The only consistent or solid foundation on which a republic or a church can be built, is an absolute level, with no enclosures and no exclusion. Townsend Bishop's grant of three hundred acres was made on the 16th of January, 1636. When he sold it, Oct. 18, 1641, it appears by the deed, that there[i.70] were on it edifices, gardens, yards, enclosures, and meadows. A large force must have been put and kept upon it, from the first, to have produced such results in so short a time. Orchards had been planted. The manner in which the grounds were laid out is still indicated by embankments, with artificial slopes and roadways, which exhibit the fine taste of the proprietor, and must have required a large expenditure of money and labor. Although the estate has always been in the hands of owners competent to take care of it and keep it in good preservation, none but the original proprietor would have been likely to have made the outlay apparent on its face, on the plan adopted. The mansion in which he resided stands to-day. Its front, facing the south, has apparently been widened, at some remote intermediate date since its original erection, by a slight extension on the western end, beyond the porch. It has been otherwise, perhaps, somewhat altered in the course of time by repairs; but its general aspect, as exhibited in the frontispiece of this volume, and its original strongly compacted and imperishable frame, remain. No saw was used in shaping its timbers; they were all hewn, by the broad-axe, of the most durable oak: they are massive, and rendered by time as hard to penetrate almost as iron. The walls and stairway of the cellar, the entrance to which is seen by the side of the porch, constructed of such stones as could be gathered on the surface of a new country, bear the marks of great antiquity. A long, low kitchen, with a stud of scarcely[i.71] six feet, extended originally the whole length of the lean-to, on the north side of the house. The rooms of the main house were of considerably higher stud. The old roadway, the outlines of which still remain, approached the house from the east, came up to its north-east corner, wound round its front, and continued from its north-west corner, on a track still visible, over a brook and through the apple-orchard planted by Bishop, to the point where the burial-ground of the village now is; and so on towards the lands then occupied by Richard Hutchinson, also to the lands afterwards owned by Nathaniel Ingersol, towards Beaver Dam, and the first settlements in that direction and to the westward. In general it may be said, that the structural proportions and internal arrangements of the house, taken in its relations to the vestiges and indications on the face of the grounds, show that it is coeval with the first occupancy of the farm. But we do not depend, in this case, upon conjectural considerations, or on mere tradition, which, on such a point, is not always reliable. It