renowned burghers who have preceded me in the steady march of
existence--whose sober and temperate blood now meanders through my veins,
flowing slower and slower in its feeble conduits, until its current shall
soon be stopped for ever!

These I say to myself are but frail memorials of the mighty men who
flourished in the days of the patriarchs: but who, alas! have long since
smouldered in that tomb towards which my steps are insensibly and
irresistibly hastening. As I pace the darkened chamber, and lose myself in
melancholy musings, the shadowy images around me almost seem to steal once
more into existence, their countenances to assume the animation of
life--their eyes to pursue me in every movement! Carried away by the
delusions of fancy, I almost imagine myself surrounded by the shades of
the departed, and holding sweet converse with the worthies of antiquity!
Ah, hapless Diedrich! born in a degenerate age, abandoned to the
buffetings of fortune--a stranger and weary pilgrim in thy native
land--blest with no weeping wife, nor family of helpless children; but
doomed to wander neglected through those crowded streets, and elbowed by
foreign upstarts from those fair abodes where once thine ancestors held
sovereign empire!

Let me not, however, lose the historian in the man, nor suffer the doting
recollections of age to overcome me, while dwelling with fond garrulity on
the virtuous days of the patriarchs--on those sweet days of simplicity and
ease, which never more will dawn on the lovely island of Manna-hata.

These melancholy reflections have been forced from me by the growing
wealth and importance of New Amsterdam, which, I plainly perceive, are to
involve it in all kinds of perils and disasters. Already, as I observed at
the close of my last book, they had awakened the attention of the mother
country. The usual mark of protection shown by mother countries to wealthy
colonies was forthwith manifested; a governor being sent out to rule over
the province, and squeeze out of it as much revenue as possible. The
arrival of a governor of course put an end to the protectorate of Oloffe
the Dreamer. He appears, however, to have dreamt to some purpose during
his sway, as we find him afterwards living as a patroon on a great landed
estate on the banks of the Hudson, having virtually forfeited all right to
his ancient appellation of Kortlandt, or Lackland.

It was in the year of our Lord 1629 that Mynheer Wouter Van Twiller w