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Knickerbocker’s History of New York by Washington Irving Book Review
There are numerous reasons to turn down a book entitled, “History of New York”, not the least of which is the Damn Yankees and their insufferable New Englander ways. (Washington Irving calls them Amphictyons)
Add to this major demerit the author, Washington Irving, who is the man we have to thank for our “modern” Christmas ritual. Saint Nick in a wagon loaded with toys flying through the treetops with stockings hung from fireplace mantels.
Indeed, Washington Irving is the namesake of our Number One Mason, George Wa3hin3ton. He even holds the boastable pleasure of meeting our well honored Masonic Magician.
Irving spent his last years completing a five volume HISTORY on our most respected Numero Uno.
All this being said, the book is one of the funniest I have ever read.
Historical satire is the game. Washington Irving, like all good wizards, leaves many unmasticated morsels of magnificence throughout the manuscript; each worth a hardy laugh, chortle, and harrumph.
The book provides a laugh out loud romp through our incoherent HISTORY.
Join Dutch Burghers in New Amsterdam, councils filled with smoke from their well used pipes.
Discovery, battles, trading, settlements.
Fun, funny, and fungible.
Thank you, Wa3hin3ton Irving.
Thanks also to Charles 33ickens for recommending this book in American Notes. Dickens and his wife read this book to each other before their journey to America in 1842.
Get this– Washington Irving allegedly published this on Dec 6, 1809. The most recent image I can find of “the text” is a 1915 copy. Lost in the cabbage patch for over a century.
Knickerbocker’s History of New York by Washington Irving Book Review
My annotations and highlights:
Knickerbocker’s History of New York by A Knickerbocker’s History of New York-Pelican Publishing (2002)
Book last read: 2024-07-09 14:49:53
Percentage read: 100%
Chapter 8: To the Public
Annotation
Chapter progress: 5.74%
Highlight: like my revered prototype,
Herodotus, where no written records could be found, I have endeavored to continue the chain of history by
well-authenticated traditions.
Notes: The history is fake.
Chapter 8: To the Public
Highlight
Chapter progress: 6.48%
Highlight: For, after all, gentle
reader, cities of themselves, and, in fact, empires of themselves, are nothing without an historian.
Chapter 8: To the Public
Annotation
Chapter progress: 6.48%
Highlight: The torch of science has more than once been extinguished and
rekindled—a few individuals, who have escaped by accident, reunite the thread of generations.
Notes: Escape from vaccine death mandate. Science.
Chapter 11: Chapter II
Annotation
Chapter progress: 8.73%
Highlight: Having thus briefly introduced my reader to the world, and given him some idea of its form and situation, he will
naturally be curious to know from whence it came, and how it was created. And, indeed, the clearing up of these
points is absolutely essential to my history, inasmuch as if this world had not been formed, it is more than
probable that this renowned island, on which is situated the city of New York, would never have had an existence.
The regular course of my history, therefore, requires that I should proceed to notice the cosmogony or formation
of this our globe.
Notes: Lol
Chapter 11: Chapter II
Annotation
Chapter progress: 8.98%
Highlight: But while briefly noticing long celebrated systems of ancient sages, let me not pass over, with neglect, those of
other philosophers, which, though less universal than renowned, have equal claims to attention, and equal chance
for correctness.
Notes: Hehe
Chapter 11: Chapter II
Highlight
Chapter progress: 8.98%
Highlight: But I decline inquiring, whether the atoms, of which the earth is said to be composed, are eternal or
recent; whether they are animate or inanimate; whether, agreeably, to the opinion of Atheists, they were
fortuitously aggregated, or, as the Theists maintain, were arranged by a supreme intelligence.
Chapter 11: Chapter II
Highlight
Chapter progress: 8.98%
Highlight: Plato, that temperate
sage, who threw the cold water of philosophy on the form of sexual intercourse, and inculcated the doctrine of
Platonic love—an exquisitely refined intercourse, but much better adapted to the ideal inhabitants of his
imaginary island of Atlantis than to the sturdy race, composed of rebellious flesh and blood, which populates the
little matter-of-fact island we inhabit.
Chapter 11: Chapter II
Highlight
Chapter progress: 9.98%
Highlight: Thus it would seem
that knowledge and genius, of which we make such great parade, consist but in detecting the errors and
absurdities of those who have gone before, and devising new errors and absurdities, to be detected by those who
are to come after us.
