his land. This son is a very profligate person. He married a merchant's daughter here, and has so lived with his wife that her father has been compelled to take her home again. He runs about among the farmers, and stays where he can find most to drink, and sleeps in barns on the straw. If he conducted himself properly, he could be, not only governor here, but hold higher positions, for he has studied the moralities, and seems to have been of a good understanding; but that is all now drowned. His father, who will not acknowledge him as his son, as before, allows him yearly as much only as is necessary for him to live.

"7th, Saturday. This morning, about half-past six, we set out from the village in order to go to the end of the island; but before we left we did not omit supplying ourselves with peaches, which grew in an orchard along the road. The whole ground was covered with them and with apples, lying upon the new grain with which the orchard, was planted. The peaches were the most delicious we had yet eaten. We proceeded on our way, and when we were not far from the point of Spyt den duyvel we could see on our left hand the rocky cliffs of the main land on the other side of the North river, these cliffs standing straight up and down, with the grain, just as if they were antimony. We crossed over the Spyt den duyvel in a canoe, and paid nine stuivers fare for us three, which was very dear. We followed the opposite side of the land, and came to the house of one Valentyn, a great acquaintance with our Gerrit. He had gone to the city, but his wife. though she. did not know Gerrit or us, was so much rejoiced to see Hollanders that she hardly knew what to do for us. She set before us what she had. We left after breakfasting there. Her son showed us the way and we came to a road entirely covered with peaches. We asked the boy why they left them to lie there and they did not let the hogs eat them. He answered, we do not know what to do with them, there were so many; the hogs are satiated with them, and will not eat any more. From this we may judge of the quantity of them. We pursued our way now a small distance through the woods and over the hills, then back again along the shore to a point, where one Webblingh, an Englishman, lived, who was standing ready to cross over. He carried us over with him, and refused to take any pay for our passage, offering us at the same time some of his rum, a liquor which is everywhere. We were now again at New Harlem, and dined with Gerosolveert, at whose house we slept the night before, and who made us welcome. It was now two o'clock; and leaving there we crossed over the island, which takes about three-quarters of an hour to do, and came to the North river, which we followed a little within the woods, to Sappokanikke.* Gerrit having a sister and friends there we rested ourselves, and drank some good beer which refreshed us. We continued along the shore to the city, where we arrived in an hour in the evening, very much fatigued, having walked this day about forty miles. I must add, in passing through this island we sometimes encountered such a sweet smell in the air that we stood still, because we did not know what it was we were meeting."

66

'14th, Saturday. Being under sail, as I have said, it was so entirely calm that we could only float with the stream until we came to the Schutters island, where we obtained the tide again. It was now about four o'clock. In order to protect ourselves from the air, which was very cold and piercing, we crept under the sail, which was very old and full of holes. The tide having run out by daylight we came under sail again, with a good wind, which brought us to the city at about eight o'clock, for which we were glad, and returning thanks to God, betook ourselves to rest.

* According to Judge Benson this was the Indian name of the point, afterward known as Greenwich, on the north side of the city.-New York Historical Collections, second series, 84.

"15th, Sunday. We went at noon to-day to hear the English minister, whose services took place after the Dutch church was out. There were not above twentyfive or thirty people in the church. The first thing that occurred was the reading of all their prayers and ceremonies out of the prayer-book, as is done in all Episcopal churches. A young man then went into the pulpit and commenced preaching, who thought he was performing wonders; but he had a little book in his hand out of which he read his sermon, which was about a quarter of an hour or half an hour long.* With this the services were concluded, at which we could not be sufficiently astonished. This was all that happened with us to-day."

From the year 1674, under Edmund Andross, commenced the new regime in New York. Andross was a public officer of ability, but well known for his imperious and despotic disposition. The people immediately petitioned their royal master, the Duke of York, for an Assembly of Representatives; but James, who regarded popular bodies as dangerous, refused their prayer, with the question: "What do they want with Assemblies? They have the Court of Sessions presided over by the Governor; or, if this is not enough, they can appeal to me!" Such was the English spirit of oppression a century before it was resisted in blood at Golden and Bunker Hills. Upon learning of this reply of Andross, Sir William Berkly, Governor of Virginia, "thanked God that there were neither free-schools nor printing-presses in the colony," fervently adding, "God keep us from both !"

