brandy, Weathersfield onions, wooden bowls, and other articles of
Yankee barter. The ingenious people of the east, however, indemnified
themselves in another way for having to abandon the coinage of
oyster-shells, for about this time we are told that wooden nutmegs made
their first appearance in New Amsterdam, to the great annoyance of the
Dutch housewives.

NOTE.

From a manuscript record of the province (Lib, N.Y. Hist,
Soc.).--"We have been unable to render your inhabitants wiser,
and prevent their being, further imposed upon, than to declare,
absolutely and peremptorily, that henceforward seawant shall be
bullion--not longer admissable in trade, without any value, as it
is indeed. So that every one may be upon his guard to barter no
longer away his wares and merchandise for these baubles; at least
not to accept them at a higher rate, or in a larger quantity,
than as they may want them in their trade with the savages.

"In this way your English [Yankee] neighbors shall no longer be
enabled to draw the best wares and merchandise from our country
for nothing; the beavers and furs not excepted. This has, indeed,
long since been insufferable; although it ought chiefly to be
imputed to the imprudent penuriousness of our own merchants and
inhabitants, who, it is to be hoped, shall, through the abolition
of this seawant, become wiser and more prudent.

"27th January, 1662,

"Seawant falls into disrepute; duties to be paid in silver coin."

CHAPTER III.

Now it came to pass, that while Peter Stuyvesant was busy regulating the
internal affairs of his domain, the great Yankee league, which had caused
such tribulation to William the Testy, continued to increase in extent and
power. The grand Amphictyonic council of the league was held at Boston,
where it spun a web which threatened to link within it all the mighty