come from the up-river country,
from Fort Orange, where his residence is, an old man, named Domine
Schaets,[98] of Amsterdam. He was, it appears, a Voetian, and had come
down for the purpose of approving, examining, ordaining and collating
a student; to perform which office the neighboring ministers come
here, as to the capital, and in order that the collation may be
approved by the governor, who, at this time, was not at home, but was
at Pemequick, in the northerly parts of New England.[99] This student,
named Tessemaker, from Utrecht, I believe, was a Voetian, and had
found some obstacles in his way, because the other ministers were all
Cocceians, namely: Do. Niewenhuisen, of [New] Amsterdam, the one of
Long Island, and Do. Gaesbeck, of Esopus, whose son is sheriff of this
city. He was to minister at the South River, near the governor there,
or in the principal place, as he himself told us. The governor was
expected home every day, and then Tessemaker supposed he would be
dispatched.

[Footnote 98: Rev. Gideon Schaets was settled as pastor at
Rensselaerswyck in 1652, later at Beverwyck and Albany, continuing in
service there till he died in 1694, aged 86. Peter Tesschenmaker had
come up from Dutch Guiana, and had supplied the pulpits at Esopus and
at Newcastle on the South River (Delaware River), for about a year in
each place. The history of his formal call, examination, ordination in
October, 1679, and appointment, is set forth in _Ecclesiastical
Records of New York_, I. 724-735. The only three other Dutch Reformed
ministers in the Province at this time were those named below: Rev.
Wilhelmus van Nieuwenhuysen of New York (1672--d. 1681), Rev. Casparus
van Zuuren of Flushing, Brooklyn, and Flatlands (1677-1685), and Rev.
Laurentius Gaasbeeck of Esopus (1678--d. February, 1680).]

[Footnote 99: Pemaquid, on the coast of Maine, where this governor had
built a fort in 1677, on territory embraced in the Duke of York's
patent. The governor was Sir Edmund Andros (1674-1681). He visited
Pemaquid in the autumn of 1679. He was of course nowise subordinate to
the governor of Jamaica.]

The governor is the greatest man in New Netherland, and acknowledges
no superior in all America, except the viceroy, who resides upon
Jamaica.

This Schaets, then, preached. He had a defect in the left eye, and
used such strange gestures and language that I think I never in all my
life have heard any thing more miserable; indeed, I can comp