The Island at the Center of the World Part 9

*1 For the record, Hudson was right. Roald Amundsen finally achieved the northwest pa.s.sage in 1906, but by then it was a matter of personal adventure, the commercial possibilities of a northern route to Asia having been largely extinguished by the brutal realities of the voyage.

Return to text.

*2 In 1924, A. J. F. van Laer, Charles Gehring's predecessor as translator of the Dutch archives, produced a limited edition publication of these records, Doc.u.ments Relating to New Netherland, 16241626, in the Henry E. Huntington Library. Doc.u.ments Relating to New Netherland, 16241626, in the Henry E. Huntington Library.

Return to text.

*3 Broadway does not follow the precise course of the Indian trail, as some histories would have it. To follow the Wickquasgeck trail today, one would take Broadway north from the Customs House, jog eastward along Park Row, then follow the Bowery to Twenty-third Street. From there, the trail snaked up the east side of the island. It crossed westward through the top of Central Park; the paths of Broadway and the Wickquasgeck trail converge again at the top of the island. The trail continued into the Bronx; Route 9 follows it northward.

Return to text.

*4 Presumably, he was born something like John Lamp; like many foreign residents of the Dutch colony, he had his name "Batavianized."

Return to text.

*5 Properly speaking, Holland referred not to the Dutch Republic but to its chief province, with Amsterdam as its hub; the other six provinces in the seventeenth-century state were Utrecht, Gelderland, Overijssel, Zeeland, Friesland, and Groningen.

Return to text.

*6 Tulip mania reached its height just at the time Van der Donck began his studies. The year before, in exchange for a single tulip bulb, a man paid four oxen, eight pigs, twelve sheep, 160 bushels of wheat, 320 bushels of rye, four casks of b.u.t.ter, a thousand pounds of cheese, two oxheads of wine, a silver pitcher, and a bed. The government of the province of Holland was forced to pa.s.s laws to end the speculation before it ruined the economy.

Return to text.

*7 The "turtle" in Turtle Bay-the neighborhood that occupies that area-is a corruption of the Dutch word deutel, deutel, or or dowel; dowel; the bay-long since filled in-was so named because of its shape. the bay-long since filled in-was so named because of its shape.

Return to text.

*8 I am deeply indebted to Diederik Willem Goedhuys for the new translation he made of the Description Description in 1991, a vast improvement on the Johnson translation that unfortunately remains unpublished; to Ada Louise Van Gastel, whose 1985 doctoral dissertation, "Adriaen van der Donck, New Netherland, and America," outlined for me many of the problems with the earlier translation; and to Hanny Veenendaal of the Netherlands Center in New York City, who helped me to translate afresh some pa.s.sages of the in 1991, a vast improvement on the Johnson translation that unfortunately remains unpublished; to Ada Louise Van Gastel, whose 1985 doctoral dissertation, "Adriaen van der Donck, New Netherland, and America," outlined for me many of the problems with the earlier translation; and to Hanny Veenendaal of the Netherlands Center in New York City, who helped me to translate afresh some pa.s.sages of the Description. Description.

Return to text.

