Milk and butter; fruits to eat
No one can enumerate;
Ev'ry vegetable known;

Grain the best that e'er was grown.
All the blessings man e'er knew,
Here does Our Great Giver strew
(And a climate ne'er more pure),
But for me, yet immature,

Fraught with danger, for the swine
Trample down these crops of mine;
Up-root, too, my choicest land;
Still and dumb, the while, I stand,
In the hope, my mother's arm
Will protect me from the harm.
She can succor my distress.
Now my wish, my sole request,
Is for men to till my land;
So I'll not in silence stand.
I have lab'rors almost none;
Let my household large become;

I'll my mother's kitchen furnish
With my knick-knacks, with my surplus;
With tobacco, furs and grain;
So that Prussia she'll disdain.

JACOB STEENDAM, noch vaster.

In spite of this neglect, the new town thrived apace. Friendly relations were established with the settlers at Plymouth, and the colony seemed to be moving steadily toward a golden future. In May, 1647, there arrived from Holland the new

director, Peter Stuyvesant. He ruled supreme until 1664, when New Amsterdam surrendered to an English fleet.

PETER STUYVESANT'S NEW YEAR'S CALL

[I. Jan. A. c. 1661]

WHERE nowadays the Battery lies,
New York had just begun,
A new-born babe, to rub its eyes,
In Sixteen Sixty-One.

They christened it Nieuw Amsterdam,
Those burghers grave and stately,
And so, with schnapps and smoke and
psalm,

Lived out their lives sedately.

Two windmills topped their wooden wall,
On Stadthuys gazing down,
On fort, and cabbage-plots, and all
The quaintly gabled town;

These flapped their wings and shifted backs,
As ancient scrolls determine,
To scare the savage Hackensacks,
Paumanks, and other vermin.

At night the loyal settlers lay
Betwixt their feather-beds;

In hose and breeches walked by day,
And smoked, and wagged their heads.
No changeful fashions came from France,
The freulen to bewilder,

And cost the burgher's purse, perchance,
Its every other guilder.

In petticoats of linsey-red,
And jackets neatly kept,

The vrouws their knitting-needles sped
And deftly spun and swept.
Few modern-school flirtations there
Set wheels of scandal trundling,
But youths and maidens did their share
Of staid, old-fashioned bundling.

- The New Year opened clear and cold;
The snow, a Flemish ell

In depth, lay over Beeckman's Wold
And Wolfert's frozen well.

Each burgher shook his kitchen-doors,
Drew on his Holland leather,

Then stamped through drifts to do the chores,

Beshrewing all such weather.

But after herring, ham, and kraut

To all the gathered town

The Dominie preached the morning out,
In Calvinistic gown;

While tough old Peter Stuyvesant
Sat pewed in foremost station,
The potent, sage, and valiant

Third Governor of the nation.

Prayer over, at his mansion hall,

With cake and courtly smile, He met the people, one and all, In gubernatorial style;

Yet missed, though now the day was old,
An ancient fellow-feaster,

Heer Govert Loockermans, that bold
Brewer and burgomeester;

Who, in his farmhouse, close without
The picket's eastern end,
Sat growling at the twinge of gout
That kept him from his friend.

The Northern or Plymouth Branch of the Virginia Company, which had been chartered by James I in 1606, did, to some extent, for the north what the sister company did for the south. Sir Ferdinando Gorges was its Raleigh, and sent out a number of exploring ships, one of which made what is now reckoned the first permanent settlement in New England. Captain George Popham was in command, and in August, 1607, three months after the planting of Jamestown, built Fort Popham, or Fort St. George, at the mouth of the Kennebec. But it is not this settlement which has been celebrated in song and story. It is that made at New Plymouth in the winter of 1620 by a shipload of Separatists from the Church of England, who have come down through history as the "Pilgrim Fathers."

Driven from England by religious persecution, the Separatist congregation from the little town of Scrooby, about a hundred in number, had fled to Amsterdam, and finally, in 1609, to Leyden. But they were not in sympathy with the Dutch, and their thoughts turned to America. The Plymouth company was approached, but could not guarantee religious freedom. It gave the suppliants to understand, however, that there was little likelihood they would be interfered with, and after long debate and hesitation, they decided to take the risk.

THE WORD OF GOD TO LEYDEN CAME

[August 15 (N. S.), 1620]

THE word of God to Leyden came,
Dutch town by Zuyder Zee:
Rise up, my children of no name,
My kings and priests to be.
There is an empire in the West,
Which I will soon unfold;

A thousand harvests in her breast,
Rocks ribbed with iron and gold.

Rise up, my children, time is ripe!
Old things are passed away.
Bishops and kings from earth I wipe;
Too long they've had their day.
A little ship have I prepared

To bear you o'er the seas;
And in your souls my will declared
Shall grow by slow degrees.

Beneath my throne the martyrs cry;
I hear their voice, How long?
It mingles with their praises high,

And with their victor song.
The thing they longed and waited for,
But died without the sight;
So, this shall be! I wrong abhor,

The world I'll now set right.

Leave, then, the hammer and the loom,
You've other work to do;

For Freedom's commonwealth there's room,
And you shall build it too.
I'm tired of bishops and their pride,
I'm tired of kings as well;
Henceforth I take the people's side,
And with the people dwell.

Tear off the mitre from the priest,
And from the king, his crown;
Let all my captives be released;

Lift up, whom men cast down.
Their pastors let the people choose,
And choose their rulers too;

Whom they select, I'll not refuse,

But bless the work they do.

The Pilgrims rose, at this, God's word,
And sailed the wintry seas:

With their own flesh nor blood conferred,
Nor thought of wealth or ease.
They left the towers of Leyden town,
They left the Zuyder Zee;

And where they cast their anchor down,
Rose Freedom's realm to be.

JEREMIAH EAMES RANKIN.

A vessel of one hundred and eighty tons, named the Mayflower, was fitted out, and, on August 5 (N. S. 15), 1620, the emigrants sailed from Southampton, whither they had gone to join the ship. There were ninety persons aboard the Mayflower and thirty aboard a smaller vessel, the Speedwell. But the Speedwell proved unseaworthy, and after twice putting back for repairs, twelve of her passengers were crowded into the Mayflower, which finally, on September 6 (N. S. 16), turned her prow to the west, and began the most famous voyage in American history, after that of Columbus.

SONG OF THE PILGRIMS

[September 16 (N. S.), 1620]

THE breeze has swelled the whitening sail,
The blue waves curl beneath the gale,
And, bounding with the wave and wind,
We leave Old England's shores behind-
Leave behind our native shore,
Homes, and all we loved before.

The deep may dash, the winds may blow,
The storm spread out its wings of woe,
Till sailors' eyes can see a shroud
Hung in the folds of every cloud;

Still, as long as life shall last,
From that shore we'll speed us fast.

For we would rather never be,
Than dwell where mind cannot be free,
But bows beneath a despot's rod
Even where it seeks to worship God.
Blasts of heaven, onward sweep!
Bear us o'er the troubled deep!

O see what wonders meet our eyes! Another land, and other skies! Columbian hills have met our view! Adieu! Old England's shores, adieu!

Here, at length, our feet shall rest, Hearts be free, and homes be blessed.

As long as yonder firs shall spread
Their green arms o'er the mountain's head,
As long as yonder cliffs shall stand,
Where join the ocean and the land,

Shall those cliffs and mountains be
Proud retreats for liberty.

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