On their right hand might be seen the vassals of that renowned Mynheer, Michael Paw[51], who lorded it over the fair regions of ancient Pavonia, and the lands away south, even unto the Navesink Mountains,[52] and was, moreover, patroon of Gibbet Island.  His standard was borne by his trusty squire, Cornelius Van Vorst, consisting of a huge oyster recumbent upon a sea-green field, being the armorial bearings of his favorite metropolis, Communipaw.  He brought to the camp a stout force of warriors, heavily armed, being each clad in ten pair of linsey-woolsey breeches, and overshadowed by broad-brimmed beavers, with short pipes twisted in their hat-bands.  These were the men who vegetated in the mud along the shores of Pavonia, being of the race of genuine copper-heads, and were fabled to have sprung from oysters.

At a little distance was encamped the tribe of warriors who came from the neighborhood of Hell-gate.  These were commanded by the Suy Dams and the Van Dams, incontinent hard swearers, as their names betoken; they were terrible looking fellows, clad in broad-skirted gaberdines, of that curious colored cloth called thunder and lightning, and bore as a standard three devil’s darning-needles, volant, in a flame-colored field.

Hard by was the tent of the men of battle from the marshy borders of the Waale-Boght[53] and the country thereabouts; these were of a sour aspect, by reason that they lived on crabs, which abound in these parts.  They were the first institutors of that honorable order of knighthood, called Flymarket shirks; and, if tradition speak true, did likewise introduce the far-famed step in dancing, called “double trouble.”  They were commanded by the fearless Jacobus Varra Vanger, and had, moreover, a jolly band of Breuckelen[54] ferry-men, who performed a brave concerto on conch shells.

But I refrain from pursuing this minute description, which goes on to describe the warriors of Bloemen-dael, and Weehawk, and Hoboken, and sundry other places, well known in history and song—­for now do the notes of martial music alarm the people of New Amsterdam, sounding afar from beyond the walls of the city.  But this alarm was in a little while relieved; for, lo! from the midst of a vast cloud of dust, they recognized the brimstone-colored breeches and splendid silver leg of Peter Stuyvesant, glaring in the sunbeams; and beheld him approaching at the head of a formidable army, which he had mustered along the banks of the Hudson.  And here the excellent but anonymous writer of the Stuyvesant manuscript breaks out into a brave and glorious description of the forces, as they defiled through the principal gate of the city, that stood by the head of Wall Street.