Chapter IV The Dutch at New Amsterdam
On the fourth day of April, 1609, there put out from the port of Amsterdam a little craft of about eighty tons, called the Half Moon. It had been chartered by the Dutch East India Company to search for the Northwest Passage. Its captain was Henry Hudson, and on September 3 he cast anchor inside Sandy Hook.
HENRY HUDSON’S QUEST
[1609]
Out from the harbor of Amsterdam
The Half Moon turned her prow to sea;
The coast of Norway dropped behind,
Yet Northward still kept she
Through the drifting fog and the driving snow,
Where never before man dared to go:
“O Pilot, shall we find the strait that leads to the Eastern Sea?”
“A waste of ice before us lies—we must turn back,” said he.
Westward they steered their tiny bark,
Westward through weary weeks they sped,
Till the cold gray strand of a stranger-land
Loomed through the mist ahead.
League after league they hugged the coast,
And their Captain never left his post:
“O Pilot, see you yet the strait that leads to the Eastern Sea?”
“I see but the rocks and the barren shore; no strait is there,” quoth he.
They sailed to the North—they sailed to the South—
And at last they rounded an arm of sand
Which held the sea from a harbor’s mouth—
The loveliest in the land;
They kept their course across the bay,
And the shore before them fell away:
“O Pilot, see you not the strait that leads to the Eastern Sea?”
“Hold the rudder true! Praise Christ Jesu! the strait is here,” said he.
Onward they glide with wind and tide,
Past marshes gray and crags sun-kist;
They skirt the sills of green-clad hills,
And meadows white with mist—
But alas! the hope and the brave, brave dream!
For rock and shallow bar the stream:
“O Pilot, can this be the strait that leads to the Eastern Sea?”
“Nay, Captain, nay; ’tis not this way; turn back we must,” said he.
Full sad was Hudson’s heart as he turned
The Half Moon’s prow to the South once more;
He saw no beauty in crag or hill,
No beauty in curving shore;
For they shut him away from that fabled main
He sought his whole life long, in vain:
“O Pilot, say, can there be a strait that leads to the Eastern Sea?”
“God’s crypt is sealed! ’Twill stand revealed in His own good time,” quoth he.
Burton Egbert Stevenson.
A few days were spent in exploring the bay, and on September 6 occurred the only fatality that marked the voyage. A seaman named John Colman, with four sailors, was sent out in a small boat to sound the Narrows, and encountered some Indians, who sent a flight of arrows toward the strangers. One of the arrows pierced Colman’s throat, killing him.
THE DEATH OF COLMAN
[September 6, 1609]
’Twas Juet spoke—the Half Moon’s mate
And they who Holland’s ship of state
Compass’d with wisdom, listening sate:
Discovery’s near-extinguished spark
Flared up into a blaze,
When Man-na-hat-ta’s virgin hills,
Enriched by Autumn’s days,
First fell on our impatient sight,
And soothed us with a strange delight.
Bidden by fevered trade, our keel
Had ploughed unbeaten deeps;
From many a perfume-laden isle
To the dark land that sleeps
Forever in its winter robe,
Th’ unsocial hermit of the globe.
But we, who sought for China’s strand
By ocean ways untried,
Forgot our mission when we cast
Our anchor in a tide
That kissed a gem too wondrous fair
For any eastern sea to wear!
Entranced, we saw the golden woods
Slope gently to the sands;
The grassy meads, the oaks that dwarfed
Their kin of other lands;
And from the shore the balmy wind
Blew sweeter than the spice of Ind.
As he whose eyes, though opened wide,
Are fixed upon a dream,
So Colman—one who long had held
Our Hudson’s warm esteem—
Gazed on the gorgeous scene, and said,
“Ere even’s shades are overspread,
“Proudly our flag on yonder height
Shall tell of Holland’s gain;
Proclaiming her to all the earth
The sovereign of the main.”
And quickly from the Half Moon’s bow
We turned the longboat’s yielding prow.
