HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 29

May, 1640, took out a patent for a large tract lying on the northerly side of Gowanus Cove, and having, also, an extensive water-front on the East River; comprising, with the exception of Red Hook, the largest portion of what is now known as South Brooklyn. There is abundant evidence, also, that the territory (subsequently forming the town of Bushwick, and now the Eastern District of tile city of Brooklyn), purchased from the Indians, by tile West India Company in 1638, had been more or less cultivated—probably, by “squatter right”—by settlers who now began to take out patents for the lands which they had thus occupied. Patents were issued in August, 1640, to ABRAHAM RYCKEN for a large plantation; and in September, 1641, to LAMBERT HUYBERTSEN (MOLL), for land on tile East River previously occupied by one Cornelis Jacobsen Sille. In the same neighborhood HANS HANSEN BERGEN was already occupying a large tract adjoining that of his father-in-law Joris Rapalie and lying partly on the “Waal-bogt” and partly within tile limits of Bushwick; while along the “bend of the Marechawick,”1 lay the farms and “tobacco plantations” of JAN and PIETER MONTFOORT, PIETER CAESAR the Italian, and others.2

The West India Company, at this time, owned by purchase nearly all that portion of the western end of Long Island now embraced within the present city of Brooklyn, and the towns of Flatlands, Flatbush, and Newtown. To this was added, May 10th, 1640, the hereditary rights “of the great chief Penhawitz,” the head of the Canarsee tribe, who claimed the territory forming the present county of Kings, and a part of the town of Jamaica. Thus the perfected title of all the island west of Cow Bay and comprising the present counties of Kings and Queens became vested in the company by purchase. At the eastern end of tile island, during this year, Lyon Gardiner, of Saybrook, had made the first permanent English settlement within the limits of the present State of New York, on the island which still bears his name, near Montauk Point; and in the following spring, emigrants from Lynn, Mass., made an attempt, under Lord Stirling's patent, to effect a settlement at Schout's Bay, within the Emits of the present Queens County. Dislodged from

1. The Wallabout Bay.

2. See chapter on “Early Settlers and Patents.”