gay
retreats of luxury--villas half buried in twilight bowers, whence the
amorous flute oft breathes the sighings of some city swain--there the
fish-hawk built his solitary nest on some dry tree that overlooked his
watery domain. The timid deer fed undisturbed along those shores now
hallowed by the lover's moonlight walk and printed by the slender foot
of beauty; and a savage solitude extended over those happy regions where
now are reared the stately towers of the Joneses, the Schermerhornes,
and the Rhinelanders.

Ah! witching scenes of foul delusion! Ah! hapless voyagers, gazing with
simple wonder on these Circean shores! Such, alas! are they, poor easy
souls who listen to the seductions of a wicked world--treacherous are
its smiles, fatal its caresses. He who yields to its enticements
launches upon a whelming tide, and trusts his feeble bark among the
dimpling eddies of a whirlpool! And thus it fared with the worthies of
Pavonia, who, little mistrusting the guileful scene before them, drifted
quietly on until they were aroused by an uncommon tossing and agitation
of their vessels. For now the late dimpling current began to brawl
around them and the waves to boil and foam with horrific fury. Awakened
as if from a dream, the astonished Oloffe bawled aloud to put about, but
his words were lost amid the roaring of the waters. And now ensued a
scene of direful consternation. At one time they were borne with
dreadful velocity among tumultuous breakers; at another hurried down
boisterous rapids. Now they were nearly dashed upon the Hen and Chickens
(infamous rocks!--more voracious than Scylla and her whelps), and anon
they seemed sinking into yawning gulfs that threatened to entomb them
beneath the waves. All the elements combined to produce a hideous
confusion. The waters raged, the winds howled, and as they were hurried
along several of the astonished mariners beheld the rocks and trees of
the neighboring shores driving through the air!

At length the mighty tub of Commodore Van Kortlandt was drawn into the
vortex of that tremendous whirlpool called the Pot, where it was whirled
about in giddy mazes until the senses of the good commander and his crew
were overpowered by the horror of the scene and the strangeness of the
revolution. How the gallant squadron of Pavonia was snatched from the
jaws of this modern Charybdis has never been truly made known, for so
many survived to tell the tale, and, what is still more wonderf