The Half-Moon crossed the bar, anchored in the lower bay, and the Dutch navigators proceeded cautiously to survey the hostile shore of Coney Island, where now the countless visitors of Manhattan or Brighton Beach gather on summer evenings, and at length ventured to sail up through the Narrows, drew near to Manhattan Island, and saw some of its early inhabitants. The first New-Yorkers were very indifferently clad; but the young ladies—squaws, as they were called—were well acquainted with paint and powder, and had an inexhaustible appetite for feathers, beads, and other finery. Shells were the money of the country; and fur robes, rich with embroidery, were worn by the chiefs.
After a pleasant voyage in September, 1609, up the Hudson River to Albany, the famous navigator passed through the harbor out to sea, and then sailed away, never to return—unless we accept Irving's legend, and hear with Rip Van Winkle the roar of the balls of the Dutch sailors as they play their weird games amongst the Catskills, while the lightning flashes and the thunder peals in the dismal night. But Sandy Hook now became a well-known scene to the Dutch sailors. Immigrants came over; a few houses were built at first on New York Island; Albany was settled in 1614, and the same year Adrian Block, when his own ship was burned, built a new one on the Manhattan shore. It was the first vessel produced in this centre of the world's trade. It was not quite as broad as it was long; but its length of keel was thirty-eight feet, on deck it was nearly forty-five feet, and its breadth about eleven and a half. On this peculiar craft the gallant explorer set out to survey the great East River. He passed safely the perils of both Hell Gates, coasted the unknown shores to Block Island, and left an imperishable name on that pleasant summer resort. New Amsterdam became a famous seat of trade. Fur and tobacco were its chief commodities. A fine tobacco plantation stretched along the East River at Corlaer's Hook, and at Albany the Van Rensselaers and Schuylers contended for the fur trade of the savages, sometimes coming to blows. Many Dutch galliots now sailed leisurely over from old Amsterdam to the new. New York Island was covered with rich farms. In 1679 peaches were so plenty that they were fed to the swine; strawberries covered the ground in rare profusion. Sheltered within the protecting arm of Sandy Hook, the little city nourished and grew great. It had no idle hands. Its burgomasters all either kept shops, taverns, or worked on farms, and scorned sloth. All was prosperous growth, under the famous Governor Stuyvesant, when suddenly, in August, 1664, for the first time, a hostile English fleet sailed up the great harbor, and anchored in Gravesend Bay. It was composed of two fifty-gun ships and one of forty, with six hundred soldiers. The consternation in the city was great; but Governor Stuyvesant ordered the guns to be run out on the fort at the end of Broadway, called out the militia, and prepared for a desperate contest.
MASTER NOBLE'S LESSON.
BY MRS. ANNIE A. PRESTON.
When Master Noble was appointed to take charge of the Oak Bridge schools, he found, much to his surprise, that in every grade, from the Primary to the High Schools, there were many pupils who had frequently been promoted to higher classes, but, failing to get their lessons during the first term, had, at examination, been sent back to a lower grade again.
This had become such a common occurrence in the schools in Oak Bridge that the spirit of honest and praiseworthy emulation was lost, and the pupils felt it to be no humiliation or disgrace to be dropped from a higher class to a lower one.
"Something must be done to impress upon them the disgrace of such indifference, and to arouse their ambition," thought the new master, and he forthwith invited all the young folks in the community to meet him the next Saturday afternoon at the Town-hall to listen to a story that he would tell.
Of course the promise of a story from the popular new master, and the fact that he had recently returned from extensive travels, called the children and young people all out, and this is what they heard:
"It is said that years ago a beautiful little brown sparrow made her home in the garden of a certain great and renowned magician. She built her nest in the grass, and was content to hop and chirp about in the rose thicket, and to keep very near the ground indeed.