As I Grew To More Mature Years I Made
Many Researches After The Truth Of These Strange Traditions; For I Have
Always Been A Curious Investigator Of The Valuable, But Obscure
Branches Of The History Of My Native Province.
I found infinite
difficulty, however, in arriving at any precise information.
In seeking
to dig up one fact it is incredible the number of fables which I
unearthed; for the whole course of the Sound seemed in my younger days
to be like the straits of Pylorus of yore, the very region of fiction.
I will say nothing of the Devil's Stepping Stones, by which that arch
fiend made his retreat from Connecticut to Long Island, seeing that the
subject is likely to be learnedly treated by a worthy friend and
contemporary historian[2] whom I have furnished with particulars
thereof. Neither will I say anything of the black man in a
three-cornered hat, seated in the stern of a jolly boat who used to be
seen about Hell Gate in stormy weather; and who went by the name of the
Pirate's Spuke, or Pirate's Ghost, because I never could meet with any
person of stanch credibility who professed to have seen this spectrum;
unless it were the widow of Manus Conklin, the blacksmith of Frog's
Neck, but then, poor woman, she was a little purblind, and might have
been mistaken; though they said she saw farther than other folks in the
dark. All this, however, was but little satisfactory in regard to the
tales of buried money about which I was most curious; and the following
was all that I could for a long time collect that had anything like an
air of authenticity.
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