Captain Kidd (so memorable in history) who was a pirate during the reign of king William, has also found his way into our colonial records. According to Smollett, the colonies of North America had grown rich by piracy during the war with Spain. Kidd had offered to suppress these freebooters, provided government would furnish him with a ship of thirty guns; and the admiralty being either unwilling or unable to afford him the proposed aid, a private subscription was set on foot by the Lord Chancellor, the Duke of Shrewsbury, the Earls of Romney, Oxford and Bellamont, Sir Edward Harrison, and Colonel Livingston of New-York. The king had promised to contribute one half of the expense, reserving to himself one tenth of the profits; but he never advanced the money.—Kidd, thus equipped, set sail from Plymouth, and soon after turned pirate himself. He divided the booty which he had taken in the East Indies with his crew, burned his own ship, and sailed in a prize he had captured to the West Indies. There he purchased a sloop in which he steered for North America. Arriving on the coast of New-York, he sent one Emmet to make his peace with Bellamont, the governor of the province, who inveigled him into a negociation, and caused him to be arrested. Eventually he was taken to England, and there tried for piracy and murder in 1701, and executed.

During his piratical career, he visited Coeymans and Albany, and had a secret place of retirement on or near a hill about two miles south of Albany, (and which still bears his name, viz. Kiddchookghen, or, as it is improperly called, Kiddenhookghen). That hill, according to tradition, he adopted as a place of rendezvous for those infernal spirits, to whose care he entrusted the enormous sums of money which he buried in the earth; and there it is said also that he made a cave, which is now hidden from human observation, in which he buried 30 boxes of gold, and laid upon them 12 human bodies of those whom he had murdered, in order to serve as a talisman against the prying curiosity of such as were in search of hidden treasure.

Mrs. Goewey, the wife of Gerrit Goewey, a grave and elderly matron, affirms, that her mother, who lived to a very advanced age, has frequently stated to her while a mere girl, that Kidd remained at Coeymans during part of two seasons, secreted in a barn belonging to one of the name of Coeymans; and afterwards in a mill called Livingston’s mill.—

Whether these stories can be relied upon for their accuracy, I will not undertake to say; but thus much can be stated with truth, that it appears from the records, that on the 24th of March, 1691, Capt. Kidd complained to the Governor and council of New-York, that one of his men had been pressed from the vessel by Capt. Hicks, and the Governor and council ordered, upon the consideration of the good service performed by the said Captain Kidd, not only to their majesty’s forces, but others their majesty’s good subjects, that the man be restored to him. On the 17th of August, 1691, he brought a prize into the port of New-York, and the Governor and council resolved, that “paying the king’s tenths, and the governor’s fifteenths, no other duty be paid for the prize.

Would not the piratical deeds performed in those midnight orgies, which were celebrated by him and his kindred spirits, form as good a foundation for an historical novel as any contained in the Waverly novels, so much sought after and admired?