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.