threats, windmills, trumpeters, and paper war, carried on by Wilhel-
mus the Testy--and we may trace its operations in an armament
which he fitted out in 1642, in a moment of great wrath, consisting of
two sloops and thirty men, under the command of Mynheer Jan Jen-
sen Alpendam, as admiral of the fleet, and commander-in-chief of the
forces. This formidable expedition, which can only be paralleled by
some of the daring cruises of our infant navy about the bay and up
the sound, was intended to drive the Marylanders from the Schuyl-
kill, of which they had recently taken possession--and which was
claimed as part of the province of New Nederlandts--for it appears
that at this time our infant colony was in that enviable state, so much
coveted by ambitious nations, that is to say, the government had a
vast territory, part of which it enjoyed, and the greater part of which
it had continually to quarrel about.

Admiral Jan Jensen Alpendam was a man of great mettle and
prowess, and no way dismayed at the character of the enemy, who
were represented as a gigantic, gunpowder race of men, who lived on
hoe-cakes and bacon, drank mint-juleps and apple toddy, and were
exceedingly expert at boxing, biting, gouging, tar and feathering, and
a variety of other athletic accomplishments, which they had borrowed
from their cousins-german and prototypes, the Virginians, to whom
they have ever borne considerable resemblance. Notwithstanding
all these alarming representations, the admiral entered the Schuylkill
most undauntedly with his fleet, and arrived without disaster or op-
position at the place of destination.

Here he attacked the enemy in a vigorous speech in Low Dutch,
which the wary Kieft had previously put in his pocket; wherein he
courteously commenced by calling them a pack of lazy, louting, dram-
drinking, cock-fighting, horse-racing slave-driving, tavern-haunting,
Sabbath-breaking, mulatto-breeding upstarts--and concluded by or-
dering them to evacuate the country immediately--to which they most
laconically replied in plain English, "they'd see him d--d first."

Now this was a reply for which neither Jan Jensen Alpendam nor
Wilhelmus Kieft had made any calculation--and finding himself
totally unprepared to answer so terrible a rebuff with suitable hos-
tility, he concluded that his wisest course was to return home and
report progress. He accordingly sailed back to New Amsterdam,
where he was received with great honors, and considered as a pattern
for all commanders; having achieved a most hazardous enterprise, at
a trifling expense of treasure, and without losing a single man to the
state! He was unanimously called the deliverer of his country (an
appellation liberally bestowed on all great men); his two sloops,
having done their duty, were laid up (or dry-docked) in a cove now
called the Albany basin, where they quietly rotted in the mud; and
to immortalized his name, they erected, by subscription, a magnificent
shingle monument on the top of Flatten-barrack hill, which lasted
three whole years; when it fell to pieces and was burnt for firewood.

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