[12] "Letters from America, 1769-1777." By Wm. Eddis. London.
[13] "King's Bridge, which joins the northern extremity of this island to the continent, is only a small wooden bridge, and the country around is mountainous, rocky, broken, and disagreeable, but very strong."—Smyth's Tour, etc., vol. ii., p. 376.
[14] Laws and Ordinances of New Netherlands.
[15] The caption to the act in the case passed 1751, and remaining unchanged in 1773, reads: "An Act for mending and keeping in Repair the publick Road or Highway, from the House of John Horne, in the Bowry Division of the Out-ward of the City of New York, through the Bloomendale Division in the said ward, to the house of Adrian Hoogelandt."
[16] The Hon. Henry C. Murphy, who visited this place in 1859, says of it: "The town lies in the midst of a marshy district, and hence its name; for Breukelen—pronounced Brurkeler—means marsh land." "There are some curious points of coincidence," continues Mr. Murphy, "both as regards the name and situation of the Dutch Breukelen and our Brooklyn. The name with us was originally applied exclusively to the hamlet which grew up along the main road now embraced within Fulton Avenue, and between Smith Street and Jackson Street; and we must, therefore, not confound it with the settlements at the Waalebought, Gowanus, and the Ferry, now Fulton Ferry, which were entirely distinct, and were not embraced within the general name of Brooklyn, until after the organization of the township of that name by the British Colonial Government. Those of our citizens who remember the lands on Fulton Avenue near Nevins Street and De Kalb Avenue before the changes which were produced by the filling-in of those streets, will recollect that their original character was marshy and springy, being in fact the bed of the valley which received the drain of the hills extending on either side of it from the Waalebought to Gowanus Bay. This would lead to the conclusion that the name was given on account of the locality; but though we have very imperfect accounts as to who were the first settlers of Brooklyn proper, still, reasoning from analogy in the cases of New Utrecht and New Amersfoort, we cannot probably err in supposing that Brooklyn owes its name to the circumstance that its first settlers wished to preserve in it a memento of their homes in Fatherland. After the English conquest, there was a continual struggle between the Dutch and English orthography.... Thus it is spelled Breucklyn, Breuckland, Brucklyn, Broucklyn, Brookland, Brookline, and several other ways. At the end of the last century it settled down into the present Brooklyn. In this form it still retains sufficiently its original signification of the marsh or brook land."—Stiles' History of Brooklyn, vol. i., App. 4.
[17] [Part II.], [Document 33]. On the other hand, some later English descriptions are not as pleasant; but the wretchedness the writers saw during the war was what the war had caused.
[18] In describing some of the characteristic features of Long Island, Smyth, the traveler already quoted, mentions what seemed to him "two very extraordinary places." "The first," he says, "is a very dangerous and dreadful strait or passage, called Hell-Gates, between the East River and the Sound; where the two tides meeting cause a horrible whirlpool, the vortex of which is called the Pot, and drawing in and swallowing up every thing that approaches near it, dashes them to pieces upon the rocks at the bottom.... Before the late war, a top-sail vessel was seldom ever known to pass through Hell-Gates; but since the commencement of it, fleets of transports, with frigates for their convoy, have frequently ventured and accomplished it; the Niger, indeed, a very fine frigate of thirty-two guns, generally struck on some hidden rock, every time she attempted this passage. But what is still more extraordinary, that daring veteran, Sir James Wallace, to the astonishment of every person who ever saw or heard of it, carried his Majesty's ship, the Experiment, of fifty guns, safe through Hell-Gates, from the east end of the Sound to New York; when the French fleet under D'Estaing lay off Sandy Hook, and blocked up the harbor and city of New York, some ships of the line being also sent by D'Estaing round the east end of Long Island to cruise in the Sound for the same purpose, so that the Experiment must inevitably have fallen into their hands, had it not been for this bold and successful attempt of her gallant commander." The other spot was Hempstead Plains, which presented the "singular phenomenon," for America, of having no trees.
[19] Washington had some misgivings as to his authority to assume military control of New York, and he sought the advice of John Adams, who was then at Watertown. The latter replied without hesitation that under his commission as commander-in-chief he had full authority. To President Hancock, Washington wrote: "I hope the Congress will approve of my conduct in sending General Lee upon this expedition. I am sure I mean it well, as experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves, than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession."
[20] "New York in the Revolution." Published by the New York Mercantile Library Association.