He was
led to choose this subject, because, as he tells us, few of his fellow
citizens were aware that New York had ever been called New Amsterdam, and
because the subject, "poetic from its very obscurity," was especially
available for an American author, since it gave him a chance to adorn it
with legend and fable. He states that his object was "to embody the
traditions of our city in an amusing form" and to invest it "with those
imaginative and whimsical associations so seldom met with in our country,
but which live like charms and spells about the cities of the old world."
[Illustration: THE OFFICIAL WEIGHT]
[Illustration: A ONE-PIPE JOURNEY]
Irving achieved his object and produced an entertaining compound of
historical fact, romantic sentiment, exaggeration, and humor. He shows us
the contemplative Dutchmen on their first voyage in the _Half Moon_,
sailing into New York Bay, prohibited by Hudson "from wearing more than
five jackets and six pair of breeches." We see the scrupulously "honest"
Dutch traders buying furs from the Indians, using an invariable scale of
avoirdupois weights, a Dutchman's hand in the scale opposite the furs
weighing one pound, his foot two pounds.
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