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226 GEOLOGY OF NEW YORK CITY
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not,
at the time, have sufficiently marveled at this, but his indifference
to so singular a circumstance has to-day been replaced by the
industrious researches of the archaeologist, in an effort to trace the
aboriginal record at every point of the continent. Whatever antecedent
steps ushered the Indian to our eastern shores, it is very certain that
when Hendrik Hudson entered the great harbor of Manhattan he had
discovered the beauty and convenience of this inland bay.
The
shores of the Hudson, the beaches, hills, and plains of Long Island,
the islets, promontories, and woods of Manhattan Island, and the
forested recesses and wave-splashed sands of Staten Island on the
Raritan Bay were parts of his demesne, and furnished him with food, and
offered him pleasant haunts for habitation and for pleasure.
Mr.
Chas. B. Todd has given us an imaginative picture of Manhattan
Island—the nucleus of the greater city—when the red man possessed it,
and the white man first put foot upon it: " Nature's temples, not
man's, adorned it. Sombre forests overhung the Jersey shore and fringed
the water-line of the island. A chain of low, craggy hills covered with
noble for-fests of oak, chestnut, hickory, and other trees, with pretty
grassy valleys between, extended from the Battery to near the present
line of Canal Street; on either side, along the river banks, were wide
marshes stretching away to the north; at Canal Street they bore
directly across the island, and were so low that on high tides the
water flowed across from river to river. In the sheltered valleys were:
the maize fields and queer villages of the Indians and the rude
log-cabins of the settlers who had come over the year before. Cow-paths
crossed the marshes to the upper part of the island, which was much
wilder and more savage, with precipitous ledges, and in many places
dense thickets of grape-vines, creepers, blackberry and other bushes
which no one could penetrate. The settlers did not allow their sheep
and calves to cross this marsh lest they should be throttled by the
wolves, bears, and panthers that lurked in the thickets, and in their
letters home they com-
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