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.
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 now going to be exceedingly solemn,
serious and pathetic; and hints, with that air of
chuckling gratulation with which a good dame draws
forth a choice morsel from a cupboard to regale a
favorite, that this plague will give his history a
most agreeable variety.
In like manner did my heart leap within me when I
came to the dolorous dilemma of Fort Good Hope, which
I at once perceived to be the forerunner of a series
of great events and entertaining disasters. Such
are the true subjects for the historic pen. For
what is history, in fact, but a kind of Newgate Calendar—a
register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted
on his fellow-men? It is a huge libel on human
nature to which we industriously add page after page,
volume after volume, as if we were building up a monument
to the honor, rather than the infamy, of our species.
If we turn over the pages of these chronicles that
man has written of himself, what are the characters
dignified by the appellation of great, and held up
to the admiration of posterity? Tyrants, robbers,
conquerors, renowned only for the magnitude of their
misdeeds and the stupendous wrongs and miseries they
have inflicted on mankind—warriors, who
have hired themselves to the trade of blood, not from
motives of virtuous patriotism, or to protect the
injured and defenseless, but merely to gain the vaunted
glory of being adroit and successful in massacring
their fellow-beings! What are the great events
that constitute a glorious era? The fall of empires,
the desolation of happy countries, splendid cities
smoking in their ruins, the proudest works of art tumbled
in the dust, the shrieks and groans of whole nations
ascending unto heaven!
It is thus the historians may be said to thrive on
the miseries of mankind, like birds of prey which
hover over the field of battle to fatten on the mighty
dead. It was observed by a great projector of
inland lock navigation, that rivers, lakes, and oceans
were only formed to feed canals. In like manner
I am tempted to believe that plots, conspiracies,
wars, victories, and massacres are ordained by Providence
only as food for the historian.
