Littlepage Manuscripts: Satanstoe, The Chainbearer & The Redskins (Complete Edition). James Fenimore Cooper

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СКАЧАТЬ Learn to labour and to wait.”

      —Longfellow

      The spring of the year I was twenty, Dirck and myself paid our first visit to town, in the characters of young men. Although Satanstoe was not more than five-and-twenty miles from New York, by the way of King’s-Bridge, the road we always travelled in order to avoid the ferry, it was by no means as common to visit the capital as it has since got to be. I know gentlemen who pass in and out from our neighbourhood, now, as often as once a fortnight, or even once a week; but thirty years since this was a thing very seldom done. My dear mother always went to town twice a year; in the spring to pass Easter week, and in the autumn to make her winter purchases. My father usually went down four times, in the course of the twelve months, but he had the reputation of a gadabout, and was thought by many people to leave home quite as much as he ought to do. As for my grandfather, old age coming on, he seldom left home now, unless it were to pay stated visits to certain old brother campaigners who lived within moderate distances, and with whom he invariably passed weeks each summer.

      The visit I have mentioned occurred some time after Easter, a season of the year that many of our country families were in the habit of passing in town, to have the benefit of the daily services of Old Trinity, as the Hebrews resorted to Jerusalem to keep the feast of the passover. My mother did not go to town this year, on account of my father’s gout, and I was sent to supply her place with my aunt Legge, who had been so long accustomed to have one of the family with her at that season, that I was substituted. Dirck had relatives of his own, with whom he staid, and thus every thing was rendered smooth. In order to make a fair start, my friend crossed the Hudson the week before, and, after taking breath at Satanstoe for three days, we left the Neck for the capital, mounted on a pair of as good roadsters as were to be found in the county: and that is saying a good deal; for the Morrises, and de Lanceys, and Van Cortlandts all kept racers, and sometimes gave us good sport, in the autumn, over the county course. West Chester, to say no more than she deserved, was a county with a spirited gentry, and one of which no colony need be ashamed.

      My mother was a tender-hearted parent, and full of anxiety in behalf of an only child. She knew that travelling always has more or less of hazard, and was desirous we should be off betimes, in order to make certain of our reaching town before the night set in. Highway robbers, Heaven be praised! were then, and are still, unknown to the colonies; but there were other dangers that gave my excellent parent much concern. All the bridges were not considered safe; the roads were, and are yet, very circuitous, and it was possible to lose one’s way; while it was said persons had been known to pass the night on Harlem common, an uninhabited waste that lies some seven or eight miles on our side of the city. My mother’s first care, therefore, was to get Dirck and myself off early in the morning; in order to do which she rose with the light, gave us our breakfasts immediately afterwards, and thus enabled us to quit Satanstoe just as the sun had burnished the eastern sky with its tints of flame-colour.

      Dirck was in high good-humour that morning, and, to own the truth, Corny did not feel the depression of spirits which, according to the laws of propriety, possibly ought to have attended the first really free departure of so youthful an adventurer from beneath the shadows of the paternal roof. We went our way laughing and chatting like two girls just broke loose from boarding-school. I had never known Dirck more communicative, and I got certain new insights into his feelings, expectations and prospects, as we rode along the colony’s highway that morning, that afterwards proved to be matters of much interest with us both. We had not got a mile from the chimney-tops of Satanstoe, ere my friend broke forth as follows:—

      “I suppose you have heard, Corny, what the two old gentlemen have been at, lately?”

      “Your father and mine?—I have not heard a syllable of any thing new.”

      “They have been suing out, before the Governor and Council, a joint claim to that tract of land they bought of the Mohawks, the last time they were out together on service in the colony militia.”

      I ought to mention, here, that though my predecessors had made but few campaigns in the regular army, each had made several in the more humble capacity of a militia officer.

      “This is news to me, Dirck,” I answered. “Why should the old gentlemen have been so sly about such a thing?”

      “I cannot tell you, lest they thought silence the best way to keep off the yankees. You know, my father has a great dread of a yankee’s getting a finger into any of his bargains. He says the yankees are the locusts of the west.”

      “But, how came you to know any thing about it, Dirck?”

      “I am no yankee, Corny.”

      “And your father told you on the strength of this recommendation?”

      “He told me, as he tells me most things that he thinks it best I should know. We smoke together, and then we talk together.”

      “I would learn to smoke too, if I thought I should get any useful information by so doing.”

      “Dere is much to be l’arnt from ter pipe!” said Dirck, dropping into a slightly Dutch accent, as frequently happened with him, when his mind took a secret direction towards Holland, though in general he spoke English quite as well as I did myself, and vastly better than that miracle of taste, and learning, and virtue, and piety, Mr. Jason Newcome, A.B., of Yale, and prospective president of that, or some other institution.

      “So it would seem, if your father is telling you secrets all the time you are smoking together. But where is this land, Dirck?”

      “It is in the Mohawk country—or, rather, it is in the country near the Hampshire Grants, and at no great distance from the Mohawk country.”

      “And how much may there be of it?”

      “Forty thousand acres; and some of it of good, rich flats, they say; such as a Dutchman loves.”

      “And your father and mine have purchased all this land in company, you say—share and share alike, as the lawyers call it.”

      “Just so.”

      “Pray how much did they pay for so large a tract of land?”

      Dirck took time to answer this question. He first drew from his breast a pocket-book, which he opened as well as he could under the motion of his roadster, for neither of us abated his speed, it being indispensable to reach town before dark. My friend succeeded at length in putting his hand on the paper he wanted, which he gave to me.

      “There,” he said; “that is a list of the articles paid to the Indians, which I have copied, and then there have been several hundred pounds of fees paid to the Governor and his officers.”

      I read from the list, as follows; the words coming out by jerks, as the trotting of my horse permitted. “Fifty blankets, each with yellow strings and yellow trimmings; ten iron pots, four gallons each; forty pounds of gunpowder; seven muskets; twelve pounds of small beads; ten strings of wampum; fifty gallons of rum, pure Jamaica, and of high proof; a score of jews-harps, and three dozen first quality English-made tomahawks.”

      “Well, Dirck,” I cried, as soon as through reading, “this is no great matter to give for forty thousand acres of land, in the colony of New York. I dare say a hundred pounds currency ($250) would buy every thing here, even to the rum and the first quality of English-made tomahawks.”

      “Ninety-six pounds, thirteen shillings, seven pence ‘t’ree fart’in’s’ СКАЧАТЬ