Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete

their capital shrunk in amount; but, above all, the Yankee traders, who were accustomed to flood the market with newly-coined oyster-shells, and to abstract Dutch merchandise in exchange, were loud-mouthed in decrying this “tampering with the currency.” It was clipping the wings ofcommerce; it was checking the development of public prosperity; trade would be at an end; goods would moulder on the shelves; grain would rot in the granaries; grass would grow in the marketplace. In a word, no one who has not heard the outcries and howlings of a modern Tarshish, at any check upon “paper money,” can have any idea of the clamor against Peter the Headstrong for checking the circulation of oyster-shells.
    In fact, trade did shrink into narrower channels; but then the stream was deep as it was broad. The honest Dutchman sold less goods; but then they got the worth of them, either in silver and gold, or in codfish, tinware, apple-brandy, Weathersfield onions, wooden bowls, and other articles of Yankee barter. The ingenious people of the east, however, indemnified themselves in another way for having to abandon the coinage of oyster-shells, for about this time we are told that wooden nutmegs made their first appearance in New Amsterdam, to the great annoyance of the Dutch housewives.
    NOTE.
    From a manuscript record of the province (Lib, N.Y. Hist, Soc.).—“We have been unable to render your inhabitants wiser, and prevent their being, further imposed upon, than to declare, absolutely and peremptorily, that henceforward seawant shall be bullion—not longer admissable in trade, without any value, as it is indeed. So that every one may be upon his guard to barter no longer away his wares and merchandise for these baubles; at least not to accept them at a higher rate, or in a larger quantity, than as they may want them in their trade with the savages.
    “In this way your English [Yankee] neighbors shall no longer be enabled to draw the best wares and merchandise from our country for nothing; the beavers and furs not excepted. This has, indeed, long since been insufferable; although it ought chiefly to be imputed to the imprudent penuriousness of our own merchants and inhabitants, who, it is to be hoped, shall, through the abolition of this seawant, become wiser and more prudent.
    “27th January, 1662,
    “Seawant falls into disrepute; duties to be paid in silver coin.”
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CHAPTER III.

    Now it came to pass, that while Peter Stuyvesant was busy regulating the internal affairs of his domain, the great Yankee league, which had caused such tribulation to William the Testy, continued to increase in extent and power. The grand Amphictyonic council of the league was held at Boston, where it spun a web which threatened to link within it all the mighty principalities and powers of the east. The object proposed by this formidable combination was mutual protection and defence against their savage neighbors; but all the world knows the real aim was to form a grand crusade against the Nieuw Nederlandts and to get possession of the city of the Manhattoes—as devout an object of enterprise and ambition to the Yankees as was ever the capture of Jerusalem to ancient Crusaders.
    In the very year following the inauguration of Governor Stuyvesant, a grand deputation departed from the city of Providence (famous for its dusty streets and beauteous women) in behalf of the plantation of Rhode Island, praying to be admitted into the league.
    The following minute of this deputation appears in the ancient records of the council. [40]
    “Mr. Will. Cottington and Captain Partridg of Rhoode Island presented this insewing request to the commissioners in wrighting——
    “Our request and motion is in behalfe of Rhoode Iland, that wee the ilanders of Rhoode Iland may be rescauied into combination with all the united colonyes of New England in a firme and perpetual league of friendship and amity of ofence anddefence, mutuall advice and succor upon all just occasions for our mutuall safety and wellfaire, etc.

“WILL COTTINGTON.

“ALICXSANDER PARTRIDG.”

    There was certainly something in the very physiognomy of this document that might well inspire apprehension. The name of Alexander, however mis-spelt, has been warlike in every age, and though its fierceness is in some measure softened by being coupled with the gentle cognomen of Partridge, still, like the color of scarlet, it bears an exceeding great resemblance to the sound of a trumpet.