Chapter 11: Chapter II
Highlight
Chapter progress: 10.22%
Highlight: the colony should be governed by the laws of God—until
they had time to make better.
Chapter 12: Chapter III
Annotation
Chapter progress: 11.22%
Highlight: I shall not occupy my time by discussing the huge mass of additional suppositions, conjectures, and probabilities
respecting the first discovery of this country, with which unhappy historians overload themselves in their
endeavors to satisfy the doubts of an incredulous world.
Notes: Hehe
Chapter 12: Chapter III
Annotation
Chapter progress: 11.72%
Highlight: poetry has
been found by certain shrewd critics to echo the sense—this being an improvement in history which I claim the
merit of having invented.
Notes: History invented like poetry.
Chapter 13: Chapter IV
Annotation
Chapter progress: 11.97%
Highlight: The claimants next in celebrity are the descendants of
Abraham. Thus Christoval Colon (vulgarly called Columbus), when he first discovered the gold mines of Hispaniola,
immediately concluded, with a shrewdness that would have done honor to a philosopher, that he had found the
ancient Ophir, from whence Solomon procured the gold for embellishing the temple at Jerusalem; nay, Colon even
imagined that he saw the remains of furnaces of veritable Hebraic construction, employed in refining the precious
ore.
Notes: Secrets out. Lost tribes located.
Chapter 13: Chapter IV
Annotation
Chapter progress: 11.97%
Highlight: The next inquiry at which we arrive in the regular course of our history is to ascertain, if possible, how this
country was originally peopled—a point fruitful of incredible embarrassments; for unless we prove that the
aborigines did absolutely come from somewhere, it will be immediately asserted in this age of scepticism, that
they did not come at all; and if they did not come at all, then was this country never populated—a conclusion
perfectly agreeable to the rules of logic, but wholly irreconcilable to every feeling of humanity, inasmuch as it
must syllogistically prove fatal to the innumerable aborigines of this populous region.
Notes: Lol
Chapter 13: Chapter IV
Highlight
Chapter progress: 12.22%
Highlight: Arius Montanus, without the least hesitation,
asserts that Mexico was the true Ophir, and the Jews the early settlers of the country. While Possevin, Becan,
and several other sagacious writers lug in a supposed prophecy of the fourth book of Esdras, which being inserted
in the mighty hypothesis, like the keystone of an arch, gives it, in their opinion, perpetual durability.
Chapter 13: Chapter IV
Annotation
Chapter progress: 12.22%
Highlight: traces of Christianity and Judaism, which have been said to be
found in divers provinces of the new world, to the Devil, who has always effected to counterfeit the worship of
the true Deity.
Notes: Snake effigies. Hebrew hyrogliphics.
Chapter 13: Chapter IV
Annotation
Chapter progress: 12.47%
Highlight: I more
than barely mention that Father Kircher ascribes the settlement of America to the Egyptians, Budbeck to the
Scandinavians, Charron to the Gauls, Juffredus Petri to a skating party from Friesland, Milius to the Celtæ,
Marinocus the Sicilian to the Romans, Le Comte to the Phoenicians, Postel to the Moors, Martin d’Angleria to
the Abyssinians, together with the sage surmise of De Laet, that England, Ireland, and the Orcades may contend
for that honor.
Notes: Lol
Chapter 13: Chapter IV
Annotation
Chapter progress: 12.72%
Highlight: I determined from that moment
not to burn my fingers with any more of their theories, but content myself with detailing the different methods
by which they transported the descendants of these ancient and respectable monkeys to this great field of
theoretical warfare.
Notes: Darwin ape descendants.
Chapter 13: Chapter IV
Annotation
Chapter progress: 12.72%
Highlight: Pinkerton, that industrious old gentleman, who compiles books and manufactures
geographies, has constructed a natural bridge of ice, from continent to continent, at the distance of four or
five miles from Behring’s Straits-for which he is entitled to the grateful thanks of all the wandering
aborigines who ever did or ever will pass over it.
Notes: Bridge to nowhere.
