Going up the hill from the ferry the travelers passed through the "first village called Breuckelen," in which they saw "a small and ugly little church standing in the middle of the road." Here they turned off to the right and reached Gowanus, where they were entertained by Simon Aertsen De Hart. After speaking of the large and remarkable oysters, "fully as good as those in England, and better than those we eat at Falmouth," the travelers give this description of the Dutch dinner: "We had for supper a roasted haunch of venison, which he had bought of the Indians for three guilders and a half of seewant, that is, fifteen stuivers of Dutch money [fifteen cents], and which weighed thirty pounds. The meat was exceedingly tender and good, and also quite fat. It had a slight spicy flavor. We were also served with wild turkey, which was also fat and of a good flavor; and a wild goose that was rather dry. Everything we had was the natural production of the country." The guest adds: "We saw here, lying in a heap, a whole hill of watermelons, which were as large as pumpkins, and which Symon was going to take to the city to sell.... It was very late at night when we went to rest in a Kermis bed, as it is called, in the corner of the hearth, alongside of a good fire." These visitors did not entertain a very warm appreciation for what the journal describes as "a miserable rum or brandy which had been brought from Barbadoes and other islands, and which is called by the Dutch _kill-devil_. All these people," continues the same narrator, "are very fond of it, and most of them extravagantly so, although it is very dear and has a bad taste." At New Utrecht, however, they drank "some good beer a year old." The writers comment upon Coney Island in these words: "It is oblong in shape, and is grown over with bushes. Nobody lives upon it, but it is used in winter for keeping cattle, horses, oxen, hogs, and others, which are able to obtain there sufficient to eat the whole winter, and to shelter themselves from the cold in the thickets." The Fort Hamilton region, called Najack (Nyack), after the Indian tribe of this name living in the vicinity, is spoken of as an island, it being surrounded by a marsh. These and other records of the period indicate how little the early influence of the English rule affected the Dutch manners and customs, particularly on Long Island. The new rulers might introduce the English system of weights and measures, and adopt a new nomenclature for officials and civic systems, but for a long time, and far into the eighteenth century, Dutch life on Long Island remained singularly like all that it had been in the fatherland and in the pioneer homes.