147
 

CHAPTER VIL
 

Hoiv the city of J\*ew-Amsterdam waxed great,
under the protection of Oloffe the Dreamer.

There is something exceedingly delusive in
thus looking back, through the long vista of depart¬
ed years, and catching a glimpse of the fairy realms
of antiquity that lie beyond. Like some goodly
landscape melting into distance, they receive a
thousand charms from their very obscurity, and the
fancy delights to fill up their outlines with graces
and excellencies of its own creation. Thus beam
on my imagination those happier days of our city,
when as yet New-Amsterdam was a mere pastora.
town, shrouded in groves of sycamore and wil
lows, and surrounded by trackless forests and wide
spreading waters, that seemed to shut out all the
cares and vanities of a wicked world.

In those days did this embryo city present the
rare and noble spectacle of a community governed
without laws; and thus being left to its own course,
and the fostering care of providence, increased as
rapidly as though it had been burthened with a do¬
zen panniers full of those sage laws that are usual¬
ly heaped on the backs of young cities—in order
to make them grow. And in this particular I great-