*9 My method of determining Van der Donck's involvement in these doc.u.ments that have not heretofore been a.s.sociated with him is fairly straightforward. The population of the colony was small. As both Dr. Gehring and Dr. Frijhoff argue, Van der Donck was the only jurist, and thus the only person capable of framing his arguments with Latin legalisms and of constructing elaborate "interrogatories." I simply broke out of the archives all doc.u.ments from this period that had such features. I then took a step that I hoped would serve as a check on my surmises. I had noted in some of the doc.u.ments known to have been written by Van der Donck the repeated use of an unusual word: American. American. In the 1600s, the noun, applied to a person, was very rare. European colonists didn't use it in reference to themselves: the Dutch colonists considered themselves "New Netherlanders," the English to the north were "New Englanders," and those to the south thought of themselves as "Virginians." Only very occasionally does one see "American" used in the period, when it refers to Indians. The first recorded usage in English is in 1578, in a report about Martin Frobisher's voyage to Canada: "the Americans . . . which dwell under the equinoctiall line." The usage is even rarer in Dutch writing of the period. The word typically employed by the Dutch to refer to the Indians was In the 1600s, the noun, applied to a person, was very rare. European colonists didn't use it in reference to themselves: the Dutch colonists considered themselves "New Netherlanders," the English to the north were "New Englanders," and those to the south thought of themselves as "Virginians." Only very occasionally does one see "American" used in the period, when it refers to Indians. The first recorded usage in English is in 1578, in a report about Martin Frobisher's voyage to Canada: "the Americans . . . which dwell under the equinoctiall line." The usage is even rarer in Dutch writing of the period. The word typically employed by the Dutch to refer to the Indians was wilden, wilden, meaning natives or, as Van der Donck himself wrote, people who "seemed to be wild and strangers to the Christian religion." Van der Donck used that word, or else meaning natives or, as Van der Donck himself wrote, people who "seemed to be wild and strangers to the Christian religion." Van der Donck used that word, or else naturellen, naturellen, people of nature, but he also, in a few places, referred to the Indians as Americans. Having noticed the word also used in a few instances in the legal doc.u.ments I suspected were written by Van der Donck, I then did a search of the entire corpus of political doc.u.ments related to the Manhattan-based colony that were retrieved from the Netherlands in the nineteenth century. I found nine occurrences of the term "American," all referring to Indians, and all nine in doc.u.ments that either have Van der Donck's name attached as the author or that Dr. Frijhoff and/or I had separately concluded were the work of Van der Donck. With uncanny appropriateness, then, people of nature, but he also, in a few places, referred to the Indians as Americans. Having noticed the word also used in a few instances in the legal doc.u.ments I suspected were written by Van der Donck, I then did a search of the entire corpus of political doc.u.ments related to the Manhattan-based colony that were retrieved from the Netherlands in the nineteenth century. I found nine occurrences of the term "American," all referring to Indians, and all nine in doc.u.ments that either have Van der Donck's name attached as the author or that Dr. Frijhoff and/or I had separately concluded were the work of Van der Donck. With uncanny appropriateness, then, American, American, turns out to be a clue to the ident.i.ty of Adriaen van der Donck. turns out to be a clue to the ident.i.ty of Adriaen van der Donck.

Return to text.

*10 The couple traveled south to Breda to be married. The record in the Walloon (French-speaking) church for August 13, 1645, reads: "Mons. Pierre Stuyvesant, J. H. directeur de la part de la Compagni de Oestinde en Nieu Nederland et Judith Bayard jeune fille de Mons. Bayard, en sa vie pasteur de l'Eglise Franc, a Breda."

Return to text.

*11 Note the use of Americans Americans in reference to the Indians-. in reference to the Indians-.

Return to text.

12 I.e., the Mahicans.

Return to text.

*13 I.e., David de Vries.

Return to text.

*14 Technically, Schuylkill River is a redundancy since kill kill means river or waterway. means river or waterway.

Return to text.

*15 The colors of the Dutch flag of the seventeenth century were adopted in 1915 by the city of New York in recognition of its origins. There is thus a bizarrely direct connection between the colors flown by Dutch privateers cruising for booty on the Spanish Main three hundred and fifty years ago and the jerseys worn today by the New York Mets and the New York Knicks.

Return to text.

*16 The Plowden affair would not end here, but would go on and on, as a kind of Pythonesque subplot to American colonial history. In 1784, amid the confusion at the end of the Revolutionary War, an Englishman named Charles Varlo appeared in the new country brandis.h.i.+ng Plowden's charter, which he had somehow purchased. Varlo distributed handbills to various Americans detailing his rights to a significant portion of their newly won land, and apparently delivered an address in several places "to the people of New Albion." We can only imagine his surprise when he reached St. Mary's, Maryland, which was held to be the seat of New Albion, and found there a man named Edmund Plowden-a descendant of the original, who had kept his ancestor's dream alive and traveled to the New World to claim his palatinate. This Plowden settled at an estate in Maryland called Bushwood, and Plowdens continued to live there for many generations. Charles Varlo returned to England and published his memoirs, which he called Floating Ideas of Nature. Floating Ideas of Nature.

Return to text.

*17 In the small world of the Dutch colony, Vos would later require legal services, and would hire Adriaen van der Donck to represent him.

Return to text.

*18 Officially, the Board represented the residents of the villages of New Amsterdam, Breuckelen (later Brooklyn), New Amersfoort (the future Flatlands section of Brooklyn), and Pavonia (Jersey City, New Jersey).

Return to text.

