Page 16 - Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor

"Henry (or as the Dutch historians call him, Hendrick) Hudson was a
seafaring man of renown, who had learned to smoke tobacco under Sir

Walter Raleigh, and is said to have been the first to introduce it into
Holland, which gained him much popularity in that country, and caused

him to find great favor in the eyes of their High Mightinesses, the Lords
States General, and also of the honorable East India Company. He was a
short, square, brawny old gentleman, with a double chin, a mastiff mouth,

and a broad copper nose, which was supposed in those days to have
acquired its fiery hue from the constant neighborhood of his tobacco pipe.

"He wore a commodore’s cocked hat on one side of his head. He was
remarkable for always jerking up his breeches when he gave out his orders,

and his voice sounded not unlike the brattling of a tin trumpet--owing to the
number of hard northwesters which he had swallowed in the course of his

seafaring.

"Such was Hendrick Hudson, of whom we have heard so much and know

so little."

You must read in the history itself the amusing account of Ten Breeches
and Tough Breeches. One of the Dutch colonists bought of the Indians for
sixty guelders as much land as could be covered by a man’s breeches. When

the time for measuring came Mr. Ten Breeches was produced, and peeling
off one pair of breeches after another, soon produced enough material to

surround the entire island of Manhattan, which was thus bought for sixty
guelders, or Dutch dollars.

In due time came the first Dutch governor, Wouter Van Twiller.

Governor Van Twiller was five feet six inches in height, and six feet five
inches in circumference, his figure "the very model of majesty and lordly
grandeur." On the very morning after he had entered upon his office, he

gave an example of his great legal knowledge and wise judgment.

As the governor sat at breakfast an important old burgher came in to
complain that Barent Bleecker refused to settle accounts, which was very