NEW YORK.                                  97
 

CHAPTER III.

Containing Peter Stuyvesanfs voyage up the
Hudson, and the wonders and delights of that
renowned river.

Now did the soft breezes of the south, steal
sweetly over the beauteous face of nature, tem¬
pering the panting heats of summer into genial
and prolific warmth: when that miracle of har¬
dihood and chivalric virtue, the dauntless Peter
Stuyvesant, spread his canvass to the wind, and
departed from the fair island of Mannahata.
The galley in which he embarked was sumptu¬
ously adorned with pendants and streamers of
gorgeous dyes, which fluttered gaily in the wind,
or drooped their ends in the bosom of the streamt
The bow and poop of this majestic vessel were
gallantly bedight, after the rarest Dutch fashion,
with figures of little pursy cupids with periwigs
on their heads, and bearing in their hands gar¬
lands of flowers, the like of which are not to be
found in any book of botany; being the matchless
flowers which flourished in the golden age, and
exist no longer, unless it be in the imaginations
of ingenious carvers of wdod and discolourers
of canvass.

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