[FN-2] Perhaps an Indian Football Court, resembling a Tennis Court. A writer in 1609 says of the Virginia natives: "They use, beside, football play, which women and boys do much play at. They have their goals as ours, only they never fight and pull each other down." There was a famous Tennis Court (Dutch _Kaatsbaan_) in the town of Saugerties, which seems to have been there long before the Dutch settlement. The Tennis Court referred to in the text is said to have been near the site of the present City Hall in Kingston, but would that place be strictly "near the Strand"? "Strand" means "shore, beach." It was probably on the beach. Atkarkarton, claimed by some local authorities as the Indian name of Kingston, comes down to us from Rev. Megapolensis, who wrote, in 1657: "About eighteen miles [Dutch] up the North River lies a place called by the Dutch Esopus or Sypous, by the Indians Atkarkarton. It is an exceedingly beautiful land." (Doc, Hist. N. Y., iii, 103.) The Reverend writer obviously quoted the name as of general application, although it would seem to have been that of a particular place. As stated in another connection, Esopus, Sypous, and Sopus were at first (1623) applied to a trading-post on the Hudson, from which it was extended inland as a general name and later became specific as that of the first palisaded Dutch village named Wildwijk, which was founded a year after Megapolensis wrote. At the date of his writing the territory called Sopus included the river front, the plateau on which Kingston stands, and the flats on the Esopus immediately west, particularly the flat known as the Groot Plat, and later (1662) as the Nieuw Dorp or New Village, [FN-1] as distinguished from Sopus or Wildwijk, or the Old Village, the specific site of which could not have been referred to. Of the site of the Old Village, Director Stuyvesant wrote in 1658: "The spot marked out for the settlement has a circumference of about two hundred and ten rods [FN-2] and is well adapted for defensive purposes. When necessity requires it, it can be surrounded by water on three sides, and it may be enlarged according to the convenience and requirements of the present and of future inhabitants." The palisaded enclosure was enlarged by Stuyvesant, in 1661, to over three times its original size. The precise spot was on the northwest corner of the plateau. It was separated from the low lands of the Esopus Valley by a ridge of moderate height extending on the north, east, and west, and had on the south "a swampish morass" which was required to be drained, in 1669, for the health of the town "and the improvement of so much ground." The Groot Plat in the Esopus Valley was a garden spot ready for the plough and was regarded as of size sufficient for "fifty bouweries" (farms). From the description quoted, and present conditions, it may be said with certainty that the site of the Old Village of Wildwijk was a knoll in an area of prairie and marsh. Neither