LISPENARD S   MEADOWS                            ig3

The southern line of the farm was close upon
that of the present Reade Street; and thence it
extended to the southern edge of the wide valley
through which discharged lazily into the Hudson
the stream from the Collect, or Fresh Water
Pond.

Where that stream then was, now is Canal
Street; and, what with the cutting down of the
hills and the filling in of the hollows, one must
look keenly to make sure that ever there was a
valley here at all. Of the swamp, that once made
a large part of the valley a dangerous quagmire,
there does not remain a trace—save, possibly, in
some of the cellars thereabouts; nor would any
chance wayfarer along Canal Street be likely to
identify this region with the meadows which
came by luck and love into the possession of
Leonard Lispenard, and which for more than a
century—until they were wholly buried beneath
the advancing piles of houses and ceased to be
meadows at all—were known by his name.

For a long while after the settlement of this
island the valley to the westward of the Fresh
Water Pond remained in its primitive condition:
a morass covered with a tangled growth of briers
and bushes and young trees. It was dangerous
alike to animals of four legs and of two. So
many cattle wandered into it and were lost by
being swamped that the Council caused it to
be fenced off. So rank were the miasmatic va¬
pors arising from it that tertian fevers, with their
intermediate aguish chills, fell upon those humans
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