The Hudson, from the wilderness to the sea . RIDGE AND MALL. be seen. These inhabitants have the most supreme disregard for law orcustom in planting their dwellings. To them the land seems to lie outof doors, without visible owners, bare and unproductive. Withoutinquiry they take full possession, erect cheap cabins upon the publicdomains, and exercise squatter sovereignty in an eminent degree,until some innovating owner disturbs their repose and their title, by 400 THE HUDSON. undermining their castles—for in I7ew York, as in England, everymans house is his castle.^ These form the advanced gua
The Hudson, from the wilderness to the sea . RIDGE AND MALL. be seen. These inhabitants have the most supreme disregard for law orcustom in planting their dwellings. To them the land seems to lie outof doors, without visible owners, bare and unproductive. Withoutinquiry they take full possession, erect cheap cabins upon the publicdomains, and exercise squatter sovereignty in an eminent degree,until some innovating owner disturbs their repose and their title, by 400 THE HUDSON. undermining their castles—for in I7ew York, as in England, everymans house is his castle.^ These form the advanced guard of the growingmetropolis ; and so eccentric is Fortune in the distrihution of her favoursin this land of general equality, that a dweller in these suburbancottages, where swine and goats are seen instead of deer and blood-cattle,may, not many years in the future, occupy a palace upon Central Park—perhaps, upon the very spot where he now uses a pig for a pillow, andbreakfasts upon the milk of she-goats. In a superb mansion of his A SQUATTEH^VULAGE. within an arrows flight of Madison Park, lived a middle-aged man in1861, whose childhood was thus spent among the former squatters in thatquarter. Joness Woods, formerly occupying the space between the ThirdAvenue and the East River, and Sixtieth and Eightieth Streets, arerapidly disappearing. Streets have been cut through them, clearings forbuildings have been made, and that splendid grove of old forest trees afew years ago, has been changed to clumps, giving shade to large numbers THE HUDSON. 401 of pleasure-seekers during the hot months of summer, and the delightfulweeks of early autumn. There, in profound retirement, in an elegantmansion on the bank of the East River, lived David Provoost, better
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjecthudsonrivernyandnjde
