New Amsterdam

“ The settlers of New York, both Dutch and English, were, as a rule, attentive to religious duties; but they did not regard religion as the single aim of existence. They were merchants and traders and farmers, liberal for their age in their views of religious freedom, and devoting their best energies to building up their worldly fortunes. New Amsterdam was in no sense Puritan—it was a respectable, thriving, trading and bartering community, with flourishing farms in the outskirts, and a commerce stunted by jealous restrictions, but which gave promise of future development. ”

“ No man can walk along the broad strand street of New Amsterdam, and then up into its parallel street, so back towards the starting-point, and down again to the sea, without thinking of Knickerbocker and Rip van Winkle. The Dutchman who built New Amsterdam and made it once a thriving town must be still sleeping, as the New York Dutchman once slept, waiting the time when an irruption from Paramaribo and Surinam shall again restore the place to its old possessors. ”

“ Writers of New Amsterdam
THERE is a fashion nowadays of trimming the fronts of brick houses by placing black bricks among the red in such a way as to form odd and unique designs. It is an attractive way of doing, for it varies the staid simplicity of the solid color. But for all it may seem original and new, it is a style that had its beginning long, long ago, even in the days when the stern Peter Stuyvesant governed-2- with an iron hand over the Dutch colony of fifteen hundred people, the town that was one day to be New York, but which in his time was called New Amsterdam. ”

“ Next day came a message from the new governor, in which it was promised that people from all lands might come into the City of New York, with the same rights as any other; that there would be no change in the affairs until an election by the people could be held, and that each man might worship God in whatsoever way seemed to him best.
We who had lived so long in the New World had seen the last of New Amsterdam with its Dutch rulers, who knew no law but their own whims [Pg 158] , and now were we like men who have finally thrown off a heavy burden, able to breathe freely once more. ”

“ Wherever I might go, however, I could not find so much to please the eye as in New Amsterdam, for the English people in this New World are much more prim and sedate, both in manner and dress, than are the Dutch. ”

“ During the year the affairs of New Amsterdam were looked after by the Council of the town, and then came a new Director by the name of Wouter Van Twiller. Of him I can tell you very little, for, unlike Master Minuit, he showed no interest in the welfare of those who were serving him.
A short, fat man, who was overly fond of good dinners, and if I, who am nothing but a clerk in the employ of the Company, may say it, with not of brains enough to look after the concerns of such a town as New Amsterdam was becoming, yet withal he accomplished somewhat toward making this place beautiful. ”

“ While the people were working on the mill, the fort, and the storehouse, or at the quarry, Master Minuit, busy man though he was, found time to set up a regular government in this town of huts which he called New Amsterdam, himself being at the head of it with no one to say him nay, and a Council of five chosen by the West India Company from among the white people. ”

“ Thus cities and empires creep along, enlarging in silent obscurity, until they burst forth in some tremendous calamity, and snatch, as it were, immortality from the explosion.
The above principle being admitted, my reader will plainly perceive that the city of New Amsterdam and its dependent province are on the high road to greatness. Dangers and hostilities threaten from every side, and it is really a matter of astonishment how so small a State has been able in so short a time to entangle itself in so many difficulties. ”

“ Ships were coming to us from Holland nearly every month to take away the furs that had been bought, and the timber cut from the forests. Of building stone we had all that could be used, no matter how many other [Pg 78] people might make their homes in New Amsterdam.
Truly it was wonderful how soon we made of that wilderness a country that kings might covet, which indeed they did, as I came to know before I was at an end of my service with the West India Company. ”

“ The population of the province now amounted to full ten thousand. New Amsterdam was a flourishing city, containing fifteen hundred inhabitants.
This prosperity excited both the jealousy and the covetousness of the British court. The king resolved, by one bold blow, to rob Holland of all her American possessions. On the 12th of March, 1664, the king of England granted to his brother James, the Duke of York, the whole of Long Island, all the islands in its neighborhood, and all the lands and rivers from the west side of Connecticut river to the east side of Delaware Bay. ”

“ They lean forward, and lean backward; they lean to the right, and lean to the left ― conveying the impression to an unfamiliar eye that the only reason they do not tumble down is that they haven't made up their mind which way to fall.
Amsterdam - the Amstel I have observed nervous foreigners walking along the edges of the canals, and constantly looking up at the monotonous brick piles, as if expecting to see them momentarily topple over. ”

“ Amsterdam, the capital of the new Dutch commonwealth, the rich city which alone counted more people within her wide walls than all of the country provinces put together, had ever been the leader in all matters which offered the chance of an honest penny. ”

“ These melancholy reflections have been forced from me by the growing wealth and importance of New Amsterdam, which, I plainly perceive, are to involve it in all kinds of perils and disasters. Already, as I observed at the close of my last book, they had awakened the attention of the mother country. The usual mark of protection shown by mother countries to wealthy colonies was forthwith manifested; a governor being sent out to rule over the province, and squeeze out of it as much revenue as possible. The arrival of a governor of course put an end to the protectorate of Oloffe the Dreamer. ”

“ The duties and powers of the Nine Men were proclaimed by the Council, much against Stuyvesant’s wishes. “Nothing is more desirable than that New Netherland and principally New Amsterdam our capital and residence might continue and increase in good order, justice, police, population, prosperity and mutual harmony, and be provided with strong fortifications, a church, a school, trading place, harbor and similar necessary public edifices and improvements.” ”

