The Norfolk Virginian

THE EARLIEST NEW YORKER.

Relics of Some of the First Arrivals in This Country.

At the northern end of Manhattan island, near the mouth of Spuyten Duyvil creek, a great tulip tree guards a beautiful spring, and overlooks a green, sunny glade, which contains some of the most ancient relics of the presence of man on the Atlantic side of our continent. This locality, surrounded and threatened by the advancing pavements and sewers and edifices of New York, yet remains a verdant oasis on the edge of the rapidly-expanding wilderness of brick, iron and stone.

It is a resting-place of spring, where she suns herself while snow yet glitters on the neighboring hills. Upon this charming little dell the name of Crystal Spring has been bestowed.

The picnickers who go there to enjoy the idyllic beauty of the scene know nothing of the prehistoric memories that cluster around it. They are not aware that this happy valley was a favorite resort not only of the Indians discovered by Hendrick Hudson, but of the ancestors and predecessors of those Indians for no one can tell how many centuries.

Back of the picnicking-ground, among the forest trees, is a great accumulation of oyster and mussel shells in which are intermingled fragments of rude pottery, broken arrow-heads of white quartz, and stone implements. This accumulation, competent archeological authorities assert, remains to-day practically undisturbed as it was left by the aboriginal inhabitants.

Among some immense rocks, fallen ages ago from the cliff above, are found cavities which, it is believed, were used as both storehouses, and in case of need, as temporary lodging-places.

Not far distant is a bed of peat from which the tusk of a mastodon was recently dredged up, and it has been suggested that some of the earliest dwellers around the Crystal spring may have been contemporaneous with the prehistoric elephants of America.

The opportunity may not long exist to subject these remains of the early inhabitants of Manhattan island to scientific scrutiny in their original site, for in time the northward growth of the city will have obliterated the natural features of the spot.—Youth's Companion.