2S8
 

HISTORY OF
 

CHAPTER VIII.
 

How Peter Stuyvesant defended the city of JV*ew~
Amsterdam for several days, by dint of the
strength of his head.

There is something exceedingly sublime and
melancholy in the spectacle which the present
crisis of our history presents. An illustrious and
venerable little city—the metropolis of an im¬
mense extent of uninhabited country—garri¬
soned by a doughty host of orators, chairmen,
committee-men. Burgomasters, Schepens and
old women—governed by a deterniined and
strong headed warrior, and fortified by mud
batteries, pallisadoes and resolutions—blocka¬
ded by sea, beleagured by land, and threatened
with direful desolation from without; while its
very vitals are torn with internal faction and
commotion! Never did historic pen record a
page of more complicated distress, unless it be
the strife that distracted the Israelites during
the siege of Jerusalem—where discordant par¬
ties were cutting each other's throats, at the
moment when the victorious legions of Titus
had toppled down their bulwarks, and were car-