The Stories Connected With This Wreck Made It An Object Of Great Awe To
My Boyish Fancy; But In Truth The Whole Neighborhood Was Full Of Fable
And Romance For Me, Abounding With Traditions About Pirates,
Hobgoblins, And Buried Money.
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.
[Footnote 2: For a very interesting account of the Devil and his
Stepping Stones, see the learned memoir read before the New York
Historical Society since the death of Mr. Knickerbocker, by his friend,
an eminent jurist of the place.]
KIDD THE PIRATE.
In old times, just after the territory of the New Netherlands had been
wrested from the hands of their High Mightinesses, the Lords States
General of Holland, by Charles the Second, and while it was as yet in
an unquiet state, the province was a favorite resort of adventurers of
all kinds, and particularly of buccaneers. These were piratical rovers
of the deep, who made sad work in times of peace among the Spanish
settlements and Spanish merchant ships. They took advantage of the easy
access to the harbor of the Manhattoes, and of the laxity of its
scarcely-organized government, to make it a kind of rendezvous, where
they might dispose of their ill-gotten spoils, and concert new
depredations. Crews of these desperadoes, the runagates of every
country and clime, might be seen swaggering, in open day, about the
streets of the little burgh; elbowing its quiet Mynheers; trafficking
away their rich outlandish plunder, at half price, to the wary
merchant, and then squandering their gains in taverns; drinking,
gambling, singing, swearing, shouting, and astounding the neighborhood
with sudden brawl and ruffian revelry.
At length the indignation of government was aroused, and it was
determined to ferret out this vermin brood from, the colonies. Great
consternation took place among the pirates on finding justice in
pursuit of them, and their old haunts turned to places of peril. They
secreted their money and jewels in lonely out-of-the-way places; buried
them about the wild shores of the rivers and sea-coast, and dispersed
themselves over the face of the country.
Among the agents employed to hunt them by sea was the renowned Captain
Kidd. He had long been a hardy adventurer, a kind of equivocal
borderer, half trader, half smuggler, with a tolerable dash of the
pickaroon. He had traded for some time among the pirates, lurking about
the seas in a little rakish, musquito-built vessel, prying into all
kinds of odd places, as busy as a Mother Carey's chicken in a gale of
wind.
This nondescript personage was pitched upon by government as the very
man to command a vessel fitted out to cruise against the pirates, since
he knew all their haunts and lurking-places: acting upon the shrewd old
maxim of "setting a rogue to catch a rogue." Kidd accordingly sailed
from New York in the Adventure galley, gallantly armed and duly
commissioned, and steered his course to the Madeiras, to Bonavista, to
Madagascar, and cruised at the entrance of the Red Sea. Instead,
however, of making war upon the pirates, he turned pirate himself:
captured friend or foe; enriched himself with the spoils of a wealthy
Indiaman, manned by Moors, though commanded by an Englishman, and
having disposed of his prize, had the hardihood to return to Boston,
laden with wealth, with a crew of his comrades at his heels.
His fame had preceded him. The alarm was given of the reappearance of
this cut-purse of the ocean. Measures were taken for his arrest; but he
had time, it is said, to bury the greater part of his treasures. He
even attempted to draw his sword and defend himself when arrested; but
was secured and thrown into prison, with several of his followers. They
were carried to England in a frigate, where they were tried, condemned,
and hanged at Execution Dock. Kidd died hard, for the rope with which
he was first tied up broke with his weight, and he tumbled to the
ground; he was tied up a second time, and effectually; from whence
arose the story of his having been twice hanged.
Such is the main outline of Kidd's history; but it has given birth to
an innumerable progeny of traditions. The circumstance of his having
buried great treasures of gold and jewels after returning from his
cruising set the brains of all the good people along the coast in a
ferment.
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