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It was there that the festival was first instituted, and the first church built which was dedicated to his name; for when Gysbrecht III., Heer van Amstel, had the Amstel dammed, many people came to live there, and houses arose up on all sides, and naturally, when the want of a church was felt, and it was built, the good Nicholas was chosen the patron Saint of the town.
As he was about to step ashore a band of Englishmen confronted him, with swords and muskets. "Whom art thou?" cried their leader, a stalwart man, with long mustaches. "Only Nanking Cloos, mynheers, who used to be the big idiot of New Amstel. But," he added, with confidence, "I am now a great man on a very responsible mission to the Indians. I am to talk much and wisely.
Nanking's mother was happy to hear this, and to see her son in a linsey-woolsey coat with large brass buttons, and six pairs of breeches the gift of the city of Amsterdam stride up the streets of New Amstel, with copper buckles in his shoes and his hair tied in an eel-skin queue.
His fierce friends left him here with many professions of apology and esteem, and soon after they departed Swedes and Minquas appeared, who had observed the hostile canoes from their lookout stations on the neighboring hills. These also welcomed Nanking, being already well acquainted with him, and taking up his venison proceeded through the woods toward New Amstel.
"If I get a stork and bring it back," thought Nanking, "won't I astonish this town? It'll be proclaimed, I expect, in a public manner, that Nanking Cloos is no longer the big idiot." The woods closed round New Amstel not very far from the houses, and only an Indian path led on through the strong timber or marshy copse. Nanking was unarmed and not afraid.
Immediately after this, Lord Baltimore demanded the surrender of New Amstel and all the lands on the west side of Delaware bay. "All the country," it was said by his envoy, "up to the fortieth degree, was granted to Lord Baltimore. The grant has been confirmed by the king and sanctioned by parliament. You are weak, we are strong, you had better yield at once."
After passing several hours in the discussion of the answers, which my host thought divine, we had supper, and at parting M. d'O said that as Sunday was a day for pleasure and not business he hoped I would honour them by passing the day at their pretty house on the Amstel, and they were delighted at my accepting their invitation.
Not less than thirty thousand English, who had embraced the Reformed faith, found here a shelter during the reign of Mary Tudor. Hosts of Germans, during the 'Thirty Years' War, obtained on the banks of the Amstel and the Rhine, that religious liberty, which they had in vain claimed in their own country.
In his pleasant country house upon the banks of the Amstel, beneath a wide and spreading tree, which he was wont to call the "Temple of the Muses" he loved to gather a circle of literary friends, irrespective of differences of opinion or of faith, and with them to spend the afternoon in bright congenial converse on books and men and things.
Notwithstanding the sacred stipulations into which Carr had entered, he trampled them all beneath his feet. Governor Stuyvesant writes, "At New Amstel, on the South river, notwithstanding they offered no resistance, but demanded good treatment, which however they did not obtain, they were invaded, stript bare, plundered, and many of them sold as slaves in Virginia."
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