colony called Westchester, or, as the ancient Dutch records term it,
Vest Dorp, in the right of one Thomas Pell, who pretended to have
purchased the whole surrounding country of the Indians, and stood ready
to argue their claims before any tribunal of Christendom.

This happened during the chivalrous reign of Peter Stuyvesant, and it
roused the ire of that gunpowder old hero; who, without waiting to
discuss claims and titles, pounced at once upon the nest of nefarious
squatters, carried off twenty-five of them in chains to the Manhattoes,
nor did he stay his hand, nor give rest to his wooden leg, until he had
driven every Yankee back into the bounds of Connecticut, or obliged
him to acknowledge allegiance to their High Mightinesses. He then
established certain out-posts, far in the Indian country, to keep an eye
over these debateable lands; one of these border-holds was the Roost,
being accessible from New Amsterdam by water, and easily kept supplied.
The Yankees, however, had too great a hankering after this delectable
region to give it up entirely. Some remained and swore allegiance to the
Manhattoes; but, while they kept this open semblance of fealty, they
went to work secretly and vigorously to intermarry and multiply, and by
these nefarious means, artfully propagated themselves into possession of
a wide tract of those open, arable parts of Westchester county, lying
along the Sound, where their descendants may be found at the present
day; while the mountainous regions along the Hudson, with the valleys
of the Neperan and the Pocantico, are tenaciously held by the lineal
descendants of the Copperheads.

* * * * *

The chronicle of the venerable Diedrich here goes on to relate how that,
shortly after the above-mentioned events, the whole province of the New