Chapter 13: Chapter IV
Annotation
Chapter progress: 12.97%
Highlight: My chief surprise is, that among the many writers I have noticed, no one has attempted to prove that this country
was peopled from the moon—or that the first inhabitants floated hither on islands of ice, as white bears cruise
about the northern oceans—or that they were conveyed hither by balloons, as modern aeronauts pass from Dover to
Calais—or by witchcraft, as Simon Magus posted among the stars—or after the manner of the renowned Scythian
Abaris, who, like the New England witches on full-blooded broomsticks, made most unheard-of journeys on the back
of a golden arrow, given him by the Hyperborean Apollo.
Notes: Lol. On the inhabitans of ancient America.
Chapter 14: Chapter V
Annotation
Chapter progress: 14.21%
Highlight: Heaven intended the earth should be ploughed, and sown, and manured, and laid
out into cities, and towns, and farms, and country seats, and pleasure grounds, and public gardens, all which the
Indians knew nothing about—therefore, they did not improve the talents Providence had bestowed on them—therefore
they were careless stewards—therefore, they had no right to the soil—therefore, they deserved to be exterminated.
Notes: Lol
Chapter 14: Chapter V
Annotation
Chapter progress: 14.46%
Highlight: In entering upon a newly discovered, uncultivated country, therefore, the new comers were but taking possession
of what, according to the aforesaid doctrine, was their own property—therefore in opposing them, the savages were
invading their just rights, infringing the immutable laws of nature, and counteracting the will of
Heaven—therefore, they were guilty of impiety, burglary, and trespass on the case—therefore, they were hardened
offenders against God and man—therefore, they ought to be exterminated.
Notes: Hehe.
Chapter 14: Chapter V
Annotation
Chapter progress: 15.21%
Highlight: Thus were the European worthies who first discovered America clearly entitled to the soil, and not only entitled
to the soil, but likewise to the eternal thanks of these infidel savages, for having come so far, endured so many
perils by sea and land, and taken such unwearied pains, for no other purpose but to improve their forlorn,
uncivilized, and heathenish condition; for having made them acquainted with the comforts of life; for having
introduced among them the light of religion; and, finally, for having hurried them out of the world to enjoy its
reward!
Notes: Lol
Chapter 16: Chapter I
Annotation
Chapter progress: 16.71%
Highlight: having smoked five hundred and ninety-nine pipes and three hundredweight of the best Virginia
tobacco—my great-grandfather gathered together all that knowing and industrious class of citizens who prefer
attending to anybody’s business sooner than their own, and having pulled off his coat and five pair of
breeches, he advanced sturdily up, and laid the corner-stone of the church, in the presence of the whole
multitude—just at the commencement of the thirteenth month.
Notes: Hehe.
Chapter 17: Chapter II
Highlight
Chapter progress: 19.45%
Highlight: Dutch negroes at Communipaw,
Chapter 17: Chapter II
Annotation
Chapter progress: 19.95%
Highlight: so critically correct is the village schoolmaster in his
dialect that his reading of a Low Dutch psalm has much the same effect on the nerves as the filing of a hand-saw.
Notes: Hehe
Chapter 18: Chapter III
Annotation
Chapter progress: 20.2%
Highlight: avoirdupois
Notes: A system of weights and measure from English
Chapter 18: Chapter III
Annotation
Chapter progress: 21.2%
Highlight: bantling,
Notes: Young child.
Chapter 19: Chapter IV
Highlight
Chapter progress: 21.7%
Highlight: And now the rosy blush of morn began to mantle in the east, and soon the rising sun, emerging from amidst golden
and purple clouds, shed his blithesome rays on the tin weathercocks of Communipaw.
Chapter 21: Chapter VI
Highlight
Chapter progress: 24.94%
Highlight: excellent little book, full of precious matter, of that authentic historian, John Josselyn,
Chapter 22: Chapter VII
Annotation
Chapter progress: 26.18%
Highlight: The true
version is, that Oloffe Van Kortlandt bargained for just so much land as a man could cover with his nether
garments.
Notes: Trade underclothes for Manhatten.
Chapter 23: Chapter VIII
Annotation
Chapter progress: 26.68%
Highlight: but those are a kind
of folk whose tastes and notions should go for nothing in matters of this kind.
Notes: Hehe
Chapter 26: Chapter I
Annotation
Chapter progress: 29.43%
Highlight: garrulity
Notes: Exsessive talk on meaningless topics.
