tly an officer to Peter Stuyvesant's taste, but he stood foremost
in the army list of William the Testy, and it is probable the good Peter,
who was conscientious in his dealings with all men, and had his military
notions of precedence, thought it but fair to give him a chance of proving
his right to his dignities.

To this copper captain, therefore, was confided the command of the troops
destined to protect the southern frontier; and scarce had he departed from
his station than bulletins began to arrive from him, describing his
undaunted march through savage deserts over insurmountable mountains,
across impassable rivers, and through impenetrable forests, conquering
vast tracts of uninhabited country, and encountering more perils than did
Xenophon in his far-famed retreat with his ten thousand Grecians.

Peter Stuyvesant read all these grandiloquent dispatches with a dubious
screwing of the mouth and shaking of the head; but Antony Van Corlear
repeated these contents in the streets and market-places with an
appropriate flourish upon his trumpet, and the windy victories of the
general resounded through the streets of New Amsterdam.

On arriving at the southern frontier, Van Poffenburgh proceeded to erect a
fortress, or stronghold, on the South of Delaware river. At first he
bethought him to call it Fort Stuyvesant, in honor of the governor, a
lowly kind of homage prevalent in our country among speculators, military
commanders, and office-seekers of all kinds, by which our maps come to be
studded with the names of political patrons and temporary great men; in
the present instance, Van Poffenburgh carried his homage to the most lowly
degree, giving his fortress the name of Fort Casimir, in honor, it is
said, of a favorite pair of brimstone trunk-breeches of his excellency.

As this fort will be found to give rise to important events, it may be
worth while to notice that it was afterwards called Nieuw-Amstel, and was
the germ of the present flourishing town of Newcastle, or, more properly
speaking, No Castle, there being nothing of the kind on the premises.

His fortress being finished, it would have done any man's heart good to
behold the swelling dignity with which the general would stride in and out
a dozen times a day, surveying it in front and in rear, on this side and
on that; how he would strut backwards and forwards, in full regimentals,
on the top of the ramparts, like a vain-glorious cock-pigeon, swelling and
v