savage hands.

Governor Kieft rebuilt the houses, put down all smugglers, and set
matters in New Amsterdam in good working order generally. The patroon
system of peopling the colony had proven a total failure. So, soon after
Kieft came, the West India Company decided on another plan. They
furnished free passage to anyone who promised to cultivate land in the
new country. In this way there would be no patroons to act as masters.
Each man would own his land, and could come and go as he saw fit. This
brought many colonists.

[Illustration: The Bowling Green in 1840.]

At this time there were really only two well-defined roads on the Island
of Manhattan. One stretched up through the island and led to the
outlying farms and afterward became The Bowery; the second led along the
water-side, and is to-day Pearl Street. Bowling Green, although it was
not called Bowling Green then, was the open space in front of the fort
where the people gathered on holidays. In the fourth year of Governor
Kieft's rule, he conceived the idea of holding fairs in this open space,
where fine cows and fat pigs could be exhibited. These fairs attracted
so many visitors from distant parts of the colony, that the Governor had
a large stone house built, with a roof running up steep to a peak, in
regular, step-like form. This was called a tavern, and could accommodate
all the visitors. In after years it became the first City Hall.

If you wish to stand where this building was, you must go to the head of
Coenties Slip, in Pearl Street. On the building which is there now you
will see a bronze tablet which tells all about the old Stadt Huys.