-shoes to their doors, which
it is well known are effectual barriers against all diabolical vermin of
the kind. Many of those horse-shoes may be seen at this very day on
ancient mansions and barns, remaining from the days of the patriarchs;
nay, the custom is still kept up among some of our legitimate Dutch
yeomanry, who inherit from their forefathers a desire to keep witches and
Yankees out of the country.

And now the great Peter, having no immediate hostility to apprehend from
the east, turned his face, with characteristic vigilance, to his southern
frontiers. The attentive reader will recollect that certain freebooting
Swedes had become very troublesome in this quarter in the latter part of
the reign of William the Testy, setting at naught the proclamations of
that veritable potentate, and putting his admiral, the intrepid Jan Jensen
Alpendam, to a perfect nonplus. To check the incursions of these Swedes,
Peter Stuyvesant now ordered a force to that frontier, giving the command
of it to General Jacobus Van Poffenburgh, an officer who had risen to
great importance during the reign of Wilhelmus Kieft. He had, if histories
speak true, been second in command to the doughty Van Curlet, when he and
his warriors were inhumanly kicked out of Fort Goed Hoop by the Yankees.
In that memorable affair Van Poffenburgh is said to have received more
kicks, in a certain honorable part, than any of his comrades; in
consequence of which, on the resignation of Van Curlet, he had been
promoted to his place, being considered a hero who had seen service, and
suffered in his country's cause.

It is tropically observed by honest old Socrates, that heaven infuses into
some men at their birth a portion of intellectual gold; into others, of
intellectual silver; while others are intellectually furnished with iron
and brass. Of the last class was General Van Poffenburgh, and it would
seem as if Dame Nature, who will sometimes be partial, had given him brass
enough for a dozen ordinary braziers. All this he had contrived to pass
off upon William the Testy for genuine gold; and the little governor would
sit for hours and listen to his gunpowder stories of exploits, which left
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 sty