690 [Assembly 



Agricultural Society says that the first printed history of the New- 

 Netherlands, published by Vanderdonck, at Antwerp, in 1650, gives 

 a similar description of the fertility of Long Island. 



Denton goes on to say, " towards the middle of Long Islanc lyeth 

 a plain, sixteen miles long and four broad, upon which grows very 

 fine grass, that makes exceeding good hay, and is good pasture for 

 sheep or other cattel; where you shall find neither stick nor stone to 

 hinder the horse heels, or endanger them in their races, and once 

 a year the best horses in the island are brought hither to try their 

 swiftness, and the swiltest rewarded with a silver cup, two being an- 

 nually procured for that purpose. There are two or three other small 

 plains of about a mile square, which are no small benefit to those 

 towns which enjoye them." This is the great Hempstead Plain, that 

 is now considered by some as so barren and worthless. They were 

 then not considered so, nature had made them highly productive of 

 '* very fine grass" that " made exceeding good hay," and " very 

 good pasture for sheep or other cattel," and that they were no "small 

 benefit to those towns which enjoyed them." What benefit would it 

 have been to those towns at that early age, to possess a few miles 

 of barren land? It must have then been productive of all that it is 

 described as producing; and been considered as valuable, or this testi- 

 mony would not have been left. The Hempstead Plain was regarded 

 as a great curiosity. Judge Furman says, in his notes on Denton s 

 history, that there was scarcely a traveller of any note, that visited 

 this part of North America, who does not mention these plains, and 

 regard them worthy of description. The Rev. A. Barnaby who tra- 

 velled through the middle colonies in 1759, visited them in July of 

 that year, and speaks of the great interest manifested, by the inha- 

 bitants of New- York, at that period, ahnost one hundred years ago, 

 in reference to this interesting spot, " the Plains,'' and observes that 

 strangers are always carried to see this place, as a great curiosity, 

 and the only one of the kind in Jforth America. This last remark, 

 says the Judge, which now appears singular to us, was then true in 

 reference to the knowledge possessed of the interior of the continent; 

 the immense plains, or prairies of the Far West, were then unknown. 

 It thus appears that the Island in 1670, and 1757, was not known 

 or regarded as containing large barren and sterile tracts of land, that 

 have been the dread and horror of so many since; and the island was 

 well known then, and all the middle parts, east of Hempstead Plains, 

 were with a very small exception^ covered with heavy forest trees of 

 very large size in many places, none of which now remain, save here 

 and there one that has escaped the woodman's axe, and stand as the 



