=New Amsterdam.=--For about fifty years after the Dutch Settlement the
island of Manhattan was known as New Amsterdam. Washington Irving, in
his Knickerbocker History, has surrounded it with a loving halo and
thereby given to the early records of New York the most picturesque
background of any State in the Union.

* * *

The city bright below, and far away
Sparkling in golden light his own romantic Bay.

_Fitz-Greene Halleck._

* * *

Among other playful allusions to the Indian names he takes the word
Manna-hatta of Robert Juet to mean "the island of manna," or in other
words a land flowing with milk and honey. He refers humorously to the
Yankees as "an ingenious people who out-bargain them in the market,
out-speculate them on the exchange, out-top them in fortune, and run
up mushroom palaces so high that the tallest Dutch family mansion has
not wind enough left for its weather-cock."

What would the old burgomaster think now of the mounting palaces of
trade, stately apartments, and the piled up stories of commercial
buildings? In fact the highest structure Washington Irving ever saw in
New York was a nine-story sugar refinery. With elevators running two
hundred feet a minute, there seems no limit to these modern mammoths.

=The Dutch and the English.=--From the very beginning there was a