enchanted regions of the Catskill
Mountains, the twelve tribes of the East had been more than usually
active in prosecuting their subtle scheme for the subjugation of the Nieuw
Nederlands.

Independent of the incessant maraudings among hen-roosts and squattings
along the border, invading armies would penetrate, from time to time, into
the very heart of the country. As their prototypes of yore went forth into
the land of Canaan, with their wives and their children, their
men-servants and their maid-servants, their flocks and herds, to settle
themselves down in the land and possess it; so these chosen people of
modern days would progress through the country in patriarchal style,
conducting carts and waggons laden with household furniture, with women
and children piled on top, and pots and kettles dangling beneath. At the
tail of these vehicles would stalk a crew of long-limbed, lank-sided
varlets with axes on their shoulders, and packs on their backs, resolutely
bent upon "locating" themselves, as they termed it, and improving the
country. These were the most dangerous kind of invaders. It is true they
were guilty of no overt acts of hostility; but it was notorious that,
wherever they got a footing, the honest Dutchmen gradually disappeared,
retiring slowly as do the Indians before the white men; being in some way
or other talked and chaffered, and bargained and swapped, and, in plain
English, elbowed out of all those rich bottoms and fertile nooks in which
our Dutch yeomanry are prone to nestle themselves.

Peter Stuyvesant was at length roused to this kind of war in disguise, by
which the Yankees were craftily aiming to subjugate his dominions.

He was a man easily taken in, it is true, as all great-hearted men are apt
to be; but if he once found it out, his wrath was terrible. He now threw
diplomacy to the dogs, determined to appear no more by ambassadors, but to
repair in person to the great council of the Amphictyons, bearing the
sword in one hand and the olive-branch in the other, and giving them
their choice of sincere and honest peace, or open and iron war.

His privy council were astonished and dismayed when he announced his
determination. For once they ventured to remonstrate, setting forth the
rashness of venturing his sacred person in the midst of a strange and
barbarous people. They might as well have tried to turn a rusty
weathercock with a broken-winded bellows. In the fiery heart of the
iron-headed Pete