Part 4

In 1637, the redoubtable Wouter Van Twiner, first governor of the colony under the New Amsterdam company of which he had been a director, secured for his personal use the island. It is fair to look at this gentleman inquisitively. “The renowned Wouter (or Walter) Van Twiller was descended from a long line of Dutch Burgomasters,” says Washington Irving, “who had successively dozed away their lives, and grown fat upon the bench of magistracy in Rotterdam; and who had comported themselves with such singular wisdom and propriety that they were never either heard or talked of--which, next to being universally applauded, should be the object of ambition of all magistrates and rulers ... many a dunderpate, like the owl, the stupidest of birds, comes to be considered the very type of wisdom. This, by the way, is a casual remark which I would not for the universe have it thought I apply to Governor Van Twiller. It is true he was a man shut up within himself, like an oyster, and rarely spoke except in monosyllables; but then it was allowed he seldom said a foolish thing. So invincible was his gravity that he was never known to laugh or even to smile through the whole course of a long and prosperous life. Nay, if a joke were uttered in his presence, that set light-minded hearers in a roar, it was observed to throw him into a state of perplexity. Sometimes he would deign to inquire into the matter, and when, after much explanation, the joke was made as plain as a pike-staff, he would continue to smoke his pipe in silence and at length, knocking out the ashes, would exclaim, ‘Well, I see nothing in all that to laugh about.’

“The person of this illustrious old gentleman was formed and proportioned as though it had been moulded by the hands of some cunning Dutch statuary, as a model of majesty and lordly grandeur. He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere and of such stupendous dimensions that Dame Nature with all her sex’s ingenuity would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt and settled it firmly on the top of his backbone just between the shoulders. His body was oblong and particularly capacious at bottom; which was wisely ordained by Providence, seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits and very averse to the idle labor of walking. His legs were short but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain; so that when erect he had not a little the appearance of a beer-barrel on skids. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse unfurrowed by any of those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament, and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like a Spitzenberg apple.”

After the seizure of the colony by the British in 1664, the island became a perquisite of the governor’s office, a sort of retreat from care for the occupant of that harassed position, and was developed into a smiling garden. At this time it became known as Governor’s Island, the name that has become its official designation on the charts of the present day.

The first immigrants to New York under the English were assigned by the council to Nutten Island for detention until the presence or non-presence of contagious disease in their ranks could be proved. These immigrants were about fifty Palatines who had been driven from their home land by the war between Louis XIV and Holland and Austria. Subsequently 10,000 followed these first fifty unfortunate exiles. The island thus became the first quarantine station of the city of New York.

During the wars of the Spanish Succession until the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 the people of the colonies of British North America were in constant dread of attack by the French navy and during this time it was urged continually that Governor’s Island should be changed from a garden to a fortified spot. Notwithstanding this fact the successive executives Slaughter, Fletcher and Cornbury did nothing toward carrying out the desires of their subjects.

It was a happy-go-lucky, careless era. Indeed when one looks back upon the perils of the early colonies and how they were survived it is like looking back upon the perils of childhood and wondering how one ever managed to get through. The colonies “just growed,” which is true of a variety of things in this world, no doubt.

During Governor Cornbury’s administration, fifteen thousand pounds (a value in present day terms of far beyond seventy-five thousand dollars) was appropriated for building a fort upon Governor’s Island, but Governor Cornbury used the money to build a pleasure house instead, to which he and succeeding governors might retire from press of business.

Governor Cornbury, we may believe, was an edifying addition to the staid burgher circles of old New York. He was a small, shrimpish man, we are told, and inordinately vain. Being a cousin to her most Christian Majesty, Queen Anne, to which circumstance he owed his appointment, and having been assured that he resembled her hugely in appearance, he was in the habit of dressing himself like a woman and posing upon the balcony of his home--that New Yorkers might be thrilled by a reflection of royalty. Despite his royal connections his household was most impecunious and his wife gained a reputation for borrowing things which she had no intention of ever giving back. Whenever the executive coach would be seen going the round of the streets on social duties bent, the good wives who might expect visits from her ladyship would say, it is said, “Quick, put away that fancy work and that vase” (or this and that), “Kathrine! Her ladyship is about to call upon us.”

Father Time strolled on through the terms of the various royal governors noting their idiosyncrasies and continually hearing the cry that Governor’s Island should be fortified, but not by any of these gentlemen did he discover action taken. It was not until after the Continental Congress, October 6, 1775, directed that means should be immediately devised to make New York defensible that the little city one morning woke up to find that there were rudimentary fortifications on Governor’s Island. Of course these fortifications were supplementary to the fort on the main island upon which the city chiefly depended, Fort George. This was the name the English had given to Fort Amsterdam’s successor, an enlarged and strengthened edition of its original.

