t length ventured to sail up
through the Narrows, drew near to Manhattan Island, and saw some of its
early inhabitants. The first New-Yorkers were very indifferently clad;
but the young ladies--squaws, as they were called--were well acquainted
with paint and powder, and had an inexhaustible appetite for feathers,
beads, and other finery. Shells were the money of the country; and fur
robes, rich with embroidery, were worn by the chiefs.

After a pleasant voyage in September, 1609, up the Hudson River to
Albany, the famous navigator passed through the harbor out to sea, and
then sailed away, never to return--unless we accept Irving's legend, and
hear with Rip Van Winkle the roar of the balls of the Dutch sailors as
they play their weird games amongst the Catskills, while the lightning
flashes and the thunder peals in the dismal night. But Sandy Hook now
became a well-known scene to the Dutch sailors. Immigrants came over; a
few houses were built at first on New York Island; Albany was settled in
1614, and the same year Adrian Block, when his own ship was burned,
built a new one on the Manhattan shore. It was the first vessel produced
in this centre of the world's trade. It was not quite as broad as it was
long; but its length of keel was thirty-eight feet, on deck it was
nearly forty-five feet, and its breadth about eleven and a half. On this
peculiar craft the gallant explorer set out to survey the great East
River. He passed safely the perils of both Hell Gates, coasted the
unknown shores to Block Island, and left an imperishable name on that
pleasant summer resort. New Amsterdam became a famous seat of trade. Fur
and tobacco were its chief commodities. A fine tobacco plantation
stretched along the East River at Corlaer's Hook, and at Albany the Van
Rensselaers and Schuylers contended for the fur trade of the savages,
sometimes coming to blows. Many Dutch galliots now sailed leisurely over
from old Amsterdam to the new. New York Island was covered with rich
farms. In 1679 peaches were so plenty that they were fed to the swine;
strawberries covered the ground in rare profusion. Sheltered within the
protecting arm of Sandy Hook, the little city nourished and grew great.
It had no idle hands. Its burgomasters all either kept shops, taverns,
or worked on farms, and scorned sloth. All was prosperous growth, under
the famous Governor Stuyvesant, when suddenly, in August, 1664, for the
first time, a hostile English fleet sailed