Neither will I say anything of the black man in a
three-cornered hat, seated in the stern of a jolly boat who used to be
seen about Hell Gate in stormy weather; and who went by the name of the
Pirate's Spuke, or Pirate's Ghost, because I never could meet with any
person of stanch credibility who professed to have seen this spectrum;
unless it were the widow of Manus Conklin, the blacksmith of Frog's
Neck, but then, poor woman, she was a little purblind, and might have
been mistaken; though they said she saw farther than other folks in the
dark. All this, however, was but little satisfactory in regard to the
tales of buried money about which I was most curious; and the following
was all that I could for a long time collect that had anything like an
air of authenticity.
[Footnote 2: For a very interesting account of the Devil and his
Stepping Stones, see the learned memoir read before the New York
Historical Society since the death of Mr. Knickerbocker, by his friend,
an eminent jurist of the place.]
KIDD THE PIRATE.
In old times, just after the territory of the New Netherlands had been
wrested from the hands of their High Mightinesses, the Lords States
General of Holland, by Charles the Second, and while it was as yet in
an unquiet state, the province was a favorite resort of adventurers of
all kinds, and particularly of buccaneers. These were piratical rovers
of the deep, who made sad work in times of peace among the Spanish
settlements and Spanish merchant ships.
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