1S8                                HISTORY OF
 

CHAPTER VII.

Containing the most horrible battle ever recorded
in poetry or prose; with the admirable exploits
of Peter the Headstrong.

" Now had the Dutchmen snatch'd a huge re¬
past," and finding themselves wonderfully en¬
couraged and animated thereby, prepared to
take the field. Expectation, says the writer of
the Stuyvesant manuscript—Expectation now
stood on stilts. The world forgot to turn round,
or rather stood still, that it might witness the
afiray; like a fat round bellied alderman, watch¬
ing the combat of two chivalric flies upon his
jerkin. The eyes of all mankind, as usual in such
cases, were turned upon Fort Christina. The
sun, like a little man in a crowd, at a puppet
show, scampered about the heavens, popping his
head here and there, and endeavouring to get a
peep between the unmannerly clouds, that ob¬
truded themselves in his way. The historians
filled their inkhorns—the poets went without
their dinners, either that they might buy paper
and goose-quills, or because they could not get
any thing to eat—antiquity scowled sulkily out
of its grave, to see itself outdone—while evert