Chapter I

Battery—flag-staff kept by Louis Keaffee—Keaffee maintains two spy-glasses by subscriptions—merchants pay two shillings a year to look through them at the signal poles on Staten Island—a very pleasant prospect; but not so pleasant as that from the hill of Howth—query, ever been there? Young seniors go down to the flag-staff to buy pea-nuts and beer, after the fatigue of their morning studies, and sometimes to play at ball, or some other innocent amusement—digression to the Olympic and Isthmian games, with a description of the Isthmus of Corinth, and that of Darien: to conclude with a dissertation on the Indian custom of offering a whiff of tobacco smoke to their great spirit Areskou.—Return to the Battery—delightful place to indulge in the luxury of sentiment. How various are the mutations of this world! but a few days, a few hours,—at least not above two hundred years ago, and this spot was inhabited by a race of aborigines, who dwelt in bark huts, lived upon oysters and Indian corn, danced buffalo dances, and were lords “of the fowl and the brute;” but the spirit of time, and the spirit of brandy have swept them from their ancient inheritance; and as the white wave of the ocean, by its ever toiling assiduity, gains on the brown land, so the white man, by slow and sure degrees, has gained on the brown savage, and dispossessed him of the land of his forefathers.—Conjectures on the first peopling of America—different opinions on that subject, to the amount of near one hundred—opinion of Augustine Torniel—that they are the descendants of Shem and Japheth, who came by the way of Japan to America.—Juffridius Petre says they came from Friezland.—mem. cold journey—Mons. Charron says they are descended from the Gauls—bitter enough—A. Milius from the Celtæ—Kircher from the Egyptians—L’Compte from the Phœnicians—Lescarbort from the Canaanites, alias the Anthropophagi—Brerewood from Tartars—Grotius from the Norwegians—and Linkum Fidelius has written two folio volumes to prove that America was first of all peopled either by the antipodeans or the Cornish miners, who, he maintains, might easily have made a subterranean passage to this country, particularly the antipodeans, who, he asserts, can get along under ground as fast as moles—query, which of these is in the right, or are they all wrong? For my part, I don’t see why America had not as good a right to be peopled at first, as any little contemptible country in Europe, or Asia; and I am determined to write a book at my first leisure, to prove that Noah was born here—and that so far is America from being indebted to any other country for inhabitants, that they were every one of them peopled by colonies from her!—mem. Battery a very pleasant place to walk on a Sunday evening—not quite genteel though—everybody walks there, and a pleasure, however genuine, is spoiled by general participation—the fashionable ladies of New York turn up their noses if you ask them to walk on the Battery on Sunday—query, have they scruples of conscience, or scruples of delicacy? Neither—they have only scruples of gentility, which are quite different things.