With a food supply as varied as this, an ordinary meal or an extraordinary feast can readily be recalled, so far as its essential features are concerned. It is now September, and, save where the ground has been ruthlessly uptorn, everywhere is a wealth of early autumn bloom. A soothing quiet rests upon the scene, bidding us to retrospective thought. Not a bit of stone, of pottery, or of burned and blackened fragment of bone but stands out in the mellow sunshine as the feature of a long-forgotten feast. As I dreamily gaze upon the gatherings of half a day, I seem to see the ancient folk that once dwelt in this neglected spot; seem to be a guest at a pre-Columbian dinner in New Jersey. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER THIRTEENTH _A DAY’S DIGGING_ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ As long ago as November, 1679, two Dutchmen, Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter, worked their way laboriously across New Jersey from Manhattan Island, and reached South River, as the Delaware was then called, at least by the Hollanders. They were all agog to see the falls at the head of tide-water, and spent a miserable night in a rickety shanty, which was cold as Greenland, except in the fireplace, and there they roasted. All this was not calculated to put them in excellent humor, and so the next day, when they stood on the river-bank and saw only a trivial rapid where they had expected a second Niagara, their disgust knew no bounds. These travel-tired Dutchmen quickly departed, rowing a small boat down-stream, and growling whenever the tide turned and they had to row against it. When they reached Burlington, they recorded of an island nearly in front of the village, that it “formerly belonged to the Dutch Governor, who had made it a pleasure ground or garden, built good houses upon it, and sowed and planted it. He also dyked and cultivated a large piece of meadow or marsh.” The English held it at the time of their visit, and it was occupied by “some Quakers,” as the authors quoted called them. One of these Dutch houses, built in part of yellow bricks, and with a red tiled roof, I found traces of years ago, and ever since have been poking about the spot, for the very excellent reasons that it is a pretty one, a secluded one, and as full of natural history attractions now as it was of human interest when a Dutch beer-garden.