New Amsterdam

It was a period also at that time almost a terra incognita in history.

In fact, I was surprised to find how few of my fellow citizens were aware that New York had ever been called New Amsterdam, or had heard of the names of the early Dutch governors, or cared a straw about their ancient Dutch progenitors.

This then broke upon me as the poetic age of our city, poetic from its very obscurity, and open like the early and obscure days of ancient Rome to all the embellishments of heroic fiction.

I held my native city as fortunate above all other American cities in having an antiquity thus extending back into the regions of doubt and fable.

And from their amazing skill at casting up accounts upon their fingers, they are regarded with as much veneration as were the disciples of Pythagoras of yore when initiated into the sacred quaternary of numbers.

As to the honest burghers of Communipaw, like wise men and sound philosophers, they never look beyond their pipes, nor trouble their heads about any affairs out of their immediate neighborhood, so that they live in profound and enviable ignorance of all the troubles, anxieties, and revolutions of this distracted planet.

I am even told that many among them do verily believe that Holland, of which they have heard so much from tradition, is situated somewhere on Long Island, that Spiking Devil and the Narrows are the two ends of the world, that the country is still under the dominion of their high mightinesses, and that the city of New York still goes by the name of New Amsterdam.

They meet every Saturday afternoon at the only tavern in the place, which bears as a sign a square-headed likeness of the Prince of Orange, where they smoke a silent pipe by way of promoting social conviviality, and invariably drink a mug of cider to the success of Admiral Von Tromp, whom they imagine is still sweeping the British Channel with a broom at his masthead.

And thousands of miles away, another piece of territory.

New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island was caught up in the same Anglo-Dutch rivalry.

The diplomatic settlement that followed the Second Anglo-Dutch War left run in Dutch hands while New Amsterdam remained under English control.

New Amsterdam could eventually become New York City.

It's often simplified into the claim that the Dutch traded Manhattan for a nutmeg island.

That's not exactly what happened, but the real story is even more fascinating because the history of nutmeg isn't simply about a spice.

New

Amsterdam.

Sixteen twenty-four, Walloons from Netherlands settle Fort Orange, now Albany, New York.

Sixteen twenty-six, Netherlanders establish New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island.

Sixteen twenty-eight, persecuted Protestants establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Sixteen thirty-four, Lord Baltimore and a group of English Catholics arrive in Maryland.

Sixteen thirty-eight, Swedes and Finns settle along the Delaware River.

Sixteen thirty-nine, John Mason and his followers come to New Hampshire.

Sixteen fifty-four, twenty-three Portuguese Jews land at New Amsterdam from Brazil.

Sixteen sixty-two, Huguenots settle in Massachusetts on the present site of Oxford.

From that time until 1623, when the West India Company obtained its charter, their trade with the Indians was conducted almost entirely on shipboard, and they made no attempts to build any house or fortress until 1629.

Now, whether that was done with or without the permission of England, the town of New Amsterdam was built and fortified, as also the place Orania Orange, now called Albany, having since had three general governors, one after the other.

But that was not yet enough.

They wished to extend their power to the river Delaware also, and erected on its shores two or three small forts, which were, however, soon after destroyed by the natives of the country.

During the ten years after 1620, the twin colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay had been fairly shaken down into their places, and had even begun to look around them for opportunities of extension.

It was not possible that the fertile and inviting territory to the southwest should long escape their notice.

In 1629, de Razares, an envoy from New Amsterdam, was at Plymouth.

He found the Plymouth people building a shallop for the purpose of attaining a share in the wampum trade of Narragansett Bay, and he very shrewdly sold them at a bargain enough wampum to supply their needs, for fear they should discover at Narragansett the more profitable pelchy trade beyond.

It's a corporation in the interests of the state.

But basically, there's not even private fur trading in furs in New Amsterdam until a few decades into the colony.

It's sort of this corporation doing all the work.

What starts happening by the 19th century is the city stops being a profitable corporation.

Dutch background.

And hipped on the subject of New Amsterdam, which, in case you don't know, was the original name of New York City.

Don't mind me interrupting, I cut in.

But I'm not quite straight on what Vanderkamp has to do with time as a dimension.

That's all I've been doing.

Since I was 10 years old, I've been waiting on you." "Oh, the hell with it." He turned on his heel and left the house.

She followed him to the door and shouted after him, "Where are you going now?" "To New Amsterdam for a little peace and quiet," he said testily.

He threw open the thick-walled door of his time machine and pulled it shut behind him.