Ten years later, in 1638, New Haven was founded, built from the first on the square; its long sand-reaches cooled in the shade of branches that waved frequent welcomes to successive bands of settlers. But a shadier event for Charles I. occurred this year in England, in the detention of John Hampden and Oliver Cromwell, with all their traps and plunder, after it and they had been safely stowed away under hatches on board ship.
How little do we know what’s in the wind? Had it blown that day southwest instead of northeast, Charles I. might have worn his handsome but worthless head many years longer; the Stuart family to-day might perhaps be occupying the state chair of Victoria and the heavy Hanoverians; and the descendants of Messrs. Cromwell and Hampden be keeping store in some of our villages, or even got so low as to become aldermen, members of assembly, or even descended to the House of Representatives.
The same year John Harvard left a donation of three thousand dollars to a select school, founded two years previously at Newtown, which took his money and name. From this small, yet early laid foundation, Harvard College has since got up several Storeys; and although Sparks have been applied to the edifice, it still stands, like a tower set on a hill, diffusing its learned light to Holmes happy and genial, reaching upward to Longfellow, and even illuminating men Whittier than he.
We have now briefly traced the settlements of five of the New England States, bringing down their history to 1643, when, with the exception of spunky Rhode Island, they formed their first union against the witty but out-witted French of Acadia on the northeast, the trading, solid Dutch of Manhattan, and the universally hostile Indian tribes, whose enmity now became in the inverse ratio of their hunting-grounds. The sixth of these States, Vermont, came late and strugglingly among her brothers and sisters. Both New York and New Hampshire pouted and grumbled at the appearance of the new-comer, and threatened to smother her in the cradle. But the child, fed on simple food, and breathing the healthy air of the Green Mountains, grew apace after its birth in 1724, and got such a good Constitution in 1777, that she at length acquired all her rights; and what by fishing in the Connecticut, hunting among her evergreen hills, and keeping to her mutton and her last, she looked as she sat in the old continental schoolhouse as fresh, blooming, and thrifty as any. Vermont early sent away her surplus beef and swine, but she kept plenty of pluck at home.
It is sometimes said that if the Western States had been first discovered, New England would never have been settled at all; but this seeming reproach upon the hard and stern features of New England soil and climate warms into a compliment when we see what fabrics of iron, cotton, and woollen have been conjured from her narrow means, what wealth dangles from her hooks, what oil she gets without blubbering, what a clean white marble face she puts on our houses and stores, and what nutmegs and tropical wonders she picks up from her beeches and haze-le bushes, and what seasoning she distributes to spice our tables with literary condiments.
CHAPTER V.
THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW YORK.
The Spirits of the Age present at its Foundation.—Who they were and how they were affected.—The Wonders of Manhattan in September, 1609.—How the Animal, Vegetable, Ornithological, Maritime, and Human Productions then compared with those now.—What New York Lots were worth two hundred and sixty Years ago.—Their Owners.—Hudson’s Trip up the River.—What he saw and didn’t see.—The four Dutch Governors; their Doings and Misdoings.—Sketch of Holland and the Characteristics which she impressed upon New Amsterdam.—Bravery evinced in settling Brooklyn.—How the Van Rensselaers and other Vans were enticed hither.—The Troubles and Sorrows of Wouter[Wouter] Van Twiller and William Kieft.—Of the Surrender of the Dutch, and the Instalment of English Rule in New York.—Petrus Stuyvesant retires from Business.—His Farm and what he raised on it.
“The spirit of the age,” says Bancroft, “was present when the foundations of New York were laid.” More justly might it be said that a good deal of spirits, including a fair amount of Holland schnaps, put up in long gray-colored jugs, was there, carried on shore by order of the honest skipper of the Half-Moon, and duly distributed on the auspicious occasion. The corner-stone of the Western metropolis was laid by a mason employed by the Dutch East India Company, whose wide breeches, glittering knee-buckles, and large slouched hat, set off by a smart feather, seemed to the straight-limbed, wondering Algonquins, as they huddled in friendly curiosity around him, to belong to some well-fed, fat Mercury, fresh from a distant Olympus, taking a pleasant trip to their simple island.
The Spirits of the Age laying the Foundations of New York.
(p. 127)