Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/266

 four or five little scattered hamlets within the present borough. The Wallabout had the larger French and Huguenot population. Eastward the English settlers were coming into farming competition with their Dutch neighbors.

There was no great alarm or disappointment manifested on Long Island when on a morning in August, 1664, a British fleet was found to have assembled in the Narrows. Colonial militia under the British flag from New England came through the Sound and encamped on the Breuckelen shore. On September 8, 1664, New Amsterdam yielded, and Governor Nicolls raised the flag of Great Britain on the fort. Then New Amsterdam became New York; Long Island and Staten Island, and probably part of Westchester County, were made an English "shire," and Breuckelen, after some changes of spelling, was known as "Brooklyn in the West Riding of Yorkshire."

This settlement of Dutch and Huguenots, maintained under the Colonial government of New Amsterdam, in the score of years before the British conquest had acquired a distinctive character. Contrary to a prevalent opinion, these first Dutch settlements, in a sound and