Page:WALL STREET IN HISTORY.djvu/18

 10 The utility of the fence as a fortification was never brought to a test, however. Before the May flowers bloomed, in that eventful year, a treaty of peace was concluded with the savage tribes, and the besieged people in and around the fort began to breathe more freely. The fence remained standing some nine years, and formed the northern boundary of a fifteen-acre "sheep pasture"—a public field of rolling upland and swampy meadow, where the cows, oxen, horses, goats and sheep of the settlers grazed in common. The meadow-land in the valley, along the line of the present Broad Street, was taken up for tanneries in the course of the period; and prior to 1653, a considerable portion of the remainder of the "sheep pasture" had been granted by the West India Company, in large parcels, to persons of influence, apparently on speculation. But it was even then unimproved—a bit of barren landscape—although the little town had crept in sight with its gable-roofs and wind-mills the prospect was of alive with signs of promise.

The affairs of the colony at this juncture were in a ferment owing to hostilities declared on the other side of the Atlantic between England and Holland. Intelligence of terrible battles fought upon the sea came with every ship from the Old World. The Dutch were victorious, chiefly, while their losses were enormous: sixteen hundred of their vessels fell into the enemy's hand's, their fisheries were suspended and their entire commerce by the English Channel cut off. Governor Stuyvesant watched all these significant movements with acute anxiety, and, convinced that prudence was the better part of valor, took earnest measures to preserve peace with his English neighbors on this side of the ocean. To conciliate his own people he yielded to the pressure for municipal privileges, and thus a new power in the government came into existence.

The city of New York, originally called New Amsterdam, was created