The measured flashing of the oars
Broke harshly on the ear;
And eye asked eye—for lips were mute—
What Holland hearts should fear;
For true it is our hearts were soft,
Save his, who held the flag aloft.
And suddenly our unshaped dread
Took direful form and sound.
For from a near nook’s rocky shade,
Swift as pursuing hound,
A savage shallop sped, to hold
From stranger feet that strand of gold.
And rageful cries disturbed the peace
That on the waters slept;
And Echo whispered on the hills,
As though an army crept,
With flinty axe and brutal blade,
Through the imperforate forest shade.
“What! are ye cravens?” Colman said;
For each had shipped his oar.
He waved the flag: “For Netherland,
Pull for yon jutting shore!”
Then prone he fell within the boat,
A flinthead arrow through his throat!
And now full many a stealthy skiff
Shot out into the bay;
And swiftly, sadly, pulled we back
To where the Half Moon lay;
But he was dead—our master wept—
He smiled, brave heart, as though he slept.
Then to the seaward breeze our sail
With woful hearts we threw;
And anchored near a sandy strip
That looks o’er ocean blue:
And there we kissed and buried him,
While surges sang his funeral hymn.
And many a pitying glance we gave,
And many a prayer we said,
As from that grave we turned, and left
The dark sea with her dead;
For—God of Waves!—none could repress
One choking thought—the loneliness!
Thomas Frost.
Hudson ascended the river to a point a little above the present town of Albany, then turned back and returned to Holland. His report of the rich country he had discovered was received with enthusiasm there, and preparations were begun on an extensive scale to colonize the new country. Dutch voyagers explored all the adjacent coasts, among the most active being Adrian Block.
ADRIAN BLOCK’S SONG
[July, 1615]
Hard aport! Now close to shore sail!
Starboard now, and drop your foresail!
See, boys, what yon bay discloses,
What yon open bay discloses!
Where the breeze so gently blows is
Heaven’s own land of ruddy roses.
Past the Cormorant we sail,
Past the rippling Beaver Tail,
Green with summer, red with flowers,
Green with summer, fresh with showers,
Sweet with song and red with flowers,
Is this new-found land of ours!
Roses close above the sand,
Roses on the trees on land,
I shall take this land for my land,
Rosy beach and rosy highland,
And I name it Roses Island.
Edward Everett Hale.
But troubles at home prevented any extensive effort at colonization until 1621, when the States-General chartered the Dutch West India Company, which in 1623 sent Captain Cornelius Jacobsen Mey, with thirty families, to start the colony.
With sharpened pen and wit, one tunes his lays,
To sing the vanity of fame and praise;
His moping thoughts, bewildered in a maze,
In darkness wander.
What brings disgrace, what constitutes a wrong,
These form the burden of the tuneful song:
And honor saved, his senses then among
The dark holes ponder.
For me, it is a nobler thing I sing.
New Netherland springs forth my heroine;
Where Amstel’s folk did erst their people bring,
And still they flourish.
New Netherland, thou noblest spot of earth,
Where Bounteous Heaven ever poureth forth
The fulness of His gifts, of greatest worth,
Mankind to nourish.
Whoe’er to you a judgment fair applies,
And knowing, comprehends your qualities,
Will justify the man who, to the skies,
Extols your glories.
Who studies well your natural elements,
And with the plumb of science, gains a sense
Of all the four: fails not in their defence,
Before free juries.
Your Air, so clear, so sharp to penetrate,
The western breezes softly moderate;
And, tempering the heat, they separate
It from all moisture.
From damp, and mist, and fog, they set it free;
From smells of pools, they give it liberty:
The struggling stenches made to mount on high,
And be at peace there.
No deadly pest its purity assails,
To spread infection o’er your hills and vales,
Save when a guilty race, great sins bewails
In expiating.
Your Sun, th’ original of Fire and heat,
The common nutriment of both to eat,
Is warm and pure; in plants most delicate,
Much sap creating.
