indefatigable researches into our early history, have even affirmed that
this sachem was the very individual on whom Master Hendrick Hudson and
his mate, Robert Juet, made that sage and astounding experiment so
gravely recorded by the latter in his narrative of the voyage: "Our
master and his mate determined to try some of the cheefe men of the
country whether they had any treacherie in them. So they took them down
into the cabin and gave them so much wine and aqua vitae that they
were all very merrie; one of them had his wife with him, which sate so
modestly as any of our countrywomen would do in a strange place. In the
end one of them was drunke; and that was strange to them, for they
could not tell how to take it." [Footnote: See Juet's Journal, Purchas
Pilgrim.]

How far Master Hendrick Hudson and his worthy mate carried their
experiment with the sachem's wife is not recorded, neither does the
curious Robert Juet make any mention of the after-consequences of this
grand moral test; tradition, however, affirms that the sachem on landing
gave his modest spouse a hearty rib-roasting, according to the connubial
discipline of the aboriginals; it farther affirms that he remained a
hard drinker to the day of his death, trading away all his lands, acre
by acre, for aqua vitae; by which means the Roost and all its domains,
from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow, came, in the regular course of trade and
by right of purchase, into the possession of the Dutchmen.

Never has a territorial right in these new countries been more
legitimately and tradefully established; yet, I grieve to say, the
worthy government of the New Netherlands was not suffered to enjoy this
grand acquisition unmolested; for, in the year 1654, the local Yankees
of Connecticut--those swapping, bargaining, squatting enemies of the
Manhattoes--made a daring inroad into this neighborhood and founded a