" This is the description of New
York City when Charles the First was King.
* * *
Behold the natural advantages of our State; the situation
of our principal seaport; the facility that the
Sound affords for an intercourse with the East, and the
noble Hudson which bears upon its bosom the wealth
of the remotest part of the State.
_Robert R. Livingston._
* * *
[Illustration: OLOFFE VAN KORTLANDT'S DREAM.]
Moreover, we should not forget that Communipaw outranks New York in
antiquity, and, according to Knickerbocker, whose quiet humor is
always read and re-read with pleasure, might justly be considered the
Mother Colony. For lo! the sage Oloffe Van Kortlandt dreamed a dream,
and the good St. Nicholas came riding over the tops of the trees,
and descended upon the island of Manhattan and sat himself down
and smoked, "and the smoke ascended in the sky, and formed a cloud
overhead; and Oloffe bethought him, and he hastened and climbed up to
the top of one of the tallest trees, and saw that the smoke spread
over a great extent of country; and, as he considered it more
attentively, he fancied that the great volume assumed a variety of
marvelous forms, where, in dim obscurity, he saw shadowed out palaces
and domes and lofty spires, all of which lasted but a moment, and then
passed away.
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