The permanent residents on Long Island are chiefly of Dutch extraction, and they seem to have inherited all the coldness, reserve, and covetousness of their ancestors. It is a common saying in New York, that a Long Island man will conceal himself in his house on the approach of a stranger; and really the numberless instances of shyness I met with in the inhabitants seemed to argue, that there was some truth in the remark. If you do but ask any simple question relative to the neighbouring country, they will eye you with suspicion, and evidently drive to disengage themselves from you; widely different from the Anglo-Americans, whose inquisitiveness in similar circumstances would lead them to a thousand impertinent and troublesome enquiries, in order to discover what your business was in that place, and how they could possibly take any advantage of it. These Dutchmen are in general very excellent farmers; and several of them have very extensive tracts of land under cultivation, for the produce of which there is a convenient and ready market at New York. Amongst them are to be found many very wealthy men; but except a few individuals, they live in a mean, penurious, and most uncomfortable manner. The population of the island is estimated at about thirty-seven thousand souls, of which number near five thousand are slaves. It is the western part of the island which is the best inhabited; a circumstance to be ascribed, not so much to the fertility of the soil as its contiguity to the city of New York. Here are several considerable towns, as, Flatbush, Jamaica, Brooklynn, Flushing, Utrecht; the three first-mentioned of which contain each upwards of one hundred houses. Brooklynn, the largest of them, is situated just opposite to New York, on the bank of the East River, and forms an agreeable object from the city. The soil of Long Island is well adapted to the culture of small grain and Indian corn; and the northern part, which is hilly, is said to be peculiarly favourable to the production of fruit. The celebrated Newtown pippin, though now to be met with in almost every part of the state of New York, and good in its kind, is yet supposed by many persons to attain a higher flavour here than in any other part of America.