*19 The Netherlands is still renowned for its tobacco connoisseurs.h.i.+p, and, not entirely coincidentally, one of the major Dutch cigarette brands is called Peter Stuyvesant.

Return to text.

*20 The site of the supposed Van der Donck house is just behind the gardens of the Van Cortlandt House. The Indian village, which was called Mosholu Mosholu or or Keskeskick, Keskeskick, was located at what is now the Parade Ground. was located at what is now the Parade Ground.

Return to text.

21 There are several references in the records to settlers using Indian-made canoes, and someone who had spent much time among them would have recognized their convenience.

Return to text.

*22 There was also a linguistic irony in Pauw's drab appearance, since his last name meant "peac.o.c.k."

Return to text.

*23 The finished building remains a tourist site, but its town hall function ended when it was converted into a palace in the nineteenth century by Louis Napoleon, so that it is now known as the Royal Palace.

Return to text.

*24 The Gevangenpoort still stands and is today a museum of torture and punishment.

Return to text.

*25 Where in England, and the English colonies, property was pa.s.sed down to the eldest son, in the Dutch system it pa.s.sed to all children, regardless of gender.

Return to text.

*26Here he is referring to all the provinces traditionally considered by the Dutch as part of their domain, including those that did not become part of the republic but would one day form the nation of Belgium.

Return to text.

*27 As a nice metaphor for the way history has muddled Manhattan's Dutch period, Stuyvesant's tombstone, embedded in the foundation of the Church of St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery, manages to get both his age and t.i.tle wrong.

Return to text.

*28 "And now latelie in a s.h.i.+p belonging to Newhauen, as bought by Mr. Goodyeare, yow haue sent armed men, & (without lycence, not soe-much as first acquainting any of the magistrates of this Jurisdiction with the cause or grownds thereof) ceised a s.h.i.+pp within our harbour . . ."

Return to text.

*29 The fort lives on-sort of-in the name of Huyshope Avenue in downtown Hartford.

Return to text.

*30 The s.h.i.+p's manifest listing Van der Donck's supplies still exists, and gives a nice snapshot of a settler's needs: whetstones, millstones, baskets of nails, "farmer's stockings," shoes, linen, "coa.r.s.e woolen cloth," hats and caps, kettles, ribbons, thread, books and paper, "2 boxes and 2 barrels of steel," "8 casks of bird lime," "10 anckers of brandy," "32 cakes of soap," and a whopping "300 lbs. of pepper and 20 lb. cinnamon," suggesting Van der Donck hoped to do some trading in spices on Manhattan.

Return to text.

*31 The festivities were held in the Museum of the American Indian, on the site of the fort. A sort of flattened tribute to the original city hall exists in the form of a brick outline of its location on the sidewalk at the corner of Pearl Street and Coenties Slip.

Return to text.

*32 Yes, Springsteen is a New Jersey icon, but New Jersey was after all part of the Dutch colony, and from that time to now at the center of Manhattan's sphere of influence. And, while we're at it, Springsteens were among the original Dutch settlers of New Netherland.

Return to text.

*33 A bit of anecdotal support: when I told my Swedish-Norwegian father-in-law-who owns a log cabin in the traditionally Scandinavian country of northern Minnesota-about the Finns as the originators of the American log cabin, his response was: "Around here everyone knows that if you want a log cabin built, you call a Finn."

Return to text.

Epilogue.

THE PAPER TRAIL.

Through all the events of this story, in a council room in Fort Amsterdam and in an administrative office above the gate, the successive secretaries of the Manhattan-based colony of New Netherland did what all secretaries do: took notes and filed records. Lots were sold, houses were built, pigs were stolen, knives were drawn, liquor was taxed, property was damaged. The quill scratched its way softly across the sheets of imported rag paper. The directors issued their decrees and the leaders of the colonists their complaints. Letters streamed out-to Curacao, Virginia, Boston, Amsterdam. The quill dipped into the ink pot, then addressed the paper again, filling row after row with the oddly curling Dutch script of the period.

