river, of the mountains and all the other accessories of the place.
    The legend is purely fiction, no authority existing for any of its facts,
characters, or other peculiarities, beyond that which was thought necessary to
secure the semblance of reality. Truth compels us to admit that the book has
attracted very little notice, and that if its merits are to be computed by its
popularity, the care that has been bestowed on this edition might as well be
spared. Such, at least, has been its fate in America; whether it has met with
better success in any other country we have no means of knowing.
 

                                   Chapter I

 »There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
 There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
 There is society where none intrudes,
 By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
 I love not man the less, but nature more,
 From these our interviews, in which I steal
 From all I may be, or have been before,
 To mingle with the universe, and feel
 What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.«
                                 Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, IV.clxxviii.
 
On the human imagination, events produce the effects of time. Thus, he who has
travelled far and seen much is apt to fancy that he has lived long; and the
history that most abounds in important incidents, soonest assumes the aspect of
antiquity. In no other way can we account for the venerable air that is already
gathering around American annals. When the mind reverts to the earliest days of
colonial history, the period seems remote and obscure, the thousand changes that
thicken along the links of recollections, throwing back the origin of the nation
to a day so distant as seemingly to reach the mists of time; and yet four lives
of ordinary duration would suffice to transmit, from mouth to mouth, in the form
of tradition, all that civilized man has achieved within the limits of the
republic. Although New-York, alone, possesses a population materially exceeding
that of either of the four smallest kingdoms of Europe, or materially exceeding
that of the entire Swiss Confederation, it is little more than two centuries
since the Dutch commenced their settlement, rescuing the region from the savage
state. Thus, what seems venerable by an accumulation of changes, is reduced to
familiarity when we come seriously to consider it solely in connection with
time.
    This glance into the perspective of the past, will prepare the reader to
look at the pictures we are about to sketch, with less surprise than he might
otherwise feel, and a few additional explanations