A Day's Digging 169 



having been a pleasure-garden. It certainly 

 was, and probably the very first on the Dela- 

 ware River. But there was " pleasure," too, 

 on the main shore, for the men who referred 

 to the island stayed one night in Burlington, 

 and, the next day being Sunday, attended 

 Quaker meeting, and wrote afterwards, 

 " What they uttered was mostly in one tone 

 and the same thing, and so it continued until 

 we were tired out and went away." Doubt- 

 less they were prejudiced, and so nothing 

 suited them, not even what they found to 

 drink, for they said, " We tasted here, for the 

 first time, peach brandy or spirits, which was 

 very good, but would have been better if 

 more carefully made." They did not like 

 the English, evidently, for the next day they 

 went to Takanij (Tacony), a village of Swedes 

 and Finns, and there drank their fill of " very 

 good beer" brewed by these people, and ex- 

 pressed themselves as much pleased to find 

 that, because they had come to a new country, 

 they had not left behind them their old 

 customs. 



The house that once stood where now 

 is but a reach of abandoned and wasting 

 meadow was erected in 1668 or possibly 



H IS 



