After a while a boat put off for land, and a stranger stepped on shore, a lofty, lordly kind of man, tall and dry, with a meagre face, furnished with huge moustaches. He was clad in Flemish doublet and hose, and an insufferably tall hat, with a cocktail feather. Such was the patroon Killian Van Renselaer, who had come out from Holland to found a colony or patroonship on a great tract of wild land, granted to him by their High Mightinesses, the Lords States General, in the upper regions of the Hudson. Killian Van Rensselaer was a nine davs' wonder in New Amsterdam;for he carried a high head, looked down upon the portly, short-legged burgomasters, and owned no allegiance to the governor himself; boasting that he held his patroonship directly from the Lords States General.

He did not tarry long (in the httle city that he actually never visited, and where he would have disdained to Ijeat up recruits for his colony, which the reader knows actually antedated that of New Amsterdam), but pushed on up the river, from whence reports of his doings were brought to the ears of the jealous Governor.

At length tidings came that the patroon of Rensselaerswyk had extended his usurpations along the river, beyond the limits granted him by their High Mightinesses: that he had even seized upon a rocky island in the Hudson, commonly known by the name of Beam or Bear's Island, where he was erecting a fortress to be called by the lofty name of Rensselaerstein. Wouter Van Twiller was roused by this intelligence. After consulting with his burgomasters, he dispatched a letter to the patroon of Rensselaerswyk, demanding by what right he had seized upon this island, which lay beyond the bounds of his patroonship. The answer of Killian Van Rensselaer was in his own