58 Staten Island Association of Arts and Sciences 



deuces embosomed in trees and flowers was quite true. In his 

 statements about the Indians, and Silver Lake being the crater 

 of an extinct volcano, he is not quite so fortunate. 



Other woodcuts represent " The Narrows from Staten Island, 

 New York" (Gleason's Pictorial Drawing Room Companion, 

 1853), evidently drawn from a station on Pavihon Hill; "View 

 from New Brighton, Staten Island, on the Narrows, New York " 

 (ibid., 1854), showing the Quarantine with the Narrows in the 

 distance ; and a view of " Mount Hermon, Staten Island, N. Y.," 

 on which is a pencil note " 111. News, N. Y., 1853, Beach and 

 Barnum, props." In the text accompanying this last picture we 

 read : " Among its cool and delightful groves many a New Yorker 

 has found rest and coolness, during the fatigues and heats of 

 summer. It is in contemplation now we learn to erect at this 

 place a large and splendid hotel, capable of accommodating six 

 hundred visitors, a church, a very large water-cure establishment, 

 and other, buildings. The locality abounds in everything calcu- 

 lated to render such establishments attractive." Mt. Hermon 

 was at Bentley, unfortunately changed in 1862 to the less at- 

 tractive name of Tottenville. In the Supplement to Staten 

 Island Names, Ye Olde Names and Nicknames, Proceedings of 

 THE Natural Science Association of Staten Island, vol. 8, 

 p. 86, October 1903, we read that Mt. Hermon was a "Locality 

 about the junction of Amboy Road and Biddle's Road. A 

 Presbyterian chapel, afterwards a school, bearing that name was 

 built there about forty years ago." The splendid hotel and the 

 water-cure estalishment never materialized, though we can testify 

 that long ago the neighboring woods and fields possessed all of 

 the charm attributed to them by the author of the sketch, however 

 sadly changed they may be today. 



Six of the views are of the Quarantine grounds and build- 

 ings at Tompkinsville, which appeared in Frank Leslie's Illus- 

 trated Newspaper in 1856 and 1858. Because of impatience at 

 the delay of the state legislature in having the yellow fever 

 hospitals removed, they were burned by the citizens in Septem- 



