102 OUR NEIGHBOR— OLD COMMUNIPAW. 



commands a grand prospect of the Bay of NeAV York. It is but half 

 an hour's sail from the latter place, provided you have a fair wind, 

 and may be distinctly seen from the city. Nay, it is a well-known 

 fact, which I can testify from my own experience, that on a clear, 

 still Summer evening, you may hear, from the Battery of New York, 

 the obstreperous peals of broad-mouthed laughter of the Dutch ne- 

 groes at Conimunipaw, who, like most other negroes, are famous for 

 their risible powers. This is peculiarly the case on Sunday even- 

 ings, when, it is remarked by an ingenious and observant philoso- 

 pher, who has made great discoveries in the neighborhood of New 

 York city, that they always laugh loudest — which he attributes to 

 the circumstance of their having their holiday clothes on. 



These negroes, in fact, like the monks in the dark ages, engross all 

 the knowledge of the place, and being infinitely more knowing than 

 their masters, carry on all the foreign trade, making frequent voyages 

 to town in canoes loaded with oysters, buttermilk and cabbages. 

 They are great astrologers, predicting the different changes of 

 weather almost as certainly as an almanac. They are, moreover, ex- 

 quisite performers on three-stringed fiddles ; in whistling, they al- 

 most boast the far-famed powers of Orpheus' lyre, for not a horse or 

 an ox in the place, when at the plow, or before the wagon, will budge 

 a foot until he hears the well-known whistle of his black driver and 

 companion. And from their amazing skill at casting up accounts 

 upon their fingers, they are regarded with as much veneration as 

 were the disciples of Pythagoras of yore, when initiated into the sa- 

 cred quarternary of numbers. 



As to the honest burghers of Conimunipaw, like wise men and 

 sound philosophers, they never looked beyond their pipes, nor trou- 

 bled their heads about any affairs of their immediate neighborhood ; 

 so that they live in profound and enviable ignorance of all the trou- 

 bles, anxieties and revolutions of this distracted planet. I am even 

 told that many among them do verily believe that Holland, of which 

 they have heard so much by tradition, is situated somewhere onStaten 

 Island or Long Island ; that Spyking-devil and the Narrows are the two 

 ends of the world ; that the country is still under the dominion of their 

 High Mightinesses, and that the city of New York still goes under the 

 name of Niew Amsterdom. They meet every Saturday afternoon, at the 

 only tavern in the place, which bears as a sign, the square-headed 



