Not a hill, but some fortress disfigures it round!
And ramparts are raised where the cottage was found!
The plains and the vallies with ruin are spread,
With graves in abundance, and bones of the dead.
The first that attempted to enter the streight
(In anno one thousand six hundred and eight)
Was Hudson (the same that we mentioned before,
Who was lost in the gulph that he went to explore.)
For a sum that they paid him (we know not how much)
This captain transferred all his right to the Dutch;
For the time has been here, (to the world be it known,)
When all a man sailed by, or saw, was his own.
The Dutch on their purchase sat quietly down,
And fixed on an island to lay out a town;
They modelled their streets from the horns of a ram,
And the name that best pleased them was, New Amsterdam.
They purchased large tracts from the Indians for beads,
And sadly tormented some runaway Swedes,
Who (none knows for what) from their country had flown,
To live here in peace, undisturbed and alone.
New Belgia, the Dutch called their province, be sure,
But names never yet made possession secure,
For Charley (the second that honoured the name)
Sent over a squadron, asserting his claim:
(Had his sword and his title been equally slender,
In vain had they summoned Mynheer to surrender)
The soil they demanded, or threatened their worst,
Insisting that Cabot had looked at it first.
The want of a squadron to fall on their rear
Made the argument perfectly plain to Mynheer—
Force ended the contest—the right was a sham,
And the Dutch were sent packing to hot Surinam.
'Twas hard to be thus of their labours deprived,
But the age of Republics had not yet arrived—
Fate saw—though no wizzard could tell them as much—
That the crown, in due time, was to fare like the Dutch.
[290] Published in the Freeman's Journal, December 15, 1784, under the pseudonym "K." Republished in the editions of 1795 and 1809. Text from the latter edition.