CHAPTER VIII.
The land being thus fairly purchased of the Indians, a circumstance very unusual in the history of colonization, and strongly illustrative of the honesty of our Dutch progenitors, a stockade fort and trading house were forthwith erected on an eminence in front of the place where the good St.
Nicholas had appeared in a vision to Oloffe the Dreamer; and which, as has already been observed, was the identical place at present known as the Bowling Green.
Around this fort a progeny of little Dutch-built houses, with tiled roofs and weathercocks, soon sprang up, nestling themselves under its walls for protection, as a brood of half-fledged chickens nestle under the wings of the mother hen.

The whole was surrounded by an enclosure of strong palisadoes, to guard against any sudden irruption of the savages.

Outside of these extended the corn-fields and cabbage-gardens of the community, with here and there an attempt at a tobacco plantation; all covering those tracts of country at present called Broadway, Wall Street, William Street, and Pearl Street, I must not omit to mention, that in portioning out the land a goodly "bowerie" or farm was allotted to the sage Oloffe, in consideration of the service he had rendered to the public by his talent at dreaming; and the site of his "bowerie" is known by the name of Kortlandt (or Cortland) Street to the present day.
And now the infant settlement having advanced in age and stature, it was thought high time it should receive an honest Christian name.

Hitherto it had gone by the original Indian name of Manna-hata, or, as some will have it, "The Manhattoes;" but this was now decried as savage and heathenish, and as tending to keep up the memory of the pagan brood that originally possessed it.

Many were the consultations held upon the subject without coming to a conclusion, for though everybody condemned the old name, nobody could invent a new one.