Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/38

 18 Sloan's Architectural JRevieiu and Builders' Journal. [J*iy, in the writer's recollection, it wandered, in a very tortuous and eel-like manner, through extensive mud-flats, from the ground there forming an oblong basin about a mile in length, and varying in width from ten or twelve hundred feet nearthe river, to from one to two hundred feet at the head of tide. These were origi- nally much more extensive, occupying all the site of a dyked meadow at the junction of the two branches of the Cohocksink, about where Frankford road, Laurel and Maiden streets come together, a considerable distance along the main branch of the Cohocksink on the north side, and both sides of the smaller branch, reaching as far up as the present Jefferson street. This stream is now nearly all culverted. Its open head, a trifling rill, can yet be seen by the curious crossing York street, above Second, and running in the same gen- eral direction with the latter. This marsh, then, it will be seen, ran far up behind the treaty-ground, and was in its lower spread distant from it not more than thirteen hundred feet. This was, assuredly, " the place of the eels," a black, unctuous, slimy spot, important enough, in aboriginal estimation, to characterize the entire neighborhood. Mr. Jonathan Eo-oleton, who, in his youth, has often gunned for birds along the banks of the smaller fork, and in his boyhood, some fifty j T ears ago, has often waded the fen or swum the stream, according to the state of tide — informs me that it was then a very great place for eels. With the exception of about eleven hundred feet of very foul open water, from a little above Maiden street bridge* to the Delaware, this is all cul- verted, and thus hidden from the public view, beneath the crooked line of Canal street. But higher up the Delaware, by three-eighths of a mile, than the mouth of the Cohocksink, and nearly the same distance clue east of this ancient morass, was, according to Judge Peters, the ample space and elevated shore of what had of old been a favorite Indian village. Undoubtedly, then, this was Sakimax- ing, "the place of the chiefs." But, curiously enough, J. F. Watson tells us that " There was once a place of low boggy marsh, into which high tides flowed [from the Delaware,] now all filled up, about one square westward of [down river from] the Treaty Tree." In other words between the site of the Tree or Council Bank and Battery Hill. This would be another place of the eels. Thus, again, two apparently irreconcil- able things are reconciled. The early white settlers, doubtless, soon confounded names to them so very similar, and ap- plied the ignobler term to both localities. But the place of the eels, symbolically, would not be an ignoble term. The rule in allegory, in general pictorial sym- bolism, and in heraldry, is to read char- acteristic attributes in the better sense. Thus, without any designating adjuncts, the serpent and the fox would typify wis- dom ; the wolf, perseverance; the dog, fidelitj^ ; the cat, wariness ; the lion, courage, &c. In this acceptation, the eel would denote adroitness, and be equally typical of the cool hankering of the Sagamores for the white man's comforts and conveniences, and of the guarded desire of the Proprietary for Indian land- titles and good neighborship. In this view, the place of the chiefs would also be the place of the eels. Peter Cock had from the Governor of New York, in 1664, a grant of a tract of land called Shackamaxon. — Watson. Under the New York colony govern- ment of the Duke of York, the affairs of the Pennsylvania settlements were ad- ministered by a deputy of the governor called the " Commander." There was a meeting, March 13th, 1676-7, of Captain John Collier, Commander ; Justices, John Moll, Peter Cock, [probably father of "Lasse, Lawrence, or Lacy Cock,"] Peter Rambo, [whose lineal descendant of the same name was among us the last generation, and may be coming up again
 * Known to all Kensington as "The Stone Bridge."