To ensure complete success, the expedition was placed under the direction of a trusty guide, who professed to be intimately acquainted with the homes and haunts of the savages. This party started in the fore part of March, and pushed actively forward towards the Indian village ; but fortune favored the red man. The night set in clouded and dark; and when the expedition reached Armenperal,'^ Van Dyck called a halt, notwithstanding the entreaties of his men to push on, ere the savages

a O'Callaghan's Hist. N. N . p. 240, 1.

b O'Callaghan's Hist N. N. p. 24:1. Journal van Nieuw Nederlaut, Hoi. Doc. v. 314. De Vries corroborates the statements in the text.

« O'Callaghan's Hist. N. N. p. 242.

d Armenperal supposed to be the west branch of the Sprain river, which flows in the rear of Dobb's Ferry. -

168 HISTORY OF THE

should have warning of their approach. An hour and a half was thus lost ; the guide then missed his way, whereupon Van Dyck Jost temper, and made a retrograde movement to Fort Amsterdam, whither he returned without having accomplished the object for which he had been detailed. The expedition however was not without its effect. The Indians had observed, by the trail of the white men, how narrowly they had escaped destruction, and therefore immediately sued for peace, which Cornells van Tienhoven concluded with them, in the course of the spring" of 1642, "at the house of a settler named Jonas Bronk, who resided on a river to which he gave his name, situate east of Yonkers, in the present county of Westchester."