ony Van Corlear, who,
seated on the windlass, was relating to them the marvelous history of
those myriads of fireflies, that sparkled like gems and spangles upon the
dusky robe of night. These, according to tradition, were originally a race
of pestilent sempiternous beldames, who peopled these parts long before
the memory of man, being of that abominated race emphatically called
brimstones; and who, for their innumerable sins against the children of
men, and to furnish an awful warning to the beauteous sex, were doomed to
infest the earth in the shade of these threatening and terrible little
bugs; enduring the internal torments of that fire, which they formerly
carried in their hearts and breathed forth in their words, but now are
sentenced to bear about for ever--in their tails!

And now I am going to tell a fact, which I doubt much my readers will
hesitate to believe; but if they do, they are welcome not to believe a
word in this whole history--for nothing which it contains is more true. It
must be known then that the nose of Antony the Trumpeter was of a very
lusty size, strutting boldly from his countenance like a mountain of
Golconda, being sumptuously bedecked with rubies and other precious
stones, the true regalia of a king of good fellows, which jolly Bacchus
grants to all who bouse it heartily at the flagon. Now thus it happened,
that bright and early in the morning, the good Antony, having washed his
burly visage, was leaning over the quarter-railing of the galley,
contemplating it in the glassy wave below. Just at this moment the
illustrious sun, breaking in all his splendor from behind a high bluff of
the Highlands, did dart one of his most potent beams full upon the
refulgent nose of the sounder of brass; the reflection of which shot
straightway down, hissing hot, into the water, and killed a mighty
sturgeon that was sporting beside the vessel! This huge monster being with
infinite labor hoisted on board, furnished a luxurious repast to all the
crew, being accounted of excellent flavor, excepting about the wound,
where it smacked a little of brimstone; and this, on my veracity, was the
first time that ever sturgeon was eaten in those parts by Christian
people.[49]

When this astonishing miracle came to be made known to Peter Stuyvesant,
and that he tasted of the unknown fish, he, as may well be supposed,
marveled exceedingly: and as a monument thereof, he gave the name of
Antony's Nose to a stout promontor