, the fighting men
of Wallabout, the Van Pelts, the Say Dams, the Van Dams, and all the
warriors of Hellgate "clad in their thunder-and-lightning gaberdines,"
and lastly the standard bearers and bodyguards of Peter Stuyvesant,
bearing the great beaver of the Manhattan.

"And now commenced the horrid din, the desperate struggle, the maddening
ferocity, the frantic desperation, the confusion and self-abandonment
of war. Dutchman and Swede commingled, tugged, panted, and blowed. The
heavens were darkened with a tempest of missives. Bang! went the guns;
whack! went the broadswords; thump! went the cudgels; crash! went the
musket-stocks; blows, kicks, cuffs, scratches, black eyes and bloody
noses swelling the horrors of the scene! Thick, thwack, cut and hack,
helter-skelter, higgledy-piggledy, hurly-burly, heads-over-heels,
rough-and-tumble! Dunder and blixum! swore the Dutchmen; splitter and
splutter! cried the Swedes. Storm the works! shouted Hardkoppig Peter.
Fire the mine! roared stout Rising--Tantarar-ra-ra! twanged the
trumpet of Antony Van Corlear;--until all voice and sound became
unintelligible,--grunts of pain, yells of fury, and shouts of triumph
mingling in one hideous clamor. The earth shook as if struck with a
paralytic stroke; trees shrunk aghast, and withered at the sight; rocks
burrowed in the ground like rabbits; and even Christina creek turned
from its course, and ran up a hill in breathless terror!"

As a matter of fact, the fort surrendered without a fight on
September 1, 1655. It was thereupon christened New Amstel, afterwards
New Castle, and was for a long time the most important town on the
Delaware. This achievement put the Dutch in complete authority over the
Swedes on both sides of the river. The Swedes, however, were content,
abandoned politics, secluded themselves on their farms, and left
politics to the Dutch. Trade, too, they left to the Dutch, who, in their
effort to monopolize it, almost killed it. This conquest by their High
Mightinesses also ended the attempts of the New Englanders, particularly
the people of New Haven, to get a foothold in the neighborhood of Salem,
New Jersey, for which they had been struggling for years. They had
dreams of a great lake far to northward full of beaver to which the
Delaware would lead them. Their efforts to establish themselves survived
in one or two names of places near Salem, as, for example, New England
Creek, and New England Channel, which down almost