Governor Andross, however-much as he may in after years have merited from the people of the Eastern Colonies the title of the "Tyrant of New England"-governed New York with wisdom and moderation. Desirous of establishing himself on a popular basis with the people, one of his first official acts was to appoint, in 1676, a native Hollander-Nicholas Meyer-Mayor of the city. The selection was a good one. Meyer was one of the most enterprising of traders, and a most respectable burgher; and although the duties of his office could not have been particularly onerous at a time when only three hundred and one names were recorded upon the list of tax-payers, yet what little he did was done honestly and well—a fact that cannot truthfully be stated of New York Mayors of later generations. Nor did Andross strive to be popular alone. Aware that no government can be a stable one unless placed on a basis of sound morality, he at once established ordinances for regulating the public morals and promoting the welfare of the city. "The city-gates were ordered to be closed at night at nine o'clock, and to be opened at daylight. The citizens were required to keep watch by turns, and were fined for absence or neglect of duty; and all profanity and drunkenness were strictly forbidden. Every citizen was ordered to provide himself with a good musket

* The only English minister in the whole province at this time was attached to the garrison at the City of New York. This was the Rev. Charles Wooley, a graduate of Emanuel College, Cambridge, in 1677. He came to New York in August, 1678, and left there for England in July, 1680. He was the author of a small volume with the title of A Two Years' Journal in New York, &c. published in 1701, and recently republished, with notes by Dr. E. B. O'Callaghan, in Mr. Gowans interesting series of early works on the colonies.-Note to the Labadists.

or firelock with at least six charges of powder and ball, and to appear with good arms before the Captain's colors, at the first beating of the drum."

In 1677 the first native-born Mayor was appointed to the Mayoralty. This was Stephanus Van Cortlandt, a large property-holder, and afterwhom Cortlandt street is named. Under his administration seven public wells were placed in different parts of the city, chiefly as a protection. against fires.

Meanwhile the necessity of conciliating the Iroquois-the most powerful Indian confederacy, at that time, in America-had received little or no attention from the people of New York or their Government. The first three English Governors of the colony, or rather lieutenants of the Duke of York, viz.: Colonels Nicholls, Lovelace, and Major, afterward Sir Edmund Andross, bestowed but inconsiderable attention upon the Five Nations, not seeming to appreciate either the importance of their trade or of their friendship. Still the moral hatred they had borne for the French inclined them rather to prefer the friendship of the English. But the Duke of York, in his affection for the Church of Rome, shutting his eyes to what unquestionably should have been the true policy of the English toward the Indians, had conceived the idea of handing the Confederates over to the Holy See, as converts to its forms, if not to its faith. Hence the efforts to mediate the peace between the Iroquois and the French of 1667, which were followed by invitations to the Jesuit missionaries from the English, to settle among the Confederates, and by persuasions to the latter to receive them. The Mohawks were either too wise, or too bitter in spirit toward the French, to listen to the proposal. But not so with the other nations of the alliance; and the Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas opened their arms to the insidious stangers in holy garb, causing infinite mischief in after years, as will appear in the sequel.

This peace of 1667 continued several years, during which time both the English and French prosecuted their trade with the Indians to a great and profitable extent. The French, especially, evinced a degree of energy, and a spirit of enterprise, almost unexampled in the history of colonization-planting their trading-posts, under the lead of the adventurous La Salle, at all the commanding points of the great lakes, and across the country of the Illinois to the Mississippi; and stealing the hearts of the Indians through the arts of the crafty ministers of the order of Jesus, whom they sprinkled among the principal nations over the whole country of the exploration. By these bold advances deep into the interior, and the insiduous wiles which everywhere characterized their movements, the French acquired a decided advantage over the English colonists in the fur trade, which it was evidently their design exclusively to engross; while the direct tendency of the Duke of York's policy, originating in blindness and bigotry, was to produce exactly the same result.

