been expended in making the solid ground whereon the buildings now
stand. Neither is it probable that, even on the most sultry of summer
nights, the nose of old Mynheer Stuyvesant would have been saluted with
odors of morocco leather, such as fill the air of "The Swamp" to-night.
The wild swamp-flowers, though, gave out some faint perfumes to the
night air in those olden times; but the place could hardly have been so
still of a summer night as it is now, for the booming of the bullfrog
and the piping of his lesser kin must have made night resonant here, and
it is reasonable to surmise that owls hooted in the cedar-trees that
hung over the tawny sedges of the swamp. "Jack-o'-Lantern" was the only
inhabitant who burned gas hereabouts in those times, and he manufactured
his own. The nocturnal raccoon edged his way through the alders here, in
the old summer nights, and the muskrat built his house among the reeds.
Not a raccoon nor a muskrat is the wayfarer likely to meet with here
to-night; but the gray rat of civilization is to be dimly discerned, as
he lopes along the gutters in his nightly prowl.

There is something very bewildering to the untutored mind in the
announcements on the dim, stony door-posts of the stores. Here it is set
forth that "Kids and Gorings" are the staple of the concern. Puzzling
though the inscription is to me, yet I recognize in it something that is
pastoral and significant; for there were kids that skipped, probably,
and bulls that gored, when the grass was green here. "Oak and Hemlock
Leather," on the next door-post, reads well, for it is redolent of
glades that were old before the masonry that now prevails here had been
dreamed of. Here we have an announcement of "Russet Roans"; and the next
merchant, who is apparently a cannibal or a ghoul, deliberately notifies
the public that he deals in "Hatters' Skins." Many of the door-posts
announce "Findings" and "Skivers"; and upon one of them I note the
somewhat remarkable intimation of "Pulled Wool." Gold Street, also, is
redolent of all these things, as I turn into it, nor is there any
remission of the pungent trade-stenches of the district until I have
gained a good distance up Spruce Street, toward the City Hall Park. Here
the Bowery proper, viewed as a great artery of New York trade and
travel, may be said to begin. The first reach of it is called Chatham
Street; and, having plunged into this, I have nothing before me now but
Bowery for a distan