About this time the first public market for the sale of negro slaves was established at the foot of Wall Street.  More and more slaves were brought into the city, and the laws were made more and more strict to keep them in the most abject bondage.  It had come to be the law that no more than four slaves could meet together at one time.  They were not permitted to pass the city gates, nor to carry weapons of any sort.  Should one appear on the street after nightfall without a lighted lantern, he was put in jail and his master was fined.  Sometimes a slave murdered his owner.  Then he was burned at the stake, after scarcely the pretence of a trial; or was suspended from the branches of a tall tree and left there to die.

[Illustration:  The Slave-Market.  From an Old Print.]

But although the slaves were restrained and beaten and killed, their numbers increased so fast that the citizens were always in fear that they might one day rise up and kill all their masters.  A riot did occur the year after the slave-market was set up.  Several white men were killed and a house was burned.  Many negroes were then arrested and nineteen of them were executed under a charge of having engaged in a plot against the whites.

Affairs moved along quietly for a time after the riot.  The next most interesting happening was the putting up of the first public clock, on the City Hall in Wall Street.  It was the gift of Stephen De Lancey.

De Lancey was a Huguenot nobleman, who had fled from France when the Huguenots were persecuted for their faith, and had found a home in the new world.  He lived in a mansion at the corner of what are now Pearl and Broad Streets.  The house is there yet, still called Fraunces’s Tavern from the owner who turned it into a tavern after De Lancey removed from it.

Governor Hunter was becoming very popular with the people, when unfortunately his health failed.  So he surrendered the government into the hands of Peter Schuyler, who was the oldest member in the City Council, and went to Europe, having served for nine years.  For thirteen months Schuyler took charge, until William Burnet, the new Governor, replaced him.

[Illustration:  Fraunces’s Tavern.]

CHAPTER XV

Governor Burnet and the French traders

Governor William Burnet was the son of a celebrated bishop of England.

His early days were passed at the Court of William III., where he met people of refinement and culture.  Of an observing nature, and studying a great deal, he came to be a man of deep learning, a good talker, with manners that attracted attention wherever he went—­so fine were they.

The city was gayly decorated in honor of his coming.  Women looked from their windows and waved their handkerchiefs.  Men crowded the streets and loudly shouted their welcome.

Soon after, he married the daughter of a leading merchant, and so identified himself at once with the city’s interests.  He became the fast friend of Chief-Justice Lewis Morris.  Another friendship was that he formed with Dr. Cadwallader Colden.  We shall hear more of this man later.  Besides being a physician of note, he had a world-wide reputation as a writer on many scientific subjects.