HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 119

pending trouble to the Dutch. An earthquake, bringing terror to their hearts, was followed by a great freshet which devastated their harvests. The dreaded small-pox raged through their villages, and decimated the neighboring Indian tribes. Then ensued the horrors of savage waxfare, and men's hearts failed them before the terrors of the red-man's tomahawk and firebrand. When at last comparative peace had been restored, Stuyvesant turned his attention towards making some definite settlement with the colony of Connecticut concerning their respective jurisdictions. The Connecticut authorities, however, claimed that several of the English towns of Long Island were under their rule, and even ventured to hint that they would reduce the adjoining Dutch villages also. After long and fruitless negotiations, the Dutch agents returned Òwith fleas in their ears" to New Amsterdam. Finding themselves powerless to resist their English and savage neighbors, the towns of Haerlem, Breuckelen, Midwout, Amersfoort, New Utrecht, Boswyck, Bergen, and the City, assembled in convention, by Stuyvesant's order, Nov. 1st, and adopted a remonstrance to the Amsterdam Chamber, wherein they attributed their troubles to the supineness of the authorities in Holland. The action of the Convention was at once prompt and loyal to the interests of the country and the Fatherland. But, even while they deliberated, a revolution was in progress on Long Island. Certain self-constituted officials visited the English towns, changed the names thereof, proclaimed the king, and threatened the Dutch settlements.

Let us turn aside, however, from the current of public events, in order to notice a few local items, marking more particularly the progress of the town of Breuckelen.

On the first of March in this year (1663), the following petition was presented

To the Right Honble Director-General and Council of New Netherland:

“Shew with due reverence and respect, the undersigned, neighbors and inhabitants of the village of Breuckelen, your Honors’ obedient servants, that there lies convenient to us a certain place near Breuckelen fit to be erected into a new village, for our advantage, being a woodland (as we) believe (is) known to your Honors, in which place there is sufficient accommodation where twenty or thirty persons can have a suitable place and