Comic History of the United States. Nye Bill

here."

      "Very good," said the chief, as they jogged down-town on a swift Sixth Avenue elevated train towards the wigwams on 14th Street, and going at the rate of four miles an hour. "We do not care especially who discovers us, so long as we hold control of the city organization. How about that, Hank?"

      "That will be satisfactory," said Mr. Hudson, taking a package of imported cheese and eating it, so that they could have the car to themselves.

      "We will take the departments, such as Police, Street-Cleaning, etc., etc., etc., while you and Columbus get your pictures on the currency and have your graves mussed up on anniversaries. We get the two-moment horses and the country châteaux on the Bronx. Sabe?"

      "That is, you do not care whose portrait is on the currency," said Hudson, "so you get the currency."

      Said the man, "That is the sense of the meeting."

      Thus was New York discovered via Albany and Fort Lee, and five minutes after the two touched glasses, the brim of the schoppin and the Manhattan cocktail tinkled together, and New York was inaugurated.

      Obtaining a gentle and philanthropical gentleman who knew too well the city by gas-light, they saw the town so thoroughly that nearly every building in the morning wore a bright red sign which read—

Beware of Paint.Table of Contents

      Regarding the question as to who has the right to claim the priority of discovery of New York, I unite with one of the ablest historians now living in stating that I do not know.

      Here and there throughout the work of all great historians who are frank and honest, chapter after chapter of information like this will burst forth upon the eye of the surprised and delighted reader.

       CLUB LIFE IN EARLY NEW YORK.

      Society at the time of the discovery of the blank-verse Indian of America was crude. Hudson's arrival, of course, among older citizens soon called out those who desired his acquaintance, but he noticed that club life was not what it has since become, especially Indian club life.

      He found a nation whose regular job was war and whose religion was the ever-present prayer that they might eat the heart of their enemy plain.

      The Indian High School and Young Ladies' Seminary captured by Columbus, as shown in the pictures of his arrival at home and his presentation to the royal pair one hundred and seventeen years before this, it is said, brought a royal flush to the face of King Ferdie, who had been well brought up.

      This can be readily understood when we remember that the Indian wore at court a court plaster, a parlor-lamp-shade in stormy weather, made of lawn grass, or a surcingle of front teeth.

      They were shown also in all these paintings as graceful and beautiful in figure; but in those days when the Pocahontas girls went barefooted till the age of eighty-nine years, chewed tobacco, kept Lent all winter and then ate a brace of middle-aged men for Easter, the figure must have been affected by this irregularity of meals.

       THE INDIAN GIRL OF STORY.—THE INDIAN GIRL OF FACT.

      Unless the Pocahontas of the present day has fallen off sadly in her carriage and beauty, to be saved from death by her, as Smith was, and feel that she therefore had a claim on him, must have given one nervous prostration, paresis, and insomnia.

      The Indian and the white race never really united or amalgamated outside of Canada. The Indian has always held aloof from us, and even as late as Sitting Bull's time that noted cavalry officer said to the author that the white people who simply came over in the Mayflower could not marry into his family on that ground. He wanted to know why they had to come over in the Mayflower.

       BILL NYE CONVERSING WITH SITTING BULL.

      "We were here," said the aged warrior, as he stole a bacon-rind which I used for lubricating my saw, and ate it thoughtfully, "we were here and helped Adam 'round up' and brand his animals. We are an old family, and never did manual labor. We are just as poor and proud and indolent as those who are of noble blood. We know we are of noble blood because we have to take sarsaparilla all the time. We claim to come by direct descent from Job, of whom the inspired writer says—

      "Old Job he was a fine young lad,

       Sing Glory hallelujah.

       His heart was good, but his blood was bad,

       Sing Glory hallelujah."[3]

CHAPTER VIII.

       Table of Contents

THE DUTCH AT NEW AMSTERDAM.

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      Soon after the discovery of the Hudson, Dutch ships began to visit that region, to traffic in furs with the Indians. Some huts were erected by these traders on Manhattan Island in 1613, and a trading-post was established in 1615. Relics of these times are frequently turned up yet on Broadway while putting in new pipes, or taking out old pipes, or repairing other pipes, or laying plans for yet other pipes, or looking in the earth to see that the original pipes have not been taken away.

      Afterwards the West India Company obtained a grant of New Netherland, and New Amsterdam was fairly started. In 1626, Minuit, the first governor, arrived, and, as we have stated, purchased the entire city of New York of the Indians for twenty-four dollars.

      Then trouble sprang up between the Dutch and the Swedes on the Delaware over the possession of Manhattan, and when the two tribes got to conversing with each other over their rights, using the mother-tongue on both sides, it reminded one of the Chicago wheat market when business is good. The English on the Connecticut also saw that Manhattan was going to boom as soon as the Indians could be got farther west, and that property would be high there.