Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete eBook
Washington Irving
These gigantic savages and smokers caused no little
disquiet in the mind of Mynheer Beekman, threatening
to cause a famine of tobacco in the land; but his
most formidable enemy was the roaring, roistering English
colony of Maryland, or, as it was anciently written,
Merryland; so called because the inhabitants, not
having the fear of the Lord before their eyes, were
prone to make merry and get fuddled with mint-julep
and apple-toddy. They were, moreover, great horse-racers
and cock-fighters, mighty wrestlers and jumpers, and
enormous consumers of hoe-cake and bacon. They
lay claim to be the first inventors of those recondite
beverages, cock-tail, stone-fence, and sherry-cobbler,
and to have discovered the gastronomical merits of
terrapins, soft crabs, and canvas-back ducks.
This rantipole colony, founded by Lord Baltimore,
a British nobleman, was managed by his agent, a swaggering
Englishman, commonly called Fendall, that is to say,
“offend all,” a name given him for his
bullying propensities. These were seen in a message
to Mynheer Beekman, threatening him, unless he immediately
swore allegiance to Lord Baltimore as the rightful
lord of the soil, to come at the head of the roaring
boys of Merryland and the giants of the Susquehanna,
and sweep him and his Nederlanders out of the country.
The trusty sword of Peter Stuyvesant almost leaped
from its scabbard, when he received missives from
Mynheer Beekman, informing him of the swaggering menaces
of the bully Fendall; and as to the giantly warriors
of the Susquehanna, nothing would have more delighted
him than a bout, hand to hand, with half a score of
them, having never encountered a giant in the whole
course of his campaigns, unless we may consider the
stout Risingh as such, and he was but a little one.
Nothing prevented his marching instantly to the South
River, and enacting scenes still more glorious than
those of Fort Christina, but the necessity of first
putting a stop to the increasing aggressions and inroads
of the Yankees, so as not to leave an enemy in his
rear; but he wrote to Mynheer Beekman to keep up a
bold front and a stout heart, promising, as soon as
he had settled affairs in the east, that he would hasten
to the south with his burly warriors of the Hudson,
to lower the crests of the giants, and mar the merriment
of the Merrylanders.
FOOTNOTES:
[57] Hariot’s Journal, Purch.
Pilgrims.
CHAPTER IV.
To explain the apparently sudden movement of Peter
Stuyvesant against the crafty men of the East Country,
I would observe that, during his campaigns on the
South River, and in the enchanted regions of the Catskill
Mountains, the twelve tribes of the East had been more
than usually active in prosecuting their subtle scheme
for the subjugation of the Nieuw Nederlands.
