HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 25

settlers similar agricultural advantages and inducements1—were formed the nuclei of the present City of Brooklyn.2

Coincident with Rapalie's purchase at the “Waal-Bogt” the director secured for his own use the island “Pagganck,” lying a little south of Fort Amsterdam and which, from its abundance of excellent nut-trees was called by the Dutch “Nooten,” or Nutten Island. From that time to the present it has been familiarly known as ,the Governor’s Island." One Jonas Bronck, also, became the owner of a large and valuable tract on the “mainland,” in what is now Westchester County; and the West India Company secured the Indian title to the island of “Quotenis” in Narragansett Bay, and of another near the Thames River—both advantageously located for trading purposes. From Michael Pauw they purchased his rights to Pavonia (Jersey City) and Staten Island, thus ridding themselves of an enterprising patroon, whose proximity was as galling to their pride, as his success would have been injurious to

1. Both around the “Bogt,” and at Gowanus, were lowlands, overflowed by the sea at every tide, and covered with salt-meadow grass, coarse and hard to be cut with a common scythe, but which the cattle preferred to fresh hay or grass.

2. The statement, so often reiterated by our local writers, and even by the historians of our State, that some of the Walloon emigrants of 1623 settled first at Staten Island (O’Callaghan, i. 101), and afterwards, as early as 1624-25, at the “Waal-bogt,” (Brodhead, 1. 153, 154), is entirely unsupported by documentary or other reliable evidence. It seems to have originated in faulty traditions, and in a misapprehension of an ancient record relating to the daughter of Rapalie, the first settler in the “Bogt.” (See chapter on “Early Settlers and Patents.”)

Equally unreliable is the statement (Brodhead, i. 170) that the settlement was increased in 1626 by Walloon settlers, who had been recalled from Fort Orange and the South River, in consequence of Indian disturbances. It will be evident~ on reflection, that, in the then unsettled state of the province, no permanent settlement would have been allowed at such a distance from the fort on Manhattan Island; and, during the succeeding ten years (until 1636), concentration was the necessary policy of the infant colony. Even for more than thirty years afterwards the government exercised the greatest caution in permitting the establishment of new villages where they would be exposed to hostile attack. Nor is it a reasonable supposition that agricultural settlements were made here so many years prior to the purchase of the land from the Indians, and the granting of it by patents. If, indeed, there was any use of land on Long Island made by the Walloons before the date of the first known settlement in 1636, it must have been temporary in its nature, and confined entirely to the most accessible and easily improved portions along the shore. If such was the case, the Bottlers probably cultivated their little patches by day, returning across the river at nightfall, to their families and the security of Fort Amsterdam. But this is mere conjecture, and there is no evidence of the permanent residence of any white family within the limits of our city, prior to 1636.