heastern part of Manhattan Island. It
existed for 200 years but is now lost under modern Harlem, which centers
about 125th St. In this neighborhood to the west occurred the battle of
Harlem Heights--a lively skirmish fought Sept. 16, 1776, opposite the
west front of the present Columbia University, and resulting in a
victory for the forces of Gen. Washington, who up to that time had
suffered a number of reverses on Long Island and elsewhere. The battle
was directed by Washington from the Jumel mansion*, 160th St. and
Amsterdam Ave., the most famous house, historically, on the island of
Manhattan. It is still standing.

[Illustration: Peter Stuyvesant and the Cobbler

Peter Stuyvesant, Dutch Governor of N.Y. from 1647 to 1664 and a
valiant member of the Reformed Church, had an intense prejudice
against all other sects. At Flushing a Baptist cobbler, William
Wickendam, ventured to preach "and even went with the people into
the river and dipped them." He was fined 12,500 guilders ($5,000)
and ordered to be banished. As he was a poor man the debt was
remitted, but he was obliged to leave the province.]

The house was built in 1763 by Roger Morris for his bride, Mary
Philipse of Yonkers, for whose hand, it is said, Washington had
been an unsuccessful suitor. The house was subsequently owned by
John Jacob Astor and then passed into the hands of Stephen Jumel,
a French merchant, who, with his wife Eliza, added new fame to
the old house. They entertained here Lafayette, Louis Napoleon,
Joseph Bonaparte and Jerome Bonaparte. Aaron Burr (1756-1836) in
his old age, appeared at the mansion with a clergyman, and
married Mme. Jumel, then a widow. She divorced him shortly
afterward, and he died in poverty on Staten Island, 1836.
Alexander Hamilton whom Burr killed in the famous duel at
Weehawken, N.J. (July 11, 1804) owned a country place in the
neighborhood, "Hamilton Grange," which now stands at 140th St.
and Convent Ave.

Leaving Manhattan, that extraordinary island which Peter Minuit,
director-general of New Netherlands, bought in 1626 from the Indians for
sixty guilders' worth of goods (about $24), we cross the Harlem River to
the Borough of the Bronx, named for Jonas Bronck, the first white
settler, who made his home in 1639 near the Bronx Kills (where the
Harlem River flows into Long Island Sound).

The original price paid for the