268 WASTE-LAND WANDERINGS. 



sio sipu," as he calls it, he states that " here commences 

 Manahattan's "Wagar, or Eoad to Manhattan." If a high- 

 way existed, as there pointed out, it must have been but 

 rarely travelled by Europeans so early as 1654 ; for it 

 was not until nearly forty years later that any land was 

 occupied between the Delaware and the Raritan. It is 

 now, and has been for over two hundred years, a public 

 road, and before the building of railroads was the stage 

 route, or one of them, from the Delaware eastward to the 

 towns between Bordentown and New York. And long 

 years before all this — who shall say how many? — it was 

 the well-worn trail of the Indians, who crossed the river 

 from Pennsylvania near the mouth of the creek, and 

 passed along the terrace that forms the bold east shore 

 of the stream, and crossed it where now it is spanned 

 by this shapeless structure. The European in many 

 ways followed closely in the footsteps of his dusky pred- 

 ecessors ; and at this spot, where the Indians' stepping- 

 stones were lying in the sand, the early settlers drove 

 down pilings and rested thereupon the ancient draw- 

 bridge. Some of these are still to be seen at low tide. 



But if there be no startling colonial history, the bridge, 

 the creek, and the valley have a bit of revolutionary rec- 

 ord that might have been famous had it been, like the 

 fight at Concord bridge, of some significance. 



The original drawbridge spanned the stream in June, 

 1778, when the British soldiers " attempted to cross 

 Crosswicks Creek over a drawbridge . . . three regi- 

 ments (of militia) remaining near, after a general with- 

 drawal of the Continental troops. A party of the 

 enemy appearing, with great zeal began to repair the 



