ort legs ached and their fat
sides sweated again, and finally encamped them in the evening on the
summit of a hill without the city, to give them a taste of camp life,
intending the next day to renew the toils and perils of the field. But so
it came to pass that in the night there fell a great and heavy rain, and
melted away the army, so that in the morning when Gaffer Phoebus shed his
first beams upon the camp, scarce a warrior remained, excepting Peter
Stuyvesant and his trumpeter, Van Corlear.

This awful desolation of a whole army would have appalled a commander of
less nerve; but it served to confirm Peter's want of confidence in the
militia system, which he thenceforward used to call, in joke--for he
sometimes indulged in a joke--William the Testy's broken reed. He now took
into his service a goodly number of burly, broad-shouldered,
broad-bottomed Dutchmen, whom he paid in good silver and gold, and of whom
he boasted that, whether they could stand fire or not, they were at least
water-proof.

He fortified the city, too, with pickets and palisadoes, extending across
the island from river to river; and above all cast up mud batteries or
redoubts on the point of the island where it divided the beautiful bosom
of the bay.

These latter redoubts, in process of time, came to be pleasantly overrun
by a carpet of grass and clover, and overshadowed by wide-spreading elms
and sycamores, among the branches of which the birds would build their
nests and rejoice the ear with their melodious notes. Under these trees,
too, the old burghers would smoke their afternoon pipe, contemplating the
golden sun as he sank in the west, an emblem of the tranquil end toward
which they were declining. Here, too, would the young men and maidens of
the town take their evening stroll, watching the silver moon beams as they
trembled along the calm bosom of the bay, or lit up the sail of some
gliding bark, and peradventure interchanging the soft vows of honest
affection; for to evening strolls in this favored spot were traced most of
the marriages in New Amsterdam.

Such was the origin of that renowned promenade, The Battery, which, though
ostensibly devoted to the stern purposes of war, has ever been consecrated
to the sweet delights of peace. The scene of many a gambol in happy
childhood--of many a tender assignation in riper years--of many a soothing
walk in declining age--the healthful resort of the feeble invalid--the
Sunday refreshment