Nor turf, nor dried manure,—within your doors,
Nor coal, extracted from earth’s secret stores,
Nor sods, uplifted from the barren moors,
For fuel given;
Which, with foul stench the brain intoxicate,
And thus, by the foul gas which they create.
The intellects of many, wise and great,
Men are out-driven.
The forests do, with better means, supply
The hearth and house; the stately hickory,
Not planted, does the winter fell defy,—
A valiant warden;
So closely grained, so rich with fragrant oil,
Before its blaze both wet and cold recoil;
And sweetest perfumes float around the while,
Like ’n Eden’s garden.
The Water clear and fresh, and pure and sweet,
Springs up continually beneath the feet,
And everywhere the gushing fountains meet,
In brooks o’erflowing,
Which animals refresh, both tame and wild;
And plants conduce to grow on hill and field;
And these to man unnumbered comforts yield,
And quickly growing.
The Earth in soils of different shades appears,
Black, blue and white, and red; its bosom bears
Abundant harvests; and, what pleases, spares
Not to surrender.
No bounds exist to their variety.
They nourishment afford most plenteously
To creatures which, in turn, man’s wants supply
And health engender.
O fruitful land! heaped up with blessings kind,
Whoe’er your several virtues brings to mind,—
Its proper value to each gift assigned,
Will soon discover,
If ever land perfection have attained,
That you in all things have that glory gained;
Ungrateful mortal, who, your worth disdained,
Would pass you over.
In North America, behold your Seat,
Where all that heart can wish you satiate,
And where oppressed with wealth inordinate,
You have the power
To bless the people with whate’er they need,
The melancholy, from their sorrows lead,
The light of heart, exulting pleasures cede,
Who never cower.
The Ocean laves secure the outer shore,
Which, like a dyke, is raised your fields before;
And streams, like arteries, all veinèd o’er,
The woods refreshing;
And rolling down from mountains and the hills,
Afford, upon their banks, fit sites for mills;
And furnish, what the heart with transport fills,
The finest fishing.
Jacob Steendam.
Other expeditions followed, but though the colony prospered, the mother country could provide little means of defence, and it was practically at the mercy of the English—the “swine” of Steendam’s verses.
THE COMPLAINT OF NEW AMSTERDAM
[1659]
I’m a grandchild of the gods
Who on th’ Amstel have abodes;
Whence their orders forth are sent,
Swift for aid and punishment.
I, of Amsterdam, was born,
Early of her breasts forlorn;
From her care so quickly weaned
Oft have I my fate bemoaned.
From my youth up left alone,
Naught save hardship have I known;
Dangers have beset my way
From the first I saw the day.
Think you this a cause for marvel?
This will then the thread unravel,
And the circumstances trace,
Which upon my birth took place.
Would you ask for my descent?
Long the time was it I spent
In the loins of warlike Mars.
‘T seems my mother, seized with fears,
Prematurely brought me forth.
But I now am very loth
To inform how this befel;
Though ’twas thus, I know full well,
Bacchus, too,—it is no dream,—
First beheld the daylight’s beam
From the thigh of Jupiter.
But my reasons go too far.
My own matter must I say,
And not loiter by the way,
E’en though Bacchus oft has proven
Friend to me in my misfortune.
Now the midwife who received me,
Was Bellona; in suspense, she
Long did sit in trembling fear,
For the travail was severe.
From the moment I was born,
Indian neighbors made me mourn.
They pursued me night and day,
While my mother kept away.
But my sponsors did supply
Better my necessity;
They sustained my feeble life;
They procured a bounteous wife
As my nurse, who did not spare
To my lips her paps to bear.
This was Ceres; freely she
Rendered what has nurtured me.
Her most dearly I will prize;
She has made my horns to rise;
Trained my growth through tender years,
’Midst my burdens and my cares.
True both simple ’twas and scant,
What I had to feed my want.
Oft ’twas naught except Sapawn
And the flesh of buck or fawn.
