" It is difficult for an
Anglo-Saxon to take the Dutch in America seriously. What can you
do with a people whose imagination allowed them to give such
names to their ships as Weigh Scales, Spotted Cow, and The Pear
Tree? So Irving described the taking of Fort Casimir in mock
heroic manner. He describes the marshaling of the Dutch hosts of
New York by families, the Van Grolls of Anthony's Nose, the
Brinkerhoffs, the Van Kortlandts, the Van Bunschotens of Nyack
and Kakiat, the fighting men of Wallabout, the Van Pelts, the Say
Dams, the Van Dams, and all the warriors of Hellgate "clad in
their thunder-and-lightning gaberdines," and lastly the standard
bearers and bodyguards of Peter Stuyvesant, bearing the great
beaver of the Manhattan.
"And now commenced the horrid din, the desperate struggle, the
maddening ferocity, the frantic desperation, the confusion and
self-abandonment of war. Dutchman and Swede commingled, tugged,
panted, and blowed. The heavens were darkened with a tempest of
missives. Bang! went the guns; whack! went the broadswords;
thump! went the cudgels; crash! went the musket-stocks; blows,
kicks, cuffs, scratches, black eyes and bloody noses swelling the
horrors of the scene! Thick, thwack, cut and hack,
helter-skelter, higgledy-piggledy, hurly-burly, heads-over-heels,
rough-and-tumble! Dunder and blixum! swore the Dutchmen; splitter
and splutter! cried the Swedes.
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