ing from his horfe. He ftumped refolutely up to the governor, and with more hurry than perfpicuity delivered his meffage. But fortunately his ill tidings came too late to ruffle the tranquillity of this most tranquil of rulers. His venerable excellency had just breathed and smoked his last-his lungs and his pipe having been exhaufted together, and his peaceful foul having escaped in the laft whiff that curled from his tobacco pipe. In a word, the renowned Walter the Doubter, who had so often flumbered with his cotemporaries, now flept with his fathers, and Wilhel mus Kieft governed in his stead.

1

END OF BOOK III.

Containing the Chronicles of the reign of William the

Testy.

CHAP. I.

Shewing the nature of history in general; containing furthermore the universal acquirements of William the Testy, and how a man may learn so much, as to render himself good for nothing.

WHEN the lofty Thucydides is about to enter upon his description of the plague that desolated Athens, one of his modern commentators* affures the reader, that the history" is now going to be exceeding folemn, ferious, and pathetic ;" and hints, with that air of chuckling gratulation, with which a good dame draws forth a choice morfel from a cupboard to regale a favorite, that this plague will give his history a most agreeable variety.

In like manner did my heart leap within me, when I came to the dolorous dilemma of Fort Good Hope, which I at once perceived to be the forerunner of a series of great events and entertaining difafters. Such are the true fubjects for the historic pen.

Smith's Thucyd. Vol. I.

For

what is hiftory, in fact, but a kind of Newgate kalendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow man. It is a huge libel on human nature, to which we induftriously add page after page, volume after volume, as if we were building up a monument to the honour, rather than the infamy of our species. If we turn over the pages of thefe chronicles that man has written of himself, what are the characters dignified by the appellation of great, and held up to the admiration of pofterity. Tyrants, robbers, conquerors, renowned only for the magnitude of their mifdeeds, and the ftupendous wrongs and miferies they have inflicted on mankind-warriors, who have hired themselves to the trade of blood, not from motives of virtuous patriotifm, or to protect the injured and defenceless, but merelyto gain the vaunted glory of being ad roit and fuccefsful in maffacring their fellow beings! what are the great events that constitute a glorious era ?-The fall of empires-the defolation of happy countries-fplendid cities fmoaking in their ruins-the proudest works of art tumbled in the duft-the fhrieks and groans of whole nations, afcending unto heaven!

It is thus the hiftorians may be faid to thrive on the miseries of mankind, they are like the birds of prey that hover over the field of battle, to fatten on the mighty dead. It was obferved by a great projector of inland lock navigation, that rivers, lakes and oceans, were only formed to feed canals. In like manner I

am tempted to believe, that plots, confpiracies, wars, victories and maffacres, are ordained by providence only as food for the hiftorian.

It is a fource of great delight to the philofopher, in ftudying the wonderful economy of nature, to trace the mutual dependencies of things, how they are created reciprocally for each other, and how the most noxious and apparently unneceffary animal has its ufes. Thus thofe fwarms of flies, which are fo often execrated as ufelefs vermin, are created for the fuftenance of spiders-and spiders on the other hand, are evidently made to devour flies. So thofe heroes who have been fuch pefts in the world, were bounteously provided as themes for the poet and the historian, while the poet and historian were destined to record the atchievements of heroes!

Thefe, and many fimilar reflections, naturally arofe in my mind, as I took up my pen to commence the reign of William Kieft: for now the stream of our hiftory, which hitherto has rolled in a tranquil current, is about to depart forever from its peaceful haunts, and brawl through many a turbulent and rugged fcene. Like fome fleek ox, which, having fed and fattened in a rich clover field lies funk in luxurious repofe, and will bear repeated taunts and blows, before it heaves its unwieldy limbs and clumfily aroufes from its flumbers." So the province of the Nieuw-Nederlandts, having long thrived and grown corpulent, under the prosperous reign of the Doubter, was reluctantly awakened

to a melancholy conviction, that by patient fufferance its grievances had become fo numerous and aggravating that it was preferable to repel than endure them. The reader will now witness the manner in which a peaceful community advances towards a ftate of war; which it is too apt to approach, as a horfe does a drum, with much prancing and parade, but with little progress-and too often with the wrong end foremost.

WILHELMUS KIEFT who in 1684 afcended the Gubernatorial chair, (to borrow a favourite, though clumfy appellation of modern phrafeologifts) was in form, feature and character, the very reverse of Wouter Van Twiller, his renowned predeceffor. He was of very refpectable descent, his father being Inspector of Windmils in the ancient town of Saardam; and our hero we are told made very curious investigations into the nature and operations of those machines when a boy, which is one reason why he afterwards came to be so ingenious a governor. His name according to the most ingenious etymologifts was a corruption of Kyver, that is to say a wrangler or scolder, and expreffed the hereditary difpofition of his family; which for nearly two centuries, had kept the windy town of Saardam in hot water, and produced more tartars and brimftones than any ten families in the place and fo truly did Wilhelmus Kieft inherit this family endowment, that he had scarcely been a year in the discharge of his government, before he was