the sword or the halter, and whose deaths shall,
at all events, be a lofty example to their countrymen.

But, not withstanding all this martial rout and invitation, the ranks of
honor were but scantily supplied, so averse were the peaceful burghers of
New Amsterdam from enlisting in foreign broils, or stirring beyond that
home which rounded all their earthly ideas. Upon beholding this, the great
Peter, whose noble heart was all on fire with war, and sweet revenge,
determined to wait no longer for the tardy assistance of these oily
citizens, but to muster up his merry men of the Hudson, who, brought up
among woods, and wilds, and savage beasts, like our yeomen of Kentucky,
delighted in nothing so much as desperate adventures and perilous
expeditions through the wilderness. Thus resolving, he ordered his trusty
squire, Antony Van Corlear, to have his state galley prepared and duly
victualed; which being performed, he attended public service at the great
church of St. Nicholas, like a true and pious governor; and then leaving
peremptory orders with his council to have the chivalry of the Manhattoes
marshaled out and appointed against his return, departed upon his
recruiting voyage up the waters of the Hudson.

CHAPTER IV.

Now did the soft breezes of the south steal sweetly over the face of
nature, tempering the panting heats of summer into genial and prolific
warmth, when that miracle of hardihood and chivalric virtue, the dauntless
Peter Stuyvesant, spread his canvas to the wind, and departed from the
fair island of Manna-hata. The galley in which he embarked was
sumptuously adorned with pendants and streamers of gorgeous dyes, which
fluttered gayly in the wind, or drooped their ends into the bosom of the
stream. The bow and poop of this majestic vessel were gallantly bedight,
after the rarest Dutch fashion, with figures of little pursy Cupids with
periwigs on their heads, and bearing in their hands garlands of flowers
the like of which are not to be found in any book of botany, being the
matchless flowers which flourished in the golden age, and exist no longer,
unless it be in the imaginations of ingenious carvers of wood and
discolorers of canvas.

Thus rarely decorated, in style befitting the puissant potentate of the
Manhattoes, did the galley of Peter Stuyvesant launch forth upon the bosom
of the lordly Hudson, which, as it rolled its broad waves to the ocean,
seemed to pause for a while and swell with p