The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention by Wallace Bruce
page 31 of 329 (09%)
page 31 of 329 (09%)
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=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 |
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