Chapter 26: Chapter I
Annotation
Chapter progress: 29.93%
Highlight: There are two opposite ways by which some men make a figure in the world; one by talking faster than they think,
and the other by holding their tongues and not thinking at all.
Notes: Face mask and injections for essential workers only.
Chapter 26: Chapter I
Highlight
Chapter progress: 30.17%
Highlight: his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were
curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like a Spitzenberg apple.
Chapter 27: Chapter II
Annotation
Chapter progress: 31.42%
Highlight: My
readers will excuse this sudden warmth, which I confess is unbecoming of a grave historian; but I have a mortal
antipathy to catchpolls, bumbailiffs, and little great men.
Notes: Hurumph hurumph
Chapter 27: Chapter II
Annotation
Chapter progress: 31.42%
Highlight: The burgomasters, like our aldermen, were generally chosen by
weight—and not only the weight of the body, but likewise the weight of the head.
Notes: Hehe
Chapter 27: Chapter II
Annotation
Chapter progress: 31.67%
Highlight: Who ever hears of fat men heading a riot, or
herding together in turbulent mobs! No—no—it is your lean, hungry men who are continually worrying society, and
setting the whole community by the ears.
Notes: Fat burghers.
Chapter 27: Chapter II
Highlight
Chapter progress: 31.92%
Highlight: no judge should hold a court of justice except in the
morning on an empty stomach.
Chapter 27: Chapter II
Annotation
Chapter progress: 32.17%
Highlight: The burgomasters then, as I have already mentioned, were wisely chosen by weight, and the schepens, or assistant
aldermen, were appointed to attend upon them, and help them eat; but the latter, in the course of time, when they
had been fed and fattened into sufficient bulk of body and drowsiness of brain, became very eligible candidates
for the burgomasters’ chairs, having fairly eaten themselves into office, as a mouse eats his way into a
comfortable lodgment in a goodly, blue-nosed, skimmed milk, New England cheese.
Notes: Lol
Chapter 27: Chapter II
Highlight
Chapter progress: 32.42%
Highlight: Thus it happens that your true dull minds are generally preferred for public employ, and especially promoted to
city honors; your keen intellects, like razors, being considered too sharp for common service.
Chapter 27: Chapter II
Highlight
Chapter progress: 32.67%
Highlight: No man in fact seemed to know more than his neighbor, nor any man to know more than an honest man
ought to know, who has nobody’s business to mind but his own; the parson and the council clerk were the only
men that could read in the community, and the sage Van Twiller always signed his name with a
Chapter 27: Chapter II
Annotation
Chapter progress: 32.67%
Highlight: Whereas, in these degenerate days of iron
and brass he never shows us the light of his countenance, nor ever visits us, save one night in the year; when he
rattles down the chimneys of the descendants of the patriarchs, confining his presents merely to the children, in
token of the degeneracy of the parents.
Notes: Saint Nick
Chapter 27: Chapter II
Highlight
Chapter progress: 32.92%
Highlight: favorite Dutch
maxim, that “more than enough constitutes a feast.
Chapter 28: Chapter III
Annotation
Chapter progress: 33.17%
Highlight: Sabine rapes,
Notes: Roman rape.
Chapter 28: Chapter III
Highlight
Chapter progress: 34.41%
Highlight: balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog’s fat, and called doughnuts,
Chapter 29: Chapter IV
Highlight
Chapter progress: 34.91%
Highlight: Thus we
find that the gentle sex in all ages have shown the same disposition to infringe a little upon the laws of
decorum, in order to betray a lurking beauty, or gratify an innocent love of finery.
Chapter 30: Chapter V
Highlight
Chapter progress: 36.66%
Highlight: By
wapen recht!” that is to say, by the right of arms, or in common parlance, by
club-law.
Chapter 32: Chapter VII
Annotation
Chapter progress: 38.4%
Highlight: they one and all embarked for the wilderness
of America, to enjoy, unmolested, the inestimable right of talking.
Notes: Medical information embargo by Google.
Chapter 32: Chapter VII
Annotation
Chapter progress: 38.65%
Highlight: liberty of speech.
Notes: Murdered by Google
Chapter 32: Chapter VII
Annotation
Chapter progress: 39.15%
Highlight: the
practice of bundling prevailed,
Notes: weird sex practice of yore.