“ At present life certainly stagnates at New Amsterdam. Three persons in the street constitute a crowd, and five collected for any purpose would form a goodly club. But the place is clean and orderly, and the houses are good and in good repair. They stand, as do the houses in Georgetown, separately, each surrounded by its own garden or yard, and are built with reference to the wished-for breeze from the windows. ”

“ The good people of New Amsterdam, one and all, declared that he had been a very busy, active, bustling little governor; that he was "the father of his country;" that he was "the noblest work of God;" that "he was a man, take him for all in all, they ne'er should look upon his like again;" together with sundry other civil and affectionate speeches, regularly said on the death of all great men ”

“ On the night this welcome news was brought to New Amsterdam, the farm buildings belonging to Martin Kip were actually crowded with men, who had come thus far out of the city that they might decide upon what should be done when the Director gave orders for all the citizens to stand to their weapons, and a most excited throng it was. ”

“ Situated at the confluence of the river Amstel with the Y, an arm of the Zuyder-Zee, it is shaped somewhat like a crescent or bow, the string representing the Y, and the curve the boundary on the land side. Though of much less commercial importance than it was two centuries ago, it is still a great centre of traffic and trade, and its population, which is constantly growing, is now over two hundred and seventy thousand. Amsterdam is built on piles driven into the sand, which lies about fifty feet below the morass the city stands on. ”

“ From the condition of a fishing-village on the Amstel, in the thirteenth century, Amsterdam had risen, under the fostering privileges of the counts of Flanders, to be a commercial town of some importance even in the fourteenth century. The establishment of the Dutch independence so greatly accelerated its prosperity, that in the beginning of the seventeenth century it had attained the first rank as a maritime city. ”

“ Though the majority of the inhabitants of Amsterdam were inclined to support the new government, it contained a powerful party, daily receiving accessions of strength from the provinces, in favour of the stadtholder, which only waited for the nearer approach of the British army to declare themselves. So confidently were the English expected in Amsterdam, and a counter-revolution to take place throughout Holland, that the members of the directory were prepared to quit the Hague. ”

“ Owing to Dutch, occupation during half a century of intense agitation, civil war and revolution, New Netherland had escaped being drawn into the maelstrom of English hates and rivalries. Indeed the Dutch settlements, and New Amsterdam in particular, had derived advantage from the troubles of the English colonies, and among the immigrants who sought an asylum from Puritan intolerance within New Netherland jurisdiction were many who proved valuable additions to the population of the province, and who helped to build up its trade and commerce, and to develop agriculture. ”

“ Commerce was greatly stimulated, and the merchants of old Amsterdam sent compliments and prophesies of future greatness to their brethren across the sea. Every new-hatched settlement that springs up on the borders of the wilderness is liable to be "hailed" by its promoters as destined to become the Queen City of its region; the wish fathers the word, and the word is an advertisement. ”

“ Blood inhabits a city otherwise, I imagine, quite unvisited by the Muses, the town called Amsterdam, situated on the New York Central Railroad. What his regular or bread-winning occupation may be I know not, but it can't have made him super-wealthy. He is an author only when the fit strikes him, and for short spurts at a time; shy, moreover, to the point of publishing his compositions only as private tracts, or in letters to such far-from-reverberant organs of publicity as the Gazette or the Recorder of his native Amsterdam, or the Utica Herald or the Albany Times. ”

“ The glory and renown of this good city of Amsterdam are not only spread throughout the world by reason of the extensive commerce of which it is the seat, but also, in an especial manner, from the fact that a great number of far distant lands have been sought, discovered, and visited by sea from its port. ”

“ Its members were distinguished in learning and in commerce, and by degrees their presence and their influence were not confined to the Dutch capital. Early in the seventeenth century an important branch colony of Spanish and Portuguese immigrants was formed at Hamburg, and, a little later on, another at Copenhagen. But Amsterdam continued to be the centre of the revival, and new refugees from the Peninsula were always arriving in Holland, to take the place of the younger and more adventurous spirits who sought their fortunes further afield. ”

“ There is something inexpressibly sad in the thought of the children who crossed the ocean with the Pilgrims and the fathers of Jamestown, New Amsterdam, and Boston, and the infancy of those born in the first years of colonial life in this strange new world. ”

“ In 1621 a West Indian Company was founded which conquered Brazil and in North America built a fortress called Nieuw Amsterdam at the mouth of the river which Henry Hudson had discovered in the year 1609.
These new colonies enriched both England and the Dutch Republic to such an extent that they could hire foreign soldiers to do their fighting on land while they devoted themselves to commerce and trade. To them the Protestant revolt meant independence and prosperity. ”

“ You can scarcely be afflicted by a grotesque statue of a nonentity in Holland, because there are scarcely any statues.
Amsterdam is a grand city, easily outclassing any other in Holland. Its architecture is distinguished. Its historic past is impressively immanent in the masonry of the city itself, though there is no trace of it in the mild, commonplace demeanor of the inhabitants. Nevertheless, the inhabitants understand solidity, luxury, wealth, and good cheer. Amsterdam has a bourse which is the most peculiar caprice that ever passed through the head of a stock-broker. ”

“ High above the city rose numerous quaint steeples and yet more ancient towers, and Amsterdam's Italian prototype could never have presented a more bewitching picture than when on one of those marvellous nights, not infrequent in Holland, the moon lit up the scene with a light whiter, purer than that of electricity, and of a living beauty the very reverse of electricity's ghastly glare. ”

“ Here a crowd of men, the most varied in nationality and tradition, were all one in their worship of the presiding genius of the city. The bridge stood in front of its temple. The Exchange was the true centre of the religion of Amsterdam. ”