Jersey. This son is a very profligate person. He married a merchant's daughter here, and has so treated his wife that her father has been compelled to take her home again. He runs about among the farmers, and stays where he can find most to drink, and sleeps in barns on the straw. If he would conduct himself properly he might hold the highest positions, for he has studied the moralities, and seems to have been of a good understanding; but that is all now drowned. His father, who will no longer acknowledge him as his son,1 allows him yearly as much only as is necessary to live."

The morning after this hilarious night at the schout's, our friends set out from Harlem village to go up to the end of the island, and perhaps it may have been the thirst which sometimes ensues upon such nights that made them exclaim over the deliciousness of the juicy morning peaches. “When we were not far from the point of Spyten Duyvil we could see on our left hand the rocky cliffs of the mainland on the other side Duyvil. of the North River, these cliffs standing straight up and down, with the grain, just as if they were antimony. We crossed over the Spyten Duyvil in a canoe, and paid nine stivers fare [or about eighteen cents] for us three, which was very dear. We followed the opposite side of the land, till we came to the house of one Valentyn,

Spyten

The

him a cousin; and Burke does not elucidate the matter. names Philip and George had for at least four centuries been so thickly iterated among the Carterets that their use as distinctive appellations was lost.

1 Hence probably the rumour of illegitimacy.

a great acquaintance of our Gerrit's. He had gone to the city, but his wife, though she did not know Gerrit or us, was so much rejoiced to see Hollanders that she hardly knew what to do for us. She set before us what she had. We left after breakfasting. Her son showed us the way, and we came to a road entirely covered with peaches. We asked the boy why they left them to lie there, and why the hogs did not eat them. He answered, we do not know what to do with them, there are so many; the hogs are satiated with them and will not eat any more. We pursued our way now a small distance through the woods and over the hills, then back again along the shore to a point where lived an Englishman named Webblingh, who was standing ready to cross over. He carried us over with him, and refused to take any pay for our passage, offering us at the same time some of his rum, a liquor which is everywhere.

"We were now again at New Harlem, and dined with Geresolveert, at whose house we had slept the night before, and who made us welcome. It was now two o'clock; and leaving there we crossed the island, which takes about three quarters of an hour to do, and came to the North River, which we followed a little within The good the woods, as far as Sappokanican, where beer of Gerrit had a sister and some friends. There we rested ourselves and drank some good beer, which was very refreshing. We then kept on our way along the shore to the city, where we arrived in the evening very tired, having walked

Greenwich.

this day about forty miles. I must add, in passing through this island we sometimes encountered such a sweet smell in the air that we stood still, because we did not know what it was we were meeting."

Three dominies.

On

In the course of their adventures our worthy friends inform us that they talked with "the first male born of Europeans in New Netherland," a brewer named Jean Vigné. "His parents were from Valenciennes, and he was now about sixtyfive years of age." Their pictures of the clergy are not flattering. They heard a venerable minister "from the up-river country at Fort Orange," who was called Dominie Schaats, whose demeanour was so rough and outlandish that they suspected him of indulgence in the ubiquitous rum. They tell us that Dominie Nieuwenhuysen was "a thick, corpulent person, with a red and bloated face, and of very slabbering speech." one Sunday they went at noon "to hear the English minister, whose service took place after the Dutch church was out. There were not above twenty-five or thirty people in the church. The first thing that occurred was the reading of their prayers and ceremonies out of the prayer-book, as is done in all Episcopal churches. A young man then went into the pulpit and preached, who thought he was performing wonders; but he had a little book in his hand out of which he read his sermon, which was from a quarter to half an hour long. With this the services were concluded, whereat we could not be sufficiently astonished." This young parson was Mr. James Wolley, who came in 1678 with Andros. We may now let him