Of little avail did all of these works prove, however, for the English, after the battle of Long Island, August 27, 1776, were easily masters of the Americans in that part of the world. On August 30th, Admiral Howe sailed up New York Bay and anchored near the island, and the city of New York passed into British possession, not to be surrendered until the close of the war.

The little force of men on Governor’s Island under the command of Colonel Prescott abandoned the place on the approach of the British. One man was injured by a bullet in the arm as they were pulling away from the island. The place was garrisoned by the British during their occupancy of New York and was fortified more extensively than it ever had been before.

The site of all of these works was the site of present-day Fort Columbus or Fort Jay.

After the Revolution the value of Governor’s Island as a place of fortification was not taken advantage of and the works were allowed to fall into decay. In 1784 Governor Clinton leased the spot to a certain Dr. Price as the site for a hotel and race course. This course was open during 1785 and 1786 and had staged upon it many exciting trials of speed.

We have seen Governor’s Island as a flowery retreat for the governors of New York from the cares of office, and we have looked in upon it in the charge of the rough soldiery of England. We now see it as the scene of the dissipations of the rabble and the lusty young sports of the old city. Yet another day is in store for the historic spot.

After the retirement of Washington from the presidency the irritation between France and this country became intense, and fears were entertained of conflict between the European nation and its young former protégé. Agitation began once more in New York for the building up of the defensive works on Governor’s Island. Pressing recommendations were made to the federal authorities. The story may be taken up and carried on here in the words of a government report:

“The Secretary of War reported, December 19, 1794, that one bastion commanding two low batteries had been undertaken and was in a considerable state of forwardness, but observed that the works being only sodded would not stand very long. On January 18, 1796, the Secretary reported to the Senate that Governor’s Island had been fortified with a fort made of earth and two batteries, under its protection, partly lined with brick masonry; that there had been erected two hot air furnaces, a large powder magazine and a barracks for the garrison; on February 10, 1797, that no alterations had been made since January 1796, except in the repairs and such additions as could he made to the garrison. During this time there had been expended by the general government on the fortifications of the island as follows: 1794, $1,327; in 1795, $6,866.54; in 1796, $1,124.

“But now the apprehension of a French invasion caused such clamor for protection among the people that immediate attention by the general government was bestowed upon properly fortifying Governor’s Island. Thirty thousand one hundred and seventeen dollars was at once appropriated to be expended upon the fort, which now became known as Fort Jay. Such was the fervor of the day that the professors and students of Columbia College went in a body to Governor’s Island and worked on the fortifications with shovels and wheelbarrows.

“Liberal appropriations were made by Congress in the three succeeding years for completing and improving the fort. In 1799, Congress appropriated $30,116.18; in 1800, $20,124; in 1801, $10,338.05. No further improvements were made until 1806, when Fort Jay with the whole of its buildings was demolished except the walled counterscarp, the gate, the sally-port, the magazine, and two barracks; all the rest was removed to give place for a work of durable materials. On the site of the old fort a new one, Fort Columbus, was erected, an inclosed pentagonal work with four bastions of masonry, calculated for one hundred guns, being of the same shape on three sides as Fort Jay, with the addition of fourteen feet on each side, and on the north side of a ravelin, with two retired casemates. Such was Fort Columbus when it was completed in 1809.”

Despite the flurried haste of New Yorkers to have the fort completed, despite the unprecedented exertions of the Columbia students with shovels and wheelbarrows, Fort Columbus, or Jay as it has been rebaptized of recent years in military circles, has never been in active service.

Indeed, during the war of 1812, only three years after its completion, the need of a post farther out to sea than this called for the erection of that quaint little brick strong-box just off present-day Fort Hamilton known as Fort Lafayette. It was called originally Fort Diamond but was renamed in honor of the great Frenchman on his visit to this country in 1824. Overshadowed by its great modern neighbor (Fort Hamilton), the little fortification is rarely observed, but it is still in active service and might give good account of itself if called upon to do so, better account in fact than its sire nestling close to America’s greatest city.

Not far from Fort Jay on Governor’s Island is a little work whose name is not unfamiliar to New Yorkers. It is Castle Williams. Begun in 1807, it was completed in 1811 and as a military weapon has never been of service to the city which it was created to help protect. As a landmark in the harbor, however, it has acquired some little distinction solely through merit of the years, just as some men live through an entirely commonplace youth and middle age to become in their last years notable figures in their communities as classmates of Father Time.

