In 1637, the redoubtable Wouter Van Twiner, first governor of the colony under the New Amsterdam company of which he had been a director, secured for his personal use the island. It is fair to look at this gentleman inquisitively. “The renowned Wouter (or Walter) Van Twiller was descended from a long line of Dutch Burgomasters,” says Washington Irving, “who had successively dozed away their lives, and grown fat upon the bench of magistracy in Rotterdam; and who had comported themselves with such singular wisdom and propriety that they were never either heard or talked of--which, next to being universally applauded, should be the object of ambition of all magistrates and rulers ... many a dunderpate, like the owl, the stupidest of birds, comes to be considered the very type of wisdom. This, by the way, is a casual remark which I would not for the universe have it thought I apply to Governor Van Twiller. It is true he was a man shut up within himself, like an oyster, and rarely spoke except in monosyllables; but then it was allowed he seldom said a foolish thing. So invincible was his gravity that he was never known to laugh or even to smile through the whole course of a long and prosperous life. Nay, if a joke were uttered in his presence, that set light-minded hearers in a roar, it was observed to throw him into a state of perplexity. Sometimes he would deign to inquire into the matter, and when, after much explanation, the joke was made as plain as a pike-staff, he would continue to smoke his pipe in silence and at length, knocking out the ashes, would exclaim, ‘Well, I see nothing in all that to laugh about.’