When I thus began to grow,
No more care did they bestow,
Yet my breasts are full and neat,
And my hips are firmly set.
Neptune shows me his good will;
Merc’ry, quick, exerts his skill
Me t’ adorn with silk and gold;
Whence I’m sought by suitors bold.
Stricken by my cheek’s fresh bloom,
By my beauteous youthful form,
They attempt to seize the treasure
To enjoy their wanton pleasure.
They, my orchards too, would plunder,
Truly ’tis a special wonder,
That a maid with such a portion
Does not suffer more misfortune:
For, I venture to proclaim,
No one can a maiden name
Who with richer land is blessed
Than th’ estate by me possessed.
See: two streams my garden bind,
From the East and North they wind,—
Rivers pouring in the sea,
Rich in fish, beyond degree.
Milk and butter: fruits to eat
No one can enumerate;
Ev’ry vegetable known;
Grain the best that e’er was grown.
All the blessings man e’er knew,
Here does Our Great Giver strew
(And a climate ne’er more pure),
But for me,—yet immature,
Fraught with danger, for the swine
Trample down these crops of mine;
Up-root, too, my choicest land;
Still and dumb, the while, I stand,
In the hope, my mother’s arm
Will protect me from the harm.
She can succor my distress.
Now my wish, my sole request,—
Is for men to till my land;
So I’ll not in silence stand.
I have lab’rors almost none;
Let my household large become;
I’ll my mother’s kitchen furnish
With my knick-knacks, with my surplus;
With tobacco, furs and grain;
So that Prussia she’ll disdain.
Jacob Steendam,
In spite of this neglect, the new town thrived apace. Friendly relations were established with the settlers at Plymouth, and the colony seemed to be moving steadily toward a golden future. In May, 1647, there arrived from Holland the new director, Peter Stuyvesant. He ruled supreme until 1664, when New Amsterdam surrendered to an English fleet.
PETER STUYVESANT’S NEW YEAR’S CALL
[I. Jan. A. C. 1661]
Where nowadays the Battery lies,
New York had just begun,
A new-born babe, to rub its eyes,
In Sixteen Sixty-One.
They christened it Nieuw Amsterdam,
Those burghers grave and stately,
And so, with schnapps and smoke and psalm,
Lived out their lives sedately.
Two windmills topped their wooden wall,
On Stadthuys gazing down,
On fort, and cabbage-plots, and all
The quaintly gabled town;
These flapped their wings and shifted backs,
As ancient scrolls determine,
To scare the savage Hackensacks,
Paumanks, and other vermin.
At night the loyal settlers lay
Betwixt their feather-beds;
In hose and breeches walked by day,
And smoked, and wagged their heads.
No changeful fashions came from France,
The freulen to bewilder,
And cost the burgher’s purse, perchance,
Its every other guilder.
In petticoats of linsey-red,
And jackets neatly kept,
The vrouws their knitting-needles sped
And deftly spun and swept.
Few modern-school flirtations there
Set wheels of scandal trundling,
But youths and maidens did their share
Of staid, old-fashioned bundling.
—The New Year opened clear and cold;
The snow, a Flemish ell
In depth, lay over Beeckman’s Wold
And Wolfert’s frozen well.
Each burgher shook his kitchen-doors,
Drew on his Holland leather,
Then stamped through drifts to do the chores,
Beshrewing all such weather.
But—after herring, ham, and kraut—
To all the gathered town
The Dominie preached the morning out,
In Calvinistic gown;
While tough old Peter Stuyvesant
Sat pewed in foremost station,—
The potent, sage, and valiant
Third Governor of the nation.
Prayer over, at his mansion hall,
With cake and courtly smile,
He met the people, one and all,
In gubernatorial style;
Yet missed, though now the day was old,
An ancient fellow-feaster,—
Heer Govert Loockermans, that bold
Brewer and burgomeester;
Who, in his farmhouse, close without
The picket’s eastern end,
Sat growling at the twinge of gout
That kept him from his friend.
