he distance was full two hundred pipes, or about one hundred and
twenty miles.

With an appearance of great hurry and business, and smoking a short
traveling pipe, he proceeded on a long swing trot through the muddy lanes
of the metropolis, demolishing whole batches of dirt pies which the little
Dutch children were making in the road, and for which kind of pastry the
children of this city have ever been famous. On arriving at the governor's
house, he climbed down from his steed, roused the gray-headed doorkeeper,
old Skaats, who, like his lineal descendant and faithful representative,
the venerable crier of our court, was nodding at his post, rattled at the
door of the council chamber, and startled the members as they were dozing
over a plan for establishing a public market.

At that very moment a gentle grunt, or rather a deep-drawn snore, was
heard from the chair of the governor, a whiff of smoke was at the same
instant observed to escape from his lips, and a light cloud to ascend from
the bowl of his pipe. The council, of course, supposed him engaged in deep
sleep for the good of the community, and according to custom, in all such
cases established, every man bawled out "Silence!" when, of a sudden, the
door flew open, and the little courier straddled into the apartment, cased
to the middle in a pair of Hessian boots, which he had got into for the
sake of expedition. In his right hand he held forth the ominous
dispatches, and with his left he grasped firmly the waistband of his
galligaskins, which had unfortunately given way in the exertion of
descending from his horse. He stumped resolutely up to the governor, and,
with more hurry than perspicuity, delivered his message. But, fortunately,
his ill tidings came too late to ruffle the tranquillity of this most
tranquil of rulers. His venerable Excellency had just breathed and smoked
his last; his lungs and his pipe having been exhausted together, and his
peaceful soul having escaped in the last whiff that curled from his
tobacco pipe. In a word, the renowned Walter the Doubter, who had so often
slumbered with his contemporaries, now slept with his fathers, and
Wilhelmus Kieft governed in his stead.

_BOOK IV._

CONTAINING THE CHRONICLES OF THE REIGN OF WILLIAM THE TESTY.

CHAPTER I.

When the lofty Thucydides is about to enter upon his description of the
plague that desolated Athens, one of his modern commentators assures the
reader that the history is no