What happened to these records after Richard Nicolls's troops took possession of them can be summed up in a truism: history is written by the winners. There was probably an element of spite involved in the failure of the English to incorporate the records of the Dutch colony into the first American histories. The bad blood between the two rival nations only intensified with the three wars they fought during the course of the century. The t.i.tle of one of the many screeds published in England is enough to remind one of the ludicrous level of animosity: The Dutch-mens Pedigree, Or, A Relation Shewing How They Were First Bred and Descended from a Horse-t.u.r.d Which Was Enclosed in a b.u.t.ter-Box. The Dutch-mens Pedigree, Or, A Relation Shewing How They Were First Bred and Descended from a Horse-t.u.r.d Which Was Enclosed in a b.u.t.ter-Box. Another indication of English antipathy toward the Dutch, which America took in with its mother's milk, so to speak, is the tally of "Dutch" phrases in the language-"Dutch treat," "Dutch courage," "double Dutch," "a Dutch bargain," "going Dutch," "Dutch comfort"-all of them derogatory and all coming right out of the seventeenth century. Another indication of English antipathy toward the Dutch, which America took in with its mother's milk, so to speak, is the tally of "Dutch" phrases in the language-"Dutch treat," "Dutch courage," "double Dutch," "a Dutch bargain," "going Dutch," "Dutch comfort"-all of them derogatory and all coming right out of the seventeenth century.

While the records of other early settlements were being preserved and accessed to create the story of American beginnings, those of the non-English colony were kicked around, fought over, forgotten. Their fitful pa.s.sage through the next three centuries is an ironically dramatic reflection of how the colony itself has been ignored-Zelig-like, this archive would be connected to some of the major events and figures in American history. In 1685, after King James ordered a reorganization of the colonies, the volumes were tossed onto a stagecoach bound for Boston; three years later they made the same rough trip back to New York when the new monarchs, William and Mary, reversed the ruling. It was probably on one or both of these journeys that some volumes were lost (none of the records prior to 1638 remain, and the crucial period of 1649 to 1652, when Van der Donck was presenting the colonists' case before the States General, has vanished as well). In 1741 the fort, in which the records were once again housed (now called Fort George), was torched in what was widely considered to be a slave conspiracy. The gatehouse burned, but the records were saved by a diligent secretary tossing them out the window. It was a bl.u.s.tery day, and many pages blew away, but the bulk of the records remained intact.

In the buildup to revolution, New York City became a place of chaos and confusion. Bands of radicals did their best to disrupt the British administration. Threats were made on the life of William Tryon, the royal governor of the colony, so that on the morning of December 1, 1775, he found himself trying to conduct business from the lurching deck of a s.h.i.+p, the d.u.c.h.ess of Gordon, d.u.c.h.ess of Gordon, in New York Harbor, several hundred yards away from the populace he was supposed to be governing. A new matter of concern came to the governor's attention that morning, involving the same radical who had threatened his life. He wrote a hurried letter to the deputy secretary of the province: in New York Harbor, several hundred yards away from the populace he was supposed to be governing. A new matter of concern came to the governor's attention that morning, involving the same radical who had threatened his life. He wrote a hurried letter to the deputy secretary of the province: Sir-As I am credibly informed that Isaac Sears, at the head of a large body of Connecticut people, intends very shortly to march into the city of New-York, to seize and carry off by violence the public records in the secretary's office, I do hereby require you, without loss of time, to put on board the s.h.i.+p Dutchess of Gordon, all such public acts and records under your care, as immediately concern the interests of the crown, until I can advise with his Majesty's council how they may be better secured. The records for patents for land and public commissions are of the first importance to be put on board the above s.h.i.+p. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, WILLIAM TRYON.

The records that Tryon was anxious to protect included not only those of the English colony of New York but those of the earlier Dutch colony as well. They remained for much of the war in the damp hold of Tryon's s.h.i.+p, where mold set in, the traces of which are still evident on the sheets. Then, according to a letter from the French writer J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur to none other than Benjamin Franklin, as the fight over the fate of the city and the colonies reached a climax, the records were moved to the Tower of London. Eventually, the victorious colonists demanded their return. Miraculously, the papers survived the turmoil of the war, although at its end the secretary of the new state of New York reported that many pages were "much mill-dewed and greatly injured"; he added, however, that he had exercised "my best endeavours to preserve them, having frequently exposed them to the sun and air, and several times had them brushed through every leaf."

