Thus far we have touched at random, as one does on a holiday. Now, seriously, as on a journey of discovery, may we take staff in hand to trace, if possible, the elusive march of populations by the ashes of their campfires, as Evangeline did the wanderings of Gabriel, her beloved.
The Dutch, more's the pity, have left scant memorials of their American empire. "Knickerbocker's History of New York" has effectually laughed them out of court; but, notwithstanding, they were mighty men, whose idiosyncrasies we readily catch at as a jest, but whose greatness breaks on us slowly, as great matters must. "Kill" was a Dutch word, meaning creek, a terminal appearing in many of the few words they have left us, such as Fishkill, Peekskill, Wynantskill, Catskill. Along the banks of streams, with names like these, one could see ragged Rip Van Winkle, with his dog and gun, with shambling hunter's gait, or come silently on solemn Dutch burghers, solemnly playing ninepins in the shadows. Brooklyn (Breuchelin) is Dutch, as are Orange, Rensselaer, Stuyvesant, Rhinebeck, Rhinecliff, Vanbrunt, Staatsburg, Rotterdam, Hague, Nassau, Walloonsack, Yonkers, and Zurich. Wallabout, a borough of Brooklyn (Waalbogt), means Walloon's Bay, thus having a religio-historical significance. Nor dare we omit that river, noble as an epic, named after a Dutch discoverer, who, first of Europeans, flung the swaying shadows of foreign sails on its beautiful waters. Hudson is a prince among triumphant and adventurous discoverers. And I never sail past the Palisades, by summer or gorgeous autumn, when all the hills are blood and flame, without reverting in thought to Hudson, who gave the stream to our geography and his name to the stream, nor forget that he was set adrift in the remote and spacious sea, which likewise bears his name; though well it may, for it is doubtless his grave; for, set adrift by mutineers, he was crushed by icefloes, or fell asleep in death in that winter sea. But Hudson River and Hudson Bay will make him as immortal as this continent. All men shall know by them that Heinrich Hudson hath sailed this way. So much, then, for following along dim paths once trod by a Dutch burgher's tramp of empire.