No sooner had Peter Stuyvesant arrived at Fort Christina than he proceeded without delay to intrench himself, and immediately on running his first parallel, despatched Antony Van Corlear to summon the fortress to surrender. Van Corlear was received with all due formality, hoodwinked at the portal, and conducted through a pestiferous smell of salt fish and onions to the citadel, a substantial hut built on pine logs. His eyes were here uncovered, and he found himself in the august presence of Governor Risingh. This chieftain, as I have before noted, was a very giantly man, and was clad in a coarse blue coat, strapped round the waist with a leathern belt, which caused the enormous skirts and pockets to set off with a warlike sweep. His ponderous legs were cased in a pair of foxy-colored jackboots, and he was straddling in the attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes before a bit of broken looking-glass, shaving himself with a villanously dull razor. This afflicting operation caused him to make a series of horrible grimaces, which heightened exceedingly the grisly terrors of his visage. On Antony Van Corlear’s being announced, the grim commander paused for a moment in the midst of one of his most hard-favored contortions, and after eying him askance over the shoulder, with a kind of snarling grin on his countenance, resumed his labors at the glass. [Illustration: “BEFORE A BIT OF BROKEN LOOKING-GLASS SHAVING HIMSELF.” ] This iron harvest being reaped, he turned once more to the trumpeter, and demanded the purport of his errand. Antony Van Corlear delivered in a few words, being a kind of shorthand speaker, a long message from his Excellency, recounting the whole history of the province, with a recapitulation of grievances and enumeration of claims, and concluding with a peremptory demand of instant surrender; which done, he turned aside, took his nose between his thumb and fingers, and blew a tremendous blast, not unlike the flourish of a trumpet of defiance,—which it had doubtless learned from a long and intimate neighborhood with that melodious instrument.