The error was soon perceived by Colonel Dongan, who arrived in the colony as the successor of Major Andross, in 1683. Though his religious faith was in harmony with that of his royal master, he nevertheless possessed an enlarged understanding, with a disposition, as a Civil Governor, to look more closely after the interests of the crown than those of the crosier. He had not been long at the head of the colony before he perceived the mistakes of his predecessors in the conduct of its Indian relations. In fighting-men, the Five Nations at that time numbered ten times more than they did half a century afterward;* and the Governor saw at once their importance as a wall of separation between the English colonies and the French. He saw, also, the importance of their trade, which the Jesuit priests were largely influential in diverting to Canada. He saw that M. de Courcelles had erected a fort at Cadaraqui, within the territory of the Iroquois, on the north side of Lake Ontario,† and that La Salle had built a bark of ten tons upon that lake, and another of fifty upon Lake Erie, planting also a stockade at Niagara. He saw that the French were intercepting the trade of the English upon the lakes, and that the priests had succeeded in seducing numbers of the Mohawks and river Indians away from their own country, and planting their colonies upon the banks of the St. Lawrence, in the neighborhood of Montreal, through whose agency an illicit trade had been established with the City of Albany, by reason of which Montreal, instead of Albany, was becoming the principal depot of the Indian trade. He saw, in a word, the subtle followers of Ignatius Loyola were rapidly alienating the affections of the Confederates from the English and transferring them to the French, and that unless the policy respecting them was changed, the influence of the English would, at no distant day, be at an end with them. Nor had the priests confined their efforts simply to moral suasion; but, as though aiming to separate the Confederates from the English at a blow, and by a gulf so wide and deep as to be impassable, they had instigated them to commit positive hostilities upon the frontier settlements of Maryland and Virginia.

Having made himself thoroughly acquainted with these matters, Colonel Dongan lost no time in seeking to countervail the influence of the French, and to bring back the Indians to a cordial understanding with his own people. His instructions from home were to encourage the Jesuit missionaries. These he not only disregarded, but he ordered the missionaries away, and forbade the Five Nations to entertain them. It is true this order was never enforced to the letter, the priests, some of them at least, maintaining a foothold at several points of the Confederacy -dubious at times, certainly-but yet maintaining it for three-quarters

* Memoir of Dr. Colden, concerning the fur trade, presented to Governor Burnett in 1724.

The site of Kingston, Canada West.

of a century afterward. Still, the measures of conciliation adopted by Colonel Dongan made a strong and favorable impression upon the Indians.

Availing himself of the difficulty between the Confederates and Virginia, consequent upon the outrages just adverted to as having been instigated by the priests, Colonel Dongan was instrumental in procuring a convention of the Five Nations, at Albany, in 1684, to meet Lord Howard, of Effingham, Governor of Virginia, at which he (Dongan) was likewise present. This meeting, or council, was attended by the happiest results. The difficulties with Virginia were adjusted, and a covenant made with Lord Howard for preventing further depredations.* But what was of yet greater importance, Colonel Dongan succeeded in completely gaining the affections of the Indians, who conceived for him the warmest esteem. They even asked that the arms of the Duke of York might be put upon their castles, a request which it need not be said was most readily complied with, since, should it afterward become necessary, the Governor might find it convenient to construe it into an act of at least partial submission to English authority, although it has been asserted that the Indians themselves looked upon the ducal insignia as a sort of charm that might protect them against the French.†

There was likewise another fortunate occurrence of events just at that time, which revived all the ancient animosity between the Iroquois and the French. While the conferences between Lord Howard and the Indians were yet in progress, a message was received from M. de la Barre, the Governor of Canada, complaining of the conduct of the Senecas in prosecuting hostilities against the Miamies and other western nations in alliance with the French, and thus interrupting their trade. Colonel Dongan communicated the message to the Iroquois chiefs, who retorted by charging the French with supplying their enemies with all their munitions of war. 66 Onontio calls us children," said they, "and at the same time sends powder to our enemies to kill us!" This collision resulted in open war between the Iroquois and the French, the latter sending to France for powerful reinforcements, with the design of an entire subjugation of the former in the ensuing year. Meantime the French Catholics continued to procure letters from the Duke of York to his lieutenant commanding him to lay no obstacles in the way of the invaders. But these commands were again disregarded. Dongan apprised the Iroquois of the designs of the French, not only to march against them with a strong army, but simultaneously to bring down upon them the western Indians

* Smith's History of New York.

+ Colden's History of the Five Nations.

The name by which the Iroquois were wont to speak of the French Governors of Canada.