Chapter 34: Chapter IX
Annotation
Chapter progress: 40.65%
Highlight: now deciphering a half-defaced inscription, and now lighting upon
a mouldering manuscript, which, after painful study, scarce repays the trouble of perusal.
Notes: History.
Chapter 34: Chapter IX
Annotation
Chapter progress: 40.65%
Highlight: as will be perceived by any who will take the trouble to compare their romantic effusions, tricked
out in the meretricious gauds of fable, with this authentic history.
Notes: Hehe.
Chapter 34: Chapter IX
Annotation
Chapter progress: 40.9%
Highlight: , as though a tall man’s body had been mounted on a little man’s legs.
Notes: Lol
Chapter 34: Chapter IX
Annotation
Chapter progress: 41.65%
Highlight: distance was full two hundred
pipes, or about one hundred and twenty miles.
Notes: Distance traveled in pipes smoked.
Chapter 36: Chapter I
Annotation
Chapter progress: 42.39%
Highlight: What are the great events that constitute a glorious
era? The fall of empires, the desolation of happy countries, splendid cities smoking in their ruins, the proudest
works of art tumbled in the dust, the shrieks and groans of whole nations ascending unto heaven!
Notes: Covid extortion scam.
Chapter 37: Chapter II
Highlight
Chapter progress: 44.14%
Highlight: petticoat government.
Chapter 38: Chapter III
Annotation
Chapter progress: 44.64%
Highlight: So that, though a powerful nation may wrong its
neighbors with temporary impunity, yet sooner or later an historian springs up, who wreaks ample chastisement on
it in return.
Notes: Covid was extortion scam.
Chapter 39: Chapter IV
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.39%
Highlight: At length his words found vent, and for three days he kept up a constant discharge, anathematising
the Yankees, man, woman, and child, for a set of dieven, schobbejacken, deugenieten, twist-zoekeren, blaes-kaken,
loosen-schalken, kakken-bedden, and a thousand other names, of which, unfortunately for posterity, history does
not make mention.
Notes: Dutch curse words for yankees.
Chapter 39: Chapter IV
Annotation
Chapter progress: 45.39%
Highlight: The
name of Yankee became as terrible among the Nieuw Nederlanders as was that of Gaul among the ancient Romans,
insomuch that the good wives of the Manhattoes used it as a bugbear wherewith to frighten their unruly children.
Notes: Damn Yankees.
Chapter 40: Chapter V
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.63%
Highlight: These, like quacks in medicine, excite the malady to
profit by the cure, and retard the cure to augment the fees.
Notes: Covid extortion scam.
Chapter 40: Chapter V
Annotation
Chapter progress: 46.63%
Highlight: pettifoggers
Notes: Inferior legal practitioner.
Chapter 44: Chapter VI
Annotation
Chapter progress: 48.38%
Highlight: it had no more intrinsic value than those rags which form the paper currency of modern days.
Notes: Value of fake money equals zero.
Chapter 46: Chapter VIII
Highlight
Chapter progress: 50.12%
Highlight: A vast multitude, armed with
pipes and tobacco-boxes, and an immense supply of ammunition, sat themselves down before the governor’s
house, and fell to smoking with tremendous violence.
Chapter 47: Chapter IX
Highlight
Chapter progress: 51.12%
Highlight: Fortune, in fact, is a pestilent shrew, and, withal, an inexorable creditor; and though for a time she
may be all smiles and courtesies, and indulge us in long credits, yet sooner or later she brings up her arrears
with a vengeance, and washes out her scores with our tears.
Chapter 47: Chapter IX
Annotation
Chapter progress: 51.87%
Highlight: he denounced them as a pack of lazy, canting, julep-tippling, cock-fighting,
horse-racing, slave-driving, tavern-haunting, Sabbath-breaking, mulatto-breeding upstarts: and concluded by
ordering them to evacuate the country immediately; to which they laconically replied in plain English,
“They’d see him d—d
Notes: Confeds
Chapter 49: Chapter XI
Highlight
Chapter progress: 52.87%
Highlight: He was a perfect brush-heap in a blaze, snapping and crackling for
a time, and then ending in smoke.