With the turn of the next century, it looked as though the information in the doc.u.ments would enter the historical record. In 1801 a committee of the New York State a.s.sembly declared that "immediate measures ought to be taken to procure a translation of the records of this State, now in the Secretary's office, which are written in the Dutch language." One might expect that this directive would be taken seriously since it was auth.o.r.ed by Aaron Burr, the most powerful man in the legislature, who was about to leave in order to serve as Thomas Jefferson's vice-president (and would three years later become infamous for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel). But it wasn't until 1818 that a full-scale translation effort was under way. The man selected for this work-Francis Adrian van der Kemp, an elderly Dutch minister and former soldier who had emigrated to New York-did as he was asked. In four years, he produced a translation of the entire twelve thousand pages.

In fact, this episode in the history of the colony's records comes across as a kind of comedy. Such a rate of production is not humanly possible for one man. What's more, Van der Kemp had a faulty grasp of English, he was going blind at the time, and, in an effort to save his eyes as he rushed through the doc.u.ments, he stopped intermittently to apply belladonna (a deadly poison). The result of Van der Kemp's tour de force effort was twenty-four volumes of handwritten translations-a fiasco of small errors, howlers, and ma.s.sive, unexplained gaps-that were worse than worthless-worse because they were a.s.sumed to be adequate, were housed in the state library in Albany, and used by historians. Eventually, fate occasionally being kind, this entire corpus-which was never published and of which only the original existed-burned in a fire before it could further corrupt history.

The next attempt to bring this chapter of American history to light came in the early twentieth century. A search went out for a translator with a fluid understanding of the Dutch language of the seventeenth century, and one was found: a shy, heavy-set, Dutch-born engineer with a gift for language and a stubbornness for accuracy. But only two years after A. J. F. van Laer began work on a translation of the records, the infamous fire of 1911 struck the New York capitol, which housed the state library. Millions of volumes were destroyed. Once again, the Dutch records dodged catastrophe, thanks to the ironic fact that, being considered of lesser importance, they were housed on a bottom shelf, so that when the shelves collapsed, English colonial records that had been stored above protected them from destruction. Nevertheless, some doc.u.ments were destroyed, others were badly damaged, both by fire and water, and two years of Van Laer's work was lost. Like a character in a novel, the man, seemingly sh.e.l.l-shocked, continued for a long time after the fire to go to work as usual. His work site was now a smoldering ruin, open to the sky, and he would poke among the debris in search of potential fragments. He continued to be employed in the state archives and eventually produced a translation of four volumes of the Dutch records (which would remain unpublished for half a century), but suffered a nervous collapse as a result of the catastrophe, and turned away from the ma.s.sive, seemingly jinxed project.

And so to the 1970s, to the era of Watergate, when, as I have outlined at the beginning of this book, another effort was launched to crack the code of the Dutch ma.n.u.scripts. Gerald Ford succeeded Richard Nixon as president, and selected Nelson Rockefeller, who had just completed his fourth term as New York governor, as his vice-president. Before leaving for Was.h.i.+ngton, Rockefeller arranged for a modest portion of funds to be dedicated to the project, and the hunt was on again for a translator.

The difficulty was greater than one might imagine. The Dutch language has changed enormously in three hundred years, and in the eighteenth century there was a s.h.i.+ft in handwriting style, so that doc.u.ments written prior to that are often incomprehensible to modern Dutch speakers. Then there is the vast amount of technical knowledge required: weights and measures, how many mengelen mengelen in an in an aam, aam, the fact that a the fact that a daelder daelder is worth the same as a Carolus guilder but less than a is worth the same as a Carolus guilder but less than a rijksdaelder. rijksdaelder. The job was a niche within a niche. The job was a niche within a niche.

It was a shock to both men, then, when Peter Christoph, a senior librarian charged with the task of finding a translator, met Charles Gehring at a conference. Gehring had finished a dissertation in Germanic linguistics with a concentration in Netherlandic studies. "Before I had a chance to say anything," Christoph said, recalling their meeting for me, "he asked me, 'In your field, do you know of any openings for someone to work with seventeenth-century Dutch doc.u.ments?' I said, 'Boy, do I.'"

That was in 1974. Gehring has had only one job since, as translator of the archives of the colony. In the way of all nonprofit enterprises, there is a yearly crisis over funding to support the work. Not surprisingly, much of it comes in the way of donations from Americans of Dutch ancestry. There is also a matching grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. As Gehring's output has been published-there are eighteen volumes in print so far-he has become a center of American colonial studies. He is succeeding not only in making the records of America's non-English colony available to researchers, but in broadening the field of colonial studies beyond its historic Anglocentric focus. As a kind of cap to his effort, in 1999 the twelve thousand pages of ma.n.u.script records of the Dutch colony were declared a national treasure by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Besides giving the charred pages a belated dignity, the designation also came with funds to help preserve them.

