As long ago as November, 1679, two Dutchmen, Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter, worked their way laboriously¹ across New Jersey² from Manhattan Island, and reached South River, as the Delaware was then called, at least by the Hollanders. They were all agog³ to see the falls at the head of tide-water, and spent a miserable⁴ night in a rickety shanty⁵, which was cold as Greenland, except in the fireplace, and there they roasted. All this was not calculated to put them in excellent humor, and so the next day, when they stood on the river-bank and saw only a trivial rapid where they had expected a second Niagara, their disgust knew no bounds. These travel-tired Dutchmen quickly departed, rowing a small boat down-stream, and growling⁶ whenever the tide turned and they had to row against it.

168When they reached Burlington, they recorded of an island nearly in front of the village, that it “formerly belonged to the Dutch Governor, who had made it a pleasure ground or garden, built good houses upon it, and sowed and planted it. He also dyked and cultivated a large piece of meadow or marsh⁷.” The English held it at the time of their visit, and it was occupied by “some Quakers,” as the authors quoted called them.

One of these Dutch houses, built in part of yellow bricks, and with a red tiled roof, I found traces of years ago, and ever since have been poking⁸ about the spot, for the very excellent reasons that it is a pretty one, a secluded⁹ one, and as full of natural history attractions now as it was of human interest when a Dutch beer-garden.

Had no one who saw the place in its palmy days left a record concerning the beer, I could, at this late day, have given

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