RURAL TALES AND SKETCHES OF LONG ISLAND.

NUMBER ONE.

THE KUSHOW PROPERTY: A TALE OF CROW-HILL.

EVERY one has become acquainted, either by reading or tradition, with the GREAT SOUTH SEA BUBBLE, so appropriately named, which at one time attracted the attention of the English people, swelled into enormous size, exhibited for a while the most illusory shapes, and gorgeous colors, then vanished in the twinkling of an eye. How many had occasion to remember that magnificent scheme, whose hopes, and fortunes, and airy castles, were mirrored in the beautiful bubble when it burst! How many look back to it as the source of their poverty, who had else been basking in the sunshine of fortune, or rolling in hereditary wealth. Alas! did not the simple love simplicity,' and despise every warning of history, the Great South Sea Scheme, with its vast ruin, had been useful to all posterity. But men do not grow wiser as the world grows older, nor are the reproofs of one age remembered by another. The simpletons of this generation are succeeded by fools in the next, and by raving madmen in the third. One bold, one wicked, one disastrous scheme, becomes a challenge to another more bold, more wicked, and more disastrous still. Egyptian-like, we harden our necks, and sport upon the brink of ruin. To behold one madman is distressing; what, when mania extends itself like a contagious disease?

The GREAT LAND SPECULATION is just exploded. Perhaps more have perished by it than by the sea. It is not for us to state the causes which prompted this dangerous spirit, or whence the unusual facilities to indulge in it to excess. Politicians may quarrel about its origin—it is impossible to mistake its effects. Those who were not blind, foresaw them; the marvel is, that they had not sooner arrived. But the crash came; tardily, yet certainly. It was tremendous. It involved every one, high and low, rich and poor. Instead of a bloated prosperity, we beheld want; instead of a healthy vitality, collapse; instead of the promptings of hope, the lamentings of despair. The arm of industry was paralyzed, the grass grew green in the marts of commerce, and every fountain of prosperity was dried up. The mania began within narrow limits with a few; it extended every where to the many. All classes became smitten with a sudden, criminal passion of being rich. They borrowed moneys, and speculated wildly in lands. They thought no more of the gradual accumulation of wealth by labor, but would escape the curse imposed on Adam. A fortune must now be made in a day. The merchant forsook his regular and sure traffic, for that which promised more than all his argosies could bring him. The husbandman gave up his field to barrenness, and leaving his plough-share in the furrow, turned aback. The schoolmaster neglected to sow the seeds of knowledge, and looked out for a soil which would yield him a more profitable crop. The very children were smitten with a precocious lust of gold, and the old were aroused from the repose of their age, to hazard their little all, acquired by constant sacrifice and toil. It

was difficult to find any one innocent or untouched. Even the ministers of God became unwittingly engrossed in the game. They meditated schemes of personal aggrandizement, and returned to the weak and beggarly elements of the world. And they dreamed not why it was that religion languished, and why men grovelled on earth, and refused to lift their eyes to heaven. The progress of the thing was still onward, and thