marching to settlements where most of the people were Dutch, they tried to make the people there take the oath of allegiance to the English king.

A month later a party of twenty Englishmen secretly sailed up the Raritan River in a sloop, called the chiefs of some of the neighboring Indian tribes together, and tried to buy a large tract of land from them. They knew all the while that the Dutch West India Company had bought that same land from the Indians some time before.

As soon as he heard of this Peter Stuyvesant sent Crygier, with some well-armed men, in a swift yacht, to thwart the English traders. He also sent a friendly Indian to warn the chiefs against trying to sell land they no longer owned. The Dutch yacht arrived in time to stop the Indians from dealing with the English, and the latter, baffled there, sailed their sloop down the bay to a place between Rensselaer's Hook and Sandy Hook, where they met other Indians and tried to bargain with them for land. The Dutch Crygier overtook them.

"You are traitors!" he cried. "You are acting against the government to which you have taken the oath of fidelity!"

"This whole country," answered the men from the sloop, "has been given to the English by His Majesty the King of England."

Then the two parties separated, Crygier and his men sailing back to New Amsterdam.

While matters stood this way in the province of New Netherland an Englishman, John Scott, petitioned King Charles the Second to grant him the government of Long Island, which he said the Dutch settlers were unjustly trying to take away from the king of England. Scott was given authority to make a report to the English government on the state of affairs in that part of the New World, and in order to do this he sailed to America and went to New Haven, where he was warmly welcomed. The colony of Connecticut gave him the powers of a magistrate throughout Long Island, and he at once set to work to wrest the island from the Dutch, whom he upbraided as "cruel and rapacious neighbors who were enslaving the English settlers."

Some of the villages on Long Island, however, and especially those where there were many Quakers and Baptists, did not want to come under the rule of the Puritans. Therefore six towns, Hempstead, Gravesend, Flushing, Middlebury, Jamaica and Oyster Bay, formed a government of their own, asking John Scott to act as their president, until the king of England should establish a permanent government for them. Scott swelled with pride in his new power. He gathered an armed force of one hundred and seventy men, horse and foot, and marched out to compel the neighboring Dutch towns to join his new colony.

First he marched on Brooklyn. There he told the citizens that their land belonged to the crown of England, and that he now claimed it for the king. He had so many men with him that the Dutch saw it would be impossible to arrest him, but one of them, the secretary, Van Ruyven, suggested that he should cross the river to New Amsterdam and talk with Peter Stuyvesant. Scott pompously answered, "Let Stuyvesant come here with a hundred men; I will wait for him and run my sword through his body!" And he scowled and marched up and down before the stolid Dutchman like a fierce cock-o'-the-walk.

The Dutchmen of Brooklyn, however, did not seem anxious to exchange the rule of Governor Peter Stuyvesant for that of Captain John Scott. As he was strutting up and down Captain Scott spied a boy who looked as if he would like to use his fists on the Englishman. The boy happened to be a son of Governor Stuyvesant's faithful officer Crygier. Captain Scott walked up to the boy, and ordered him to take off his hat and salute the flag of England. Young Crygier refused, and the quick-tempered captain struck at him. One of the men standing by called out, "If you have blows to give, you should strike men, not boys!"

Four of Scott's men jumped at the man who had dared to speak so, and the latter, picking up an axe, tried to defend himself, but soon found it best to run. Scott ordered the people of Brooklyn to give the man up, threatening to burn the town unless they did so. But the man was not surrendered, and the captain did not dare to carry out his threat.

Instead he marched to Flatbush, and unfurled his flag before the house of the sheriff. Settlers gathered round to see what was happening, and Captain Scott made them a speech. "This land," said he to the Dutchmen, "which you now occupy, belongs to His Majesty, King Charles. He is the right and lawful lord of all America, from Virginia to Boston. Under his government you will enjoy more freedom than you ever before possessed. Hereafter you shall pay no more taxes to the Dutch government, neither shall you obey Peter Stuyvesant. He is no longer your governor, and you are not to acknowledge his authority. If you refuse to submit to the king of England, you know what to expect."

But the men of Flatbush were no more ready to obey the haughty captain than those of Brooklyn had been. One of the magistrates dared to tell Scott that he ought to settle this dispute with Peter Stuyvesant. "Stuyvesant is governor no longer," he retorted. "I will soon go to New Amsterdam, with a hundred men, and proclaim the supremacy of His Majesty, King Charles, beneath the very walls of the fort!"

The Dutch would not obey him, but neither would they take up arms against him. Such treatment angered the fire-eating captain more and more. He marched his troop to New Utrecht, where the Dutch flag floated over the block fort, armed with cannon. Meeting no resistance from the peace-loving settlers Scott hauled down their flag and replaced it with the flag of England. Then, using the Dutch cannon and Dutch powder he fired a salute to announce his victory. All those who passed the fort were ordered to take off their hats and bow before the new banner, and those who refused were arrested by his men, and some were bound and beaten.

Peter Stuyvesant, in New Amsterdam, heard of these disturbances on Long Island, and sent three of his leading men to meet Scott and try to make some settlement with him. They met the captain at Jamaica, and after much wrangling, at last reached what they thought might be an agreement. But as they left Scott fired these words at their backs: "This whole island belongs to the king of England. He has made a grant of it to his brother, the Duke of York. He knows that it will yield him an annual revenue of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He is soon coming with an ample force, to take possession of his property. If it is not surrendered peaceably he is determined to take, not only the whole island, but also the whole province of New Netherland!"

This was alarming news. Some of the English settlers were rallying to Scott's command, the Dutch in some of the villages fled to Dutch forts for shelter. Even the prosperous men in New Amsterdam began to fear lest the English captain should attack their homes. Fortifications were hurriedly built, and men enrolled as soldiers.

Peter Stuyvesant, fearful lest he should lose his colony, knowing well that the English greatly outnumbered the Dutch, found himself in a very difficult situation. But "Wooden-Legged Peter" was a fighter, quite as fiery as John Scott when his blood was up.

II

Peter Stuyvesant saw that he would have to make terms with the English Captain Scott, or more English adventurers might come swarming down from New England and speedily gobble up the whole of Manhattan Island. He went to Hempstead on Long Island, on the third day of March, 1664, and made an agreement with Scott that the villages on the western part of the island, where the settlers were mainly English, should consider themselves under