But Peter strapped his wooden peg,
When tea and cake were ended
(Meanwhile the sound remaining leg
Its high jack-boot defended),
A woolsey cloak about him threw,
And swore, by wind and limb,
Since Govert kept from Peter’s view,
Peter would visit him;
Then sallied forth, through snow and blast,
While many a humbler greeter
Stood wondering whereaway so fast
Strode bluff Hardkoppig Pieter.
Past quay and cowpath, through a lane
Of vats and mounded tans,
He puffed along, with might and main,
To Govert Loockermans;
Once there, his right of entry took,
And hailed his ancient crony:
“Myn Gód! in dese Manhattoes, Loock,
Ve gets more snow as money!”
To which, and after whiffs profound,
With doubtful wink and nod,
There came at last responsive sound:
“Yah, Peter; yah, Myn Gód!”
Then goedevrouw Marie sat her guest
Beneath the chimney-gable,
And courtesied, bustling at her best
To spread the New Year’s table.
She brought the pure and genial schnapps,
That years before had come—
In the “Nieuw Nederlandts,” perhaps—
To cheer the settlers’ home;
The long-stemmed pipes; the fragrant roll
Of pressed and crispy Spanish;
Then placed the earthen mugs and bowl,
Nor long delayed to vanish.
Thereat, with cheery nod and wink,
And honors of the day,
The trader mixed the Governor’s drink
As evening sped away.
That ancient room! I see it now:
The carven nutwood dresser;
The drawers, that many a burgher’s vrouw
Begrudged their rich possessor;
The brace of high-backed leathern chairs,
Brass-nailed at every seam;
Six others, ranged in equal pairs;
The bacon hung abeam;
The chimney-front, with porcelain shelft;
The hearty wooden fire;
The picture, on the steaming delft,
Of David and Goliah.
I see the two old Dutchmen sit
Like Magog and his mate,
And hear them, when their pipes are lit,
Discuss affairs of state:
The clique that would their sway demean;
The pestilent importation
Of wooden nutmegs, from the lean
And losel Yankee nation.
But when the subtle juniper
Assumed its sure command,
They drank the buxom loves that were,—
They drank the Motherland;
They drank the famous Swedish wars,
Stout Peter’s special glory,
While Govert proudly showed the scars
Of Indian contests gory.
Erelong, the berry’s power awoke
Some music in their brains,
And, trumpet-like, through rolling smoke,
Rang long-forgotten strains,—
Old Flemish snatches, full of blood,
Of phantom ships and battle;
And Peter, with his leg of wood,
Made floor and casement rattle.
Then round and round the dresser pranced,
The chairs began to wheel,
And on the board the punch-bowl danced
A Netherlandish reel;
Till midnight o’er the farmhouse spread
Her New Year’s skirts of sable,
And inch by inch, each puzzled head
Dropt down upon the table.
But still to Peter, as he dreamed,
The table spread and turned;
The chimney-log blazed high, and seemed
To circle as it burned;
The town into the vision grew
From ending to beginning;
Fort, wall, and windmill met his view,
All widening and spinning.
The cowpaths, leading to the docks,
Grew broader, whirling past,
And checkered into shining blocks,—
A city fair and vast;
Stores, churches, mansions, overspread
The metamorphosed island,
While not a beaver showed his head
From Swamp to Kalchook highland.
Eftsoons the picture passed away;
Hours after, Peter woke
To see a spectral streak of day
Gleam in through fading smoke;
Still slept old Govert, snoring on
In most melodious numbers;
No dreams of Eighteen Sixty-One
Commingled with his slumbers.
But Peter, from the farmhouse door,
Gazed doubtfully around,
Rejoiced to find himself once more
On sure and solid ground.
The sky was somewhat dark ahead,
Wind east, the morning lowery;
And on he pushed, a two-miles’ tread,
To breakfast at his Bouwery.
Edmund Clarence Stedman.