Page:WALL STREET IN HISTORY.djvu/31

Rh recorded in his journal the description of a bear hunt in John Robinson's orchard—between what is now Cedar Street and Maiden Lane. He writes, "we followed a bear from tree to tree; and when he was got to his resting place, perched upon a high branch, we dispatched a youth after him with a club to an opposite bough, who knocking his paws, he comes grumbling down backwards with a thump upon the ground, so we after him again." In what precise decade the native bear retired before the march of civilization on Manhattan Island, history does not state with absolute precision. But houses and streets were taking such strides in a northerly direction, that in 1688 Governor Dongan ordered an examination of the condition of the wall, with a view to the enlargement of the city, "and, if occasion should require to lay fortifications further out. "It appeared from the report that the "water gate" was in ruins, the "curtain palisades from the gate to the Artillery Mount (northwest corner of Wall and William) fallen down, the ground laid out in lots and partly built upon, the Artillery Mount itself in a state of dilapidation, the curtain palisades between it and the 'land gate' at Broadway in ruins, the land also laid out in lots; the Land Gate Mount in decay, and the gate across Broadway ready to fall down." This account was sufficient to have induced the authorities to decide upon the demolition of the wall. But the time was unpropitious. The city was in commotion over the news that Dongan was to be displaced in the government, and New York consolidated with New England under the rulership of Andros. And the revolution, responsive to that in England upon the abdication of James II., following soon, the public mind had little room for the consideration of local affairs.

Before retiring to his farm, Dongan (in 1689) sold the greater part of the property he had acquired in Wall Street to Abraham De Peyster, and Nicholas Bayard. A scrap of curious history is told in connection with this property. The southerly line of the street had been laid through the sheep walk, and drawn with reference to a proper field of military manœuvre, one hundred feet from the wall. A city street of that width was considered unnecessary. Hence a little shrewd speculation. Dongan purchased of the heirs of the Damen estate, eighty feet in depth along the line of the ditch, across the whole southern front of their property. To this he added some forty-five feet from the vacant land to the south of the ditch, and thus made lots of about one hundred and twenty-five feet in depth, along the southern edge of which he fixed the northern line of Wall Street. This was in 1685, at which time the street was surveyed and ordered to be established.

During the years immediately following the English Revolution the