hions natural to their sex, seemed very well inclined to
follow, but that their mothers, being more experienced in the world, and
better acquainted with men and things, strenuously discountenanced all
such outlandish innovations.

But what chiefly operated to embroil our ancestors with these strange folk
was an unwarrantable liberty which they occasionally took of entering in
hordes into the territories of the New Netherlands, and settling
themselves down, without leave or license, to improve the land in the
manner I have before noticed. This unceremonious mode of taking possession
of new land was technically termed squatting, and hence is derived the
appellation of squatters, a name odious in the ears of all great
landholders, and which is given to those enterprising worthies who seize
upon land first, and take their chance to make good their title to it
afterward.

All these grievances, and many others which were constantly accumulating,
tended to form that dark and portentious cloud which, as I observed in a
former chapter, was slowly gathering over the tranquil province of New
Netherlands. The pacific cabinet of Van Twiller, however, as will be
perceived in the sequel, bore them all with a magnanimity that redounds to
their immortal credit, becoming by passive endurance inured to this
increasing mass of wrongs, like that mighty man of old, who by dint of
carrying about a calf from the time it was born, continued to carry it
without difficulty when he had grown to be an ox.

CHAPTER IX.

By this time my readers must fully perceive what an arduous task I have
undertaken--exploring a little kind of Herculaneum of history, which had
lain nearly for ages buried under the rubbish of years, and almost totally
forgotten; raking up the limbs and fragments of disjointed facts, and
endeavoring to put them scrupulously together, so as to restore them to
their original form and connection; now lugging forth the character of an
almost forgotten hero, like a mutilated statue: now deciphering a
half-defaced inscription, and now lighting upon a mouldering manuscript,
which, after painful study, scarce repays the trouble of perusal.

In such cases how much has the reader to depend upon the honor and probity
of his author, lest, like a cunning antiquarian, he either impose upon him
some spurious fabrication of his own for a precious relic from antiquity,
or else dress up the dismembered fragment with such false trappings,