NEW AMSTERDAM GARDENS 59 



land, taking five souls above fifteen years of age, 

 should be given the standing of master and the right 

 to claim two hundred acres of land. Here was what 

 they had been waiting for; and now the Colony began 

 its first real growth, healthy and constant. 



True to their long acquired instinct of conserving 

 every particle of the earth, however, the town which 

 sprang up to meet the growing need for dwellings was 

 compactness itself — this, too, for better protection 

 against the savages — and the plots allotted to each 

 settler were modest, indeed, when the vast area at 

 their disposal is considered. Their dwellings were set 

 on the line of the street — streets had been laid out in 

 1638 — with their gable ends to the front and shoulder 

 to shoulder, leaving no space between them for a 

 passage to the rear, even, in most cases. Of course 

 many came who did not fulfill the required stipulations 

 to qualify for the standing of master; indeed these 

 made up the majority of the inhabitants. But many 

 who held large "bouweries" or farms lived in the 

 town, for the protection it afforded, as well as for 

 its neighbors. They were essentially neighborly folk, 

 these. 



Pieter Comellisen who came as house carpenter for 

 the Company three years before the granting of the 

 new Charter, found a strip of land which he bespoke 

 that was fifty feet wide at one end, and only twenty- 