Chapter 50: Chapter XII
Annotation
Chapter progress: 53.87%
Highlight: The
consequence was a great confederacy of the tribes of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Plymouth, and New Haven,
under the title of the “United Colonies of New England;” the pretended object of which was mutual
defense against the savages, but the real object the subjugation of the Nieuw Nederlandts.
Notes: Yankees united.
Chapter 50: Chapter XII
Highlight
Chapter progress: 53.87%
Highlight: The
Pilgrims,” that is to say, a people who are always seeking a better country than their
Chapter 55: Chapter IV
Annotation
Chapter progress: 59.85%
Highlight: In a word, negotiation is like courtship, a time of sweet words, gallant
speeches, soft looks, and endearing caresses—but the marriage ceremony is the signal for hostilities.
Notes: On negotiations and treaties.
Chapter 56: Chapter V
Annotation
Chapter progress: 60.6%
Highlight: but this
wanton attack upon one of the most gallant and irreproachable heroes of modern times is too much even for me to
digest, and has overset, with a single puff, the patience of the historian and the forbearance of the Dutchman.
Notes: Hehe
Chapter 56: Chapter V
Annotation
Chapter progress: 61.1%
Highlight: stopping occasionally in the villages to eat pumpkin-pies, dance at country frolics, and bundle with the
Yankee lasses, whom he rejoiced exceedingly with his soul-stirring instrument.
Notes: Lol
Chapter 59: Chapter VIII
Highlight
Chapter progress: 63.09%
Highlight: about this time broke out in the New England provinces the awful plague of witchcraft, which
spread like pestilence through the land.
Chapter 59: Chapter VIII
Annotation
Chapter progress: 63.34%
Highlight: When once an alarm is sounded, the public, who dearly love to be in a panic, are always ready to keep it up.
Notes: Fake pandemic on idiot box.
Chapter 59: Chapter VIII
Annotation
Chapter progress: 63.34%
Highlight: Strict search, too, was made after witches, who
were easily detected by devil’s pinches; by being able to weep but three tears, and those out of the left
eye; and by having a most suspicious predilection for black cats and broomsticks!
Notes: Hehe
Chapter 59: Chapter VIII
Annotation
Chapter progress: 63.84%
Highlight: quidnuncs
Notes: Inquisitive and gossipy person.
Chapter 59: Chapter VIII
Highlight
Chapter progress: 63.84%
Highlight: In the city of Ephesus, we are told that the plague was expelled by stoning a ragged old beggar to death, whom
Apollonius pointed out as being the evil spirit that caused it, and who actually showed himself to be a demon by
changing into a shagged dog.
Chapter 59: Chapter VIII
Highlight
Chapter progress: 64.09%
Highlight: New England, abandoning the study of the occult sciences, turned
their attention to the more profitable hocus pocus of trade, and soon became expert in the legerdemain art of
turning a penny.
Chapter 60: Chapter IX
Highlight
Chapter progress: 64.34%
Highlight: I must not conceal the fact, that at one time there was some danger of this plague of witchcraft extending into
the New Netherlands; and certain witches, mounted on broomsticks, are said to have been seen whisking in the air
over some of the Dutch villages near the borders; but the worthy Nederlanders took the precaution to nail
horse-shoes to their doors, which it is well known are effectual barriers against all diabolical vermin of the
kind.
Chapter 60: Chapter IX
Annotation
Chapter progress: 64.84%
Highlight: His face glowed with furnace heat from
between a huge pair of well-powdered whiskers; and his valorous soul seemed ready to bounce out of a pair of
large, glassy, blinking eyes, projecting like those of a lobster.
Notes: Lol
Chapter 64: Chapter III
Highlight
Chapter progress: 70.32%
Highlight: the scrubs, the runagates, and tatterdemalions
Chapter 65: Chapter IV
Highlight
Chapter progress: 71.32%
Highlight: The vast bosom
of the Hudson was like an unruffled mirror, reflecting the golden splendor of the heavens; excepting that now and
then a bark canoe would steal across its surface, filled with painted savages, whose gay feathers glared
brightly, as perchance a lingering ray of the setting sun gleamed upon them from the western mountains.
Chapter 66: Chapter V
Annotation
Chapter progress: 73.32%
Highlight: they
were the first that ever winked with both eyes at once.
Notes: History.