At about the time that Castle Williams was being constructed, a similar work was in erection just off the Battery, Manhattan, on a ledge of rocks now a part of the city itself. This was Fort Clinton, which is the Castle Garden, or Aquarium, of the present day. Fort Jay and Castle Williams, Fort Clinton and the Battery were the outing places of New Yorkers before the Civil War. To the Island or the Battery did the residents of the city repair for air and recreation on holidays and Sundays. An illuminating picture of this phase of the city’s life is drawn by Abram C. Dayton in his “Last Days of Knickerbocker Life in New York.”

“Castle Garden, the legend says,” he writes, “was created to protect the city against invasion. Whether these invaders were to be New Jersey Indians armed with bows and arrows or Staten Island pirates bent upon destruction with popguns and firecrackers is not related; but it is certain a very limited force would have been required to effect an entrance through its brick walls. About the time we write of its loud-mouthed armament had been removed” (about 1860): “it had been placed by special orders from somewhere on a peace footing. It was neither a concert saloon, an opera house, nor a receptacle for needy immigrants; but the old white-washed barn was devoted to the restaurant business on a very limited scale, as ice cream, lemonade, and sponge cake constituted the list of delicacies from which to select. The ticket of admission required to pass its portcullis cost one shilling; but that was a mere form instituted to guarantee perfect decorum, for it was redeemed as cash in exchange for either of the above specified articles of refreshment. At the close of a summer day its frowning battlements were crowded with listeners eager to catch a strain of martial music wafted from Governor’s Island.

“Rabineau’s swimming bath was moored to the wooden bridge which connected the old fort with the Battery grounds; and on its roof protected by an awning might be seen, after banking hours on summer afternoons, substantial citizens comfortably seated and refreshing themselves after their bath with the sea breeze, accompanied by mint julep and sherry cobblers.”

Prior to 1852, Fort Columbus was for several different short periods of time empty of troops, but since that year it has always contained a garrison. In addition to being the head-quarters of the Department of the East, the old post is now used as a military prison and as a landing-place for the aërial branch of the army.

A visit to Governor’s Island to-day is a pleasant excursion for a stranger in new New York and the port would be a new sight for most New Yorkers, so unfamiliar are familiar places to those who are closest to them. One must have a pass from the military authorities at the island to go through the old works, but this can be secured upon written application without great difficulty by any citizen of the United States.

A fine figure of a place Fort Columbus seems to be,--rather a braggart in its way! It spreads out, girded by its “dry moat,” over the crest of the hill on which it is placed, in a truly threatening attitude. But one does not need to be told that this is hollow sham. A single shell from a modern engine of war would, no doubt, finish all of its pretensions.

Looking from its sunny interior beyond its battlemented walls one can see the airy fabric of New York’s marvellous sky-scrapers against the eastern sky, a poignant contrast to the old stronghold. Age and youth! In this comparison the fort has that advantage which always inheres in years, it has seen youth grow from infancy and it knows the quick passing of all things.

TICONDEROGA

LAKE CHAMPLAIN--NEW YORK

One could desire to be at the bold promontory of Ticonderoga in 1609, when the virgin woodside gazed anxiously at Samuel Champlain, that intrepid French adventurer, as he fired his bell-mouthed musket against the mystified Iroquois. The echoes of the discharge of this ancient firearm were seldom allowed to die in these wildernesses until the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, until the complete ascendency of white man over red had been established.

Standing upon the ramparts of the old fort one may to-day easily imagine himself in a virgin forest world. Civilization has set her hand upon Lake Champlain, but her work is not obtrusively near to the fort. The hills to the rear are still wooded; the waters, to front and sides, are clear; and the same blue bends over all. The immediate surroundings are little different from those in which Champlain fought his opera-bouffe fight and inaugurated the long struggle between red men and white in this part of the world.

We must remember that in 1609 the French had already taken hold of New France. They had a querulous, contumacious baby of a colony on the Saint Lawrence at Quebec and to this point came many curious red men. With some of these red men the French had formed alliance.

One tribe of these allies had seen the thunderous cannon and guns of the French and had suggested that these weapons be taken out and turned upon some of the ancient enemies of that tribe. The idea had appealed to Champlain as eminently a clever one, and with eleven other Frenchmen armed with arquebuses and clad in light armor he had set out, on the 28th of June, with three hundred amiable red people. The party proceeded up the Saint Lawrence as far as the river which afterward became known as the Richelieu and here paused for feasting and a carouse. During the course of this ceremony three-quarters of the Indians became huffy over a trifle and left for their homes in a hurry, reducing the expedition to eleven Frenchmen and seventy-five Indians.

