Page:History of Hudson County and of the Old Village of Bergen.djvu/18

10 In the Old Dutch Days

transplanted, and walked forth in untroubled dignity with enormous guns to shoot the wild fowl whose wraithlike flights filled that sky which now is filled by wraiths of smoke from Sandy Hook to the Highlands of the Hudson.

During the next few years the silence of their bay was broken at rare intervals by a cannonshot below the narrows. Then all New Amsterdam gathered at the Battery and watched for wide sails over a wide ship—a ship almost as wide as long, but in all dimensions so small that we of today would think it no small adventure to make a mere coasting voyage on her. Out of the ship would come arrivals from Holland in wide breeches and noble Dutch hats, solid as the Dutch nation itself.

The passenger lists of these occasional ships could find room on small scraps of paper, yet the pioneers plainly felt that there was too much pressure of population, for only a few