Chapter 69: Chapter VIII
Highlight
Chapter progress: 77.56%
Highlight: All was silent awe or bustling preparation, war reared
his horrid front, gnashed loud his iron fangs, and shook his direful crest of bristling
Chapter 69: Chapter VIII
Annotation
Chapter progress: 78.05%
Highlight: St.
Nicholas and the Manhattoes!
Notes: Santa Clause and Manhatten.
Chapter 69: Chapter VIII
Highlight
Chapter progress: 79.3%
Highlight: shedding a thousand
sparks, like beams of glory, round his grizzly visage.
Chapter 70: Chapter IX
Annotation
Chapter progress: 80.3%
Highlight: How vain, how fleeting, how uncertain are all
those gaudy bubbles after which we are panting and toiling in this world of fair delusions!
Notes: History
Chapter 70: Chapter IX
Highlight
Chapter progress: 80.3%
Highlight: The more I reflect, the more I am astonished at the important character of the historian. He is the sovereign
censor, to decide upon the renown or infamy of his fellow-men.
Chapter 72: Chapter I
Highlight
Chapter progress: 82.79%
Highlight: It is certainly of the first importance, say they, that a
country should be governed by wise men; but then it is almost equally important that the people should think them
wise; for this belief alone can produce willing subordination.
Chapter 73: Chapter II
Annotation
Chapter progress: 83.54%
Highlight: Another great measure of Peter Stuyvesant for public improvement was the distribution of fiddles throughout the
land. These were placed in the hands of veteran negroes, who were despatched as missionaries to every part of the
province.
Notes: To dance and not politick.
Chapter 73: Chapter II
Highlight
Chapter progress: 84.04%
Highlight: Here would he smoke his pipe, crack his joke, and forget the rugged toils of war, in the
sweet oblivious festivities of peace, giving a nod of approbation to those of the young men who shuffled and
kicked most vigorously; and now and then a hearty smack, in all honesty of soul, to the buxom lass who held out
longest, and tired down every competitor—infallible proof of her being the best dancer.
Chapter 74: Chapter III
Annotation
Chapter progress: 84.79%
Highlight: The Susquesahanocks are a giantly people, strange in proportion, behavior, and attire—their voice sounding
from them as out of a cave. Their tobacco-pipes were three-quarters of a yard long; carved at the great end with
a bird, beare, or other device, sufficient to beat out the brains of a horse. The calfe of one of their legges
measured three-quarters of a yard about; the rest of the limbs proportionable.
Notes: Giants
Chapter 75: Chapter IV
Highlight
Chapter progress: 85.54%
Highlight: As to that better
part of valor called discretion, it was too cold-blooded a virtue for his tropical temperament.
Chapter 75: Chapter IV
Annotation
Chapter progress: 86.53%
Highlight: Amphictyons.
Notes: New Englanders
Chapter 79: Chapter VIII
Highlight
Chapter progress: 90.02%
Highlight: We are told that disciples on entering the school of Pythagoras were for two years enjoined silence, and
forbidden either to ask questions or make remarks.
Chapter 84: Chapter XIII
Highlight
Chapter progress: 97.01%
Highlight: And thus
did it fare with the empire of their High Mightinesses, at the Manhattoes, under the peaceful reign of Walter the
Doubter, the fretful reign of William the Testy, and the chivalric reign of Peter the
Chapter 84: Chapter XIII
Highlight
Chapter progress: 97.51%
Highlight: He who reads attentively will discover the threads of gold which run throughout the web of history,
and are invisible to the dull eye of ignorance.
Chapter 85: Endnotes
Highlight
Chapter progress: 98.75%
Highlight: Ogilvie’s
History of America, 1671
Chapter 85: Endnotes
Annotation
Chapter progress: 99.0%
Highlight: In a
manuscript record of the province, dated 1659, Library of the New York Historical Society, is the following
mention of Indian money:—”Seawant, alias wampum.
Notes: Money wampum.
Chapter 85: Endnotes
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Chapter progress: 99.75%
Highlight: The golden mines have never since been explored, but remain among the mysteries of the
Kaatskill mountains, and under the protection of the goblins which haunt them.
Chapter 85: Endnotes
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Chapter progress: 99.75%
Highlight: Hobbes,
Leviathan,