Part 10 (1/2)

The same kind of fortification stood at the other end of the palisade, on the sh.o.r.e of that river discovered by Master Henry Hudson, and near each battery was a gate giving entrance to the town, while an arch with heavy barriers, formed with much ornamentation of carving, stretched across the Broad Way.

Following this palisade was a wide lane, along which were built the huts of the slaves, servants, or people who were poor because of being lazy.

VILLAGE LAWS

It was on this palisade that I read the first of Director Stuyvesant's messages, and during that stroll I saw so many of them that I can even now repeat the words. They ran like this, and, to my mind, it would have been well if Master Kieft had given his attention to the same matter:

”Whereas, we are informed of the great ravages the wolf commits on the small cattle; therefore to animate and encourage the proprietors who will go out and shoot the same, we have resolved to authorize the a.s.sistant Schout and Schepens to give public notice that whoever shall exhibit a wolf to them which hath been shot on this island, on this side Haarlem, shall be promptly paid therefor by them, for a wolf twenty florins, and for a she-wolf thirty florins in wampum, or the value thereof.”

When the farmer's bell tolled from the belfrey of the church within the fort, all the gates in the palisade were closed, and no person might enter or leave the city from that time, which was nine of the clock in the evening, until sunrise of the next morning.

I have heard it said that there were many living beyond the palisade who claimed that this was all too early for them to leave the houses of their friends in the town, when there for a visit of pleasure; but I hold to it that he who would remain out of his bed longer than that is little better than a night-brawler, because of honest people being ready for sleep when the day's work is at an end.

OTHER THINGS ABOUT TOWN

A thing which displeased me, though perhaps I was easily put out by anything Director Stuyvesant did, was that he should have set up the gallows in front of the stone tavern built by Master Kieft, after it had been turned into the town hall.

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To me that instrument of justice was a blot on the fair building, even though it be something necessary in all towns; the whipping-post and the stocks seem to be there by right, and do not cast such a horror upon him who pa.s.ses them, but to have ever in sight that which had been built for the taking away of men's lives is, in a way, brutal.

The hooft, or city dock, was ever a pleasant lounging place to me, particularly when there were many s.h.i.+ps in the roadstead. It was pleasing to sit there idle, thinking Master Tienhoven was poring over my accounts when the day was so fair that one enjoyed being in the suns.h.i.+ne, and to watch the s.h.i.+ps or the small boats that flitted to and fro. It was enough to make one believe that in the days to come this New Amsterdam of ours might grow to be even as large as Amsterdam in Holland.

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Then could I, and all others who had a part in the building of the town, look back with pride upon our life-work, save that in it should be something of shame and crime, as in the case of Master Kieft, who, I may say here, was drowned in a s.h.i.+pwreck on his way back to Holland to answer to the Company for his misdeeds.

But there was at times one matter which gave me pain at the city dock, and that was whenever there arrived a vessel laden with black men, who had been stolen from Africa. With such a scene in view I had no desire to linger.

It so chanced that I went there on a certain day when the _White Horse_, a slave s.h.i.+p that came more than once to our town, was sending ash.o.r.e a throng of forlorn looking negroes to be exposed for sale, and there was so much of suffering and heart-sickness in the scene that I went back to the storehouse, glad to stay with Master Tienhoven rather than see the misery which I could not cure.

A VISIT OF CEREMONY

Before Master Stuyvesant had ruled over us many months, he went in great state to meet the governor of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony at some place in the Connecticut Colony, and if all that was said regarding the matter be true, he did what he might to persuade the Englishmen that he was of vast importance in this New World.

He journeyed on the s.h.i.+p _Black Eagle_, taking with him no less than eight servants, four trumpeters, and twelve soldiers, and I wonder much whether those people who had built here in America such towns as Salem, Plymouth, and Boston, were greatly impressed because the chief magistrate of New Amsterdam, where were living no more than fifteen hundred persons, could not go abroad without a following of twenty-four men, to say nothing of the secretaries, the clerks, cooks, and jacks-of-all-trades whom I saw flocking on board the s.h.i.+p.

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