Page:WALL STREET IN HISTORY.djvu/17



HE origin of this famous street, and its connection with the beginnings of our national life and prosperity, are scarcely less interesting to the world at large than its more recent financial mysteries, its whirlwinds of panic, and its gigantic operations. We turn backward but two and one half centuries to find its site a picturesque tangle of underbrush, wild grape-vine and tree, animated with untrained bears of a shining pitch-black color, hungry wolves, noisy wild-cats, and sly raccoons. It will be remembered that while the little settlement—the germ of the present city of New York—on the extreme southern point of Manhattan Island was yet in its helpless infancy, a bloody Indian war nearly desolated the whole surrounding country. The savages were respectfully afraid of the fort; but they prowled about in its immediate vicinity, stealing whatever they could find of use to themselves, and scalped every man, woman, or child who chanced to stray too far into the woods. As the spring of 1644 opened, the few surviving colonists were in absolute despair. They could not even turn their cows and oxen into the fields to nibble wild grass with the reasonable hope of ever seeing them alive again. Governor Kieft finally issued an order for the erection of "a good solid fence" across the island, commanding every man who wished his cattle pastured in security to appear with proper tools and assist in the work. Those who failed to give their aid were to be "excluded from the privileges of the inclosed meadow." This primitive fence was to perform the double duty of keeping the domestic animals of the settlement within proper limits, and of checking the approach of Indians and wild beasts of the forest. It was built on the line of what is now Wall Street, and was the initial paragraph, so to speak, of the curious chapter of record and story which traces the progressive steps of one of the most widely known and remarkable localities in the civilized world.