It was with feelings of pride and exultation that the good people of the Manhattoes saw two of the richest and most ponderous burghers departing on the embassy,—men whose word on ’change was oracular, and in whose presence no poor man ventured to appear without taking off his hat: when it was seen, too, that the veteran Reinier Oothout accompanied them with his spy-glass under his arm, all the old men and old women predicted that men of such weight, with such evidence, would leave the Yankees no alternative but to pack up their tin kettles and wooden wares, put wife and children in a cart, and abandon all the lands of their High Mightinesses, on which they had squatted. In truth, the commissioners sent to Hartford by the league seemed in no wise calculated to compete with men of such capacity. They were two lean Yankee lawyers, litigious-looking varlets, and evidently men of no substance, since they had no rotundity in the belt, and there was no jingling of money in their pockets; it is true, they had longer heads than the Dutchmen; but if the heads of the latter were flat at top, they were broad at bottom, and what was wanting in height of forehead was made up by a double chin. [Illustration: “A NANTUCKET WHALER, WITH A SPY-GLASS TWICE AS LONG!” ] The negotiation turned as usual upon the good old corner-stone of original discovery,—according to the principle that he who first sees a new country has an unquestionable right to it. This being admitted, the veteran Oothout, at a concerted signal, stepped forth in the assembly with the identical tarpauling spy-glass in his hand, with which he had discovered the mouth of the Connecticut, while the worthy Dutch commissioners lolled back in their chairs, secretly chuckling at the idea of having for once got the weather-gage of the Yankees; but what was their dismay when the latter produced a Nantucket whaler with a spy-glass twice as long, with which he discovered the whole coast, quite down to the Manhattoes, and so crooked, that he had spied with it up the whole course of the Connecticut River. This principle pushed home, therefore, the Yankees had a right to the whole country bordering on the Sound; nay, the city of New Amsterdam was a mere Dutch squatting-place on their territories. I forbear to dwell upon the confusion of the worthy Dutch commissioners at finding their main pillar of proof thus knocked from under them; neither will I pretend to describe the consternation of the wise men at the Manhattoes when they learned how their commissioners had been out-trumped by the Yankees, and how the latter pretended to claim to the very gates of New Amsterdam.