It was while brave old Peter Stuyvesant was governor that the English first sailed into the harbor of New Amsterdam and demanded the surrender of the city, under the claim that the country belonged to the English, having been discovered by Cabot.

The fact is, the English king, having learned that the Dutch had secured a very valuable fur trade through their friendliness with the Indians, made up his mind that he needed it. He accordingly gave the territory of New Netherlands to his brother, the Duke of York, and sent several ships to capture the city.

The Dutch were too few to resist; and the appeals of Gov. Stuyvesant to defend the city were vain; and so New Amsterdam passed into the hands of the English on August 29, 1664. The city was then named New York; and, although eight years later the Dutch re-took the city, Holland finally gave up all title to New Netherlands and it became an English colony. This was in 1674.

New Amsterdam was an odd little city at that time, looking for all the world like a little Dutch city dropped down upon the new continent.

The little wooden houses had gable roofs; the ends of the houses were of black and yellow brick; over the door were great iron figures telling when the house was built; and on the roof there was sure to be a gay-looking weather vane whirling around in the strong wind, trying, so it seemed, to keep pace with the whirling windmills that stretched their great arms over the city.

Inside the houses you would have found great, roaring fire-places, with pictured tiles up and down the sides. Such funny pictures! telling all about Noah and the Ark, or perhaps about the children of Israel crossing the Red Sea. Can you not fancy just how the older brothers and sisters used to sit by these great fireplaces pointing out the wonderful pictures to the little children?

I am always glad to think of these little children of the Dutch colonists. They were all so much happier and freer than the little Puritan children. Their homes were so much more cheerful, their parents so much less grim and severe, and there was so much more love and joy everywhere about them.

Such fairy stories as these Dutch people could tell as they sat about their great fires in the long winter evenings, or out upon the doorsteps in the warm summer nights! Not a forest nor a dale, not a single peak of the Catskill Mountains but had its legend or mysterious story for them.

When the thunder rolled, the people would say, "Hark! that is Henry Hudson and his companions playing at nine pins up among the mountains." And the children would shout and laugh and say, "Good Henry Hudson! Good Henry Hudson! the wicked sailors could not kill you when they bound you and put you afloat on the cold ocean! The little fairies guided you back to your own river and to your own blue-topped Catskills. Kind little fairies! Good Henry Hudson!"

There are so many other stories to tell of this early history of our country that I am going to leave this colony just here. It seems too bad, for these Dutch people were so strange in their dress and customs, and had such odd ideas, that I should like to tell you a score of stories about them. I should like to tell you about Rip Van Winkle, who slept for twenty years up in the mountains; I should like to tell you about old Ichabod Crane, who thought he was pursued by a ghost; of Henry Hudson and his crew playing nine-pins up among the mountains; but you must read Irving's Sketch Book and his Knickerbocker History. There are stories enough there to keep you all busy for a year. But now I must ask you to leave these queer old Dutch people and hurry across to Maryland with me. There is another kind of people there waiting for us.