Above is from the addendum of Zadok Cramer’s The Navigator from which I have quoted previously. Written buoyantly, it makes jokes of specie (‘new notes of the “first water”‘ refers to the breadth of bank notes available at the time) and law (“club law” is the lynch mob). The text:
[i2] STACK ISLAND, not long since, was famed for a band of counterfeiters, horse thieves, robbers, murderers, &c. who made this part of the Mississippi a place of manufacture and deposit. From hence they would sally forth, stop boats, buy horses, flour, whiskey, &c. and pay for all in fine new notes of the “first water.” Their villages, after many severe losses sustained by innocent, good men, unsuspecting the cheat, became notorious, and after several years search and pursuit of the civil, and in some cases the club law, against this band of monsters, they have at length disappeared.
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