As the expedition proceeded the Indians consulted their tutelary spirits. A small circular tent would be raised of skins over saplings and into this would crawl the medicine man with shudders and groans. A grand commotion would be heard and then the voice of the spirit would speak in a thin, treble squeak. The tent structure would dance violently around and the savage spectators would feel that their divinity was having a very busy time.

At length the French and Indians approached the lake which was to bear the name of the white chief, and made their way upon it in canoes. They came to a promontory of land which bore the resounding Iroquois name of Ticonderoga, or “meeting of waters,” in recognition of the fact that the waters of Lakes George and Champlain come together at the base of the eminence. Here they met a flotilla of skin canoes bearing a large war party of Iroquois and the issue of this little trip of Champlain’s may now be said to have been fairly joined.

The Iroquois, not being much given to fighting on water, paddled to land, while the invaders decided to spend the night in their canoes. All night long the air resounded with yells and epithets and bandied menaces, but, at length, morning broke and put an end to the unseemly clamor. The Frenchmen were concealed in the bottoms of canoes until a dramatic moment should arrive to show themselves. Their companions landed and now that they had come to their desire were filled with terror of the Iroquois, calling loudly for Champlain to come forth and destroy his opponents with thunder and lightning. The doughty Frenchman, feeling secure in his armor and his arms, threw aside the skins which covered him, and strode forth like a white god in shining raiment. The gallant Iroquois were filled with consternation at the sight of him. Raising his arquebus, into which he had stuffed four balls, he fired at short range, slaying two chiefs and wounding one. A second shot caused the defenders to break and flee, and this gave Champlain’s allies opportunity to kill and capture to their hearts’ content.

The expedition made its way back to Quebec filled with exultation. Thus did Ticonderoga come upon the pages of history.

This engagement of Champlain’s--incidental as it seems--had far-reaching consequences in the destiny of France in the New World. By the slaughter of the Iroquois Champlain mortally offended the Five Nations, which was an all-powerful Indian confederation, incurring an enmity never remitted. The alliance of the Long House with the English was one of the factors that helped to turn the scale in their favor in the long contest for balance of power which the years brought about between France and England in the New World.

On this very same day of July, 1609, while Champlain’s arquebus was frightening the solitudes of this leafy part of the wild New World, a little vessel known as the _Half Moon_ was in anchor on the New England coast while the carpenter fitted a new foremast. A few Weeks later the _Half Moon_ was in the Hudson and had come to anchor above present Troy in the precincts over which the warriors of the Long House kept watch. Thus does the Muse of History play different parts with two hands.

Time passed and French and Indian war parties again and again went by the point of land on which Ticonderoga now stands, bent on marauding and harrying the English villages. Lake Champlain and Lake George had become part of the great highway between French world and English world. Finally, in 1735, Crown Point, the fore-runner of Ticonderoga, was established by the French as an organized centre of power and an outpost thrown toward the English. Twenty years after this Ticonderoga came into prominence.

The year 1755 was a doleful one for the English colonies. It was the year of Braddock’s defeat. In January, Shirley, governor of Massachusetts, proposed an attack on Crown Point. The other colonies were taken with the idea and raised levies of men and funds. A heterogeneous army was the result under the leadership of William Johnson, of New York, with the rank of Major-general, separately bestowed upon him by each of the colonies taking part. His selection was due not only to his immense personal popularity but to his influence in the Long House of the Five Nations as well, no other white man of his time having so much authority with the dwellers in the forest. Of white men he had altogether about eight thousand and he had his Indian allies.

That in an army which included men from Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire there should be some bickering and disagreements was inevitable, but, at length, the column reached the foot of Lake George, which had become known to its French acquaintances as Lac le Sacrement. Now it received a new baptism. “I have given it the name of Lake George,” wrote Johnson to the Lords of Trade, “not only in honor of His Majesty but to ascertain (assert) his undoubted dominion here.” Lake George it has been ever since. A camp was made where, after a time, Fort William Henry was built, and a most unmilitary camp it was, if we can believe the accounts of contemporaries. Though a dense forest gave cover for an enemy to its very borders, no effort was made to clear away the trees. Painted Indians lounged around, traders squabbled together, and New England clergymen preached to the savages long Calvinistic sermons.