stance, when you have thought of old Washington Square, you have
probably thought of it pretty much as it is now, only of course with
an old-time atmosphere. The whole Village, with all your best
imaginative efforts, persists--does it not?--in being a part of New
York proper.

It was not until I had come to browse among the oldest of Manhattan's
oldest records,--(and at that they're not very old!)--those which show
the reaching out of the fingers of early progress, the first shoots of
metropolitan growth, that the picture really came to me. Then I saw
New York as a little city which had sprung up almost with the speed of
a modern mushroom town. First, in Peter Minuit's day, its centre was
the old block house below Bowling Green; then it spread out a bit
until it became a real, thriving city,--with its utmost limits at
Canal Street! Greenwich and the Bowery Lane were isolated little
country hamlets, the only ones on the island, and far, far out of
town. They appeared as inaccessible to the urban dwellers of that day
as do residents on the Hudson to the confirmed city people
nowadays;--nay, still more so, since trains and motors, subways and
surface cars, have more or less annihilated distance for us.

Washington Square was then in the real wilds, an uncultivated region,
half swamp, half sand, with the Sand Hill Road,--an old Indian
trail,--running along the edge of it, and Minetta Creek taking its
sparkling course through its centre. It was many years before Minetta
was even spanned by a bridge, for no one lived anywhere near it.

Peter Stuyvesant's farm gave the Bowery its name, for you must know
that Bouwerie came from the Dutch word _Bouwerij_, which means farm,
and this country lane ran through the grounds of the Stuyvesant
homestead. A branch road from the Bouwerie Lane led across the stretch
of alternate marsh and sand to the tiny settlement of Greenwich,
running from east to west. The exact line is lost today, but we know
it followed the general limit of Washington Square North. On the east
was the Indian trail.

Sarah Comstock says:

"The Indian trail has been, throughout our country, the
beginning of the road. In his turn, the Indian often
followed the trail of the beast. Such beginnings are
indiscernible for the most part, in the dusk of history, but
we still trace many an old path that once knew the tread of
moccasined feet."

[Illustration: MAP OF OLD GREENWICH VILLAGE. A