The historians who in recent years have written dissertations and academic papers on the Dutch colony-further broadening awareness of its significance-owe a lot to Gehring and to Janny Venema, a Dutch historian who has worked as a.s.sistant to the translator for the past eighteen years. I owe them a great deal as well. Not only have they made the records accessible through their translations, they have allowed me to work alongside them, have answered endless questions, have suggested avenues to explore, and have given me free rein over the shelves and file cabinets of relevant arcana they have collected over the years. Just as valuable, spending time with them has given me a greater feel for the people of the colony than I ever could have gotten from mere books. The New York State Library occupies a soulless 1970s building in downtown Albany, but in the corner where their offices are located it's the age of Rembrandt and Vermeer; for the hours I'm there, life seems richer and wilder. When Charly Gehring holds forth on the hazards of sailing in the seventeenth century, his conversation is sprinkled with Dutch nautical terms not heard in the Netherlands in centuries. He has an appealing habit of talking about people in the present tense: "Van Tienhoven has a lot of skeletons in his closet, but he's also just about the shrewdest guy on the island," he will say of a man last seen on Manhattan in 1656.

From them, too, I've gotten a sense of the doc.u.ments as artifacts, which hold stories that don't transfer into type. Sitting with Janny Venema, looking through browned, mold-speckled pages written in the days leading up to the English takeover, I noticed one sheet with a distinctly different writing. The typical scribe's hand is rounded, with intricate little flourishes; this page was filled with thick, jagged, up-and-down strokes. "Oh, that's Stuyvesant," she said offhandedly. "He must have been in a hurry and there was no secretary around." It was remarkable to see how well the man's handwriting seemed to match his personality, and indeed, the letter-which has yet to be published-brims with immediacy. He is writing to the directors of the West India Company: English frigates are in the harbor, their guns are trained on the city. At the bottom, Stuyvesant adds that he will give the letter to a skipper who hopes to slip undetected through the h.e.l.l Gate and out to sea. The fact that I was holding it was proof that the skipper never sailed. Long Island is lost, Stuyvesant informs his bosses, and New Englanders are ma.s.sing across the river, ready to invade. The town is low on food and gunpowder; the people tell him they aren't willing to fight for a company that has shown no willingness to support them. The anger in the letter is palpable: the corporate bosses had ignored his endless appeals for reinforcements, and left him in an impossible situation. It isn't Stuyvesant the pig-headed administrator who comes through in the harsh strokes, but a man caught in an inept bureaucracy.

One more, smaller example of how these weathered pages reveal fragments of human life. The outpost of Fort Orange (Albany) had its own administration, and for many years a man named Johannes Dijckman acted as secretary, taking minutes of meetings. We know little about him-just an ordinary man, of no account to history-but elsewhere there is a mention of him having a drinking problem. "Over time, you notice that his handwriting gets harder to read," Gehring said. "Then, one day in 1655, right in the middle of a meeting, the handwriting changes. A new hand picks up, and you never see the old one again." Shortly after, Dijckman appears in the deacon's account books; he's on poor relief and will stay on the dole until he dies. "Those last pages of minutes Dijckman takes are covered with stains and blotches," Venema said. "Who knows what they are: maybe just water. But maybe it's wine. Maybe tears."

NOTES.

For further details about the sources listed in these notes, please refer to the bibliography, which begins on page 352.

PROLOGUE.

"Original sources of information": Bayard Tuckerman, Peter Stuyvesant, Director-General for the West India Company in New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant, Director-General for the West India Company in New Netherland, preface. preface.

"measures ought to be taken": A. J. F. van Laer, "The Translation and Publication of the Ma.n.u.script Dutch Records of New Netherland, with an Account of Previous Attempts at Translation," 9.

destroyed the state library: See Epilogue notes for sources on previous translation attempts.

"It is impossible": Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, A History of Western Philosophy, 581. 581.

"like a great natural pier": Mariana G. van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York in the Seventeenth Century, History of the City of New York in the Seventeenth Century, 1:49. 1:49.