arm, and New York on my back,
pressing forward, like a gallant commander, to honor and immortality.

Such are the vain-glorious misgivings that will now and then enter into
the brain of the author--that irradiate, as with celestial light, his
solitary chamber, cheering his weary spirits, and animating him to
persevere in his labors. And I have freely given utterance to these
rhapsodies whenever they have occurred; not, I trust, from an unusual
spirit of egotism, but merely that the reader may for once have an idea
how an author thinks and feels while he is writing--a kind of knowledge
very rare and curious, and much to be desired.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Beloe's Herodotus.

HISTORY OF NEW YORK.

_BOOK I._

CONTAINING DIVERS INGENIOUS THEORIES AND PHILOSOPHIC SPECULATIONS,
CONCERNING THE CREATION AND POPULATION OF THE WORLD, AS CONNECTED WITH THE
HISTORY OF NEW YORK.

CHAPTER I.

According to the best authorities, the world in which we dwell is a huge,
opaque, reflecting, inanimate mass, floating in the vast ethereal ocean of
infinite space. It has the form of an orange, being an oblate spheroid,
curiously flattened at opposite parts, for the insertion of two imaginary
poles, which are supposed to penetrate and unite at the center; thus
forming an axis on which the mighty orange turns with a regular diurnal
revolution.

The transitions of light and darkness, whence proceed the alternations of
day and night, are produced by this diurnal revolution successively
presenting the different parts of the earth to the rays of the sun. The
latter is, according to the best, that is to say, the latest, accounts a
luminous or fiery body, of a prodigious magnitude, from which this world
is driven by a centrifugal or repelling power, and to which it is drawn by
a centripetal or attractive force; otherwise called the attraction of
gravitation; the combination, or rather the counteraction, of these two
opposing impulses producing a circular and annual revolution. Hence result
the different seasons of the year--viz., spring, summer, autumn, and
winter.

This I believe to be the most approved modern theory on the subject;
though there be many philosophers who have entertained very different
opinions; some, too, of them entitled to much deference from their great
antiquity and illustrious characters. Thus it was advanced by some of the
ancient sages that the earth was an extended plain, supported by vast
pillars; and b