The inhabited regions resemble the Westphalian peasant districts; upon separate farms the finest houses are built, which are planned and completed in the most elegant fashion. The furniture in them is in the best taste, nothing like which is to be seen with us, and besides so clean and neat, that altogether it surpasses every description. The female sex is universally beautiful and delicately reared, and is finely dressed in the latest European fashion, particularly in India laces, white cotton and silk gauzes; not one of these women but would consider driving a double team the easiest of work. They drive and ride out alone, having only a negro riding behind to accompany them. Near every dwelling-house negroes (their slaves) are settled, who cultivate the most fertile land, pasture the cattle, and do all the menial work."[17] That the English element, however, had crept in to a considerable extent around Brooklyn at this time, is a matter of record. [Footnote 16: The Hon. Henry C. Murphy, who visited this place in 1859, says of it: "The town lies in the midst of a marshy district, and hence its name; for Breukelen--pronounced Brurkeler--means marsh land." "There are some curious points of coincidence," continues Mr. Murphy, "both as regards the name and situation of the Dutch Breukelen and our Brooklyn. The name with us was originally applied exclusively to the hamlet which grew up along the main road now embraced within Fulton Avenue, and between Smith Street and Jackson Street; and we must, therefore, not confound it with the settlements at the Waalebought, Gowanus, and the Ferry, now Fulton Ferry, which were entirely distinct, and were not embraced within the general name of Brooklyn, until after the organization of the township of that name by the British Colonial Government. Those of our citizens who remember the lands on Fulton Avenue near Nevins Street and De Kalb Avenue before the changes which were produced by the filling-in of those streets, will recollect that their original character was marshy and springy, being in fact the bed of the valley which received the drain of the hills extending on either side of it from the Waalebought to Gowanus Bay. This would lead to the conclusion that the name was given on account of the locality; but though we have very imperfect accounts as to who were the first settlers of Brooklyn proper, still, reasoning from analogy in the cases of New Utrecht and New Amersfoort, we cannot probably err in supposing that Brooklyn owes its name to the circumstance that its first settlers wished to preserve in it a memento of their homes in Fatherland. After the English conquest, there was a continual struggle between the Dutch and English orthography.... Thus it is spelled Breucklyn, Breuckland, Brucklyn, Broucklyn, Brookland, Brookline, and several other ways. At the end of the last century it settled down into the present Brooklyn. In this form it still retains sufficiently its original signification of the