THE DIRECTORS 67

the murder of Claes Smits, and in 1643 of a simi-
lar board of eight men, who protested against
his arbitrary measures and later procured his
recall.

After the departure of Eaeft the most pictur-
esque figure of the period of Dutch rule in America,
appeared at New Amsterdam, Petrus or Pieter
Stuyvesant. We have an authentic portrait in
which the whole personality of the man is writ
large. The dominant nose, the sinall, obstinate-
eyes, the close-set, autocratic mouth, tell the char-
acter of the man who was come to be the new and
the last Director-General of New Netherland. As
Director of the West India Company's colony at
Curagao, Stuyvesant had undertaken the task of
reducing the Portuguese island of St. Martin and
had lost a leg in the fight. This loss he repaired
with a wooden leg, of which he professed himself
prouder than of all his other limbs together and
which he had decorated with silver bands and
nails, thus earning for him the sobriquet of "Old
Silver Nails." Still, so the legend runs, Peter
Stuyvesant's ghost at night "stumps to and fro
with a shadowy wooden leg through the aisles of
St. Mark's Church near the spot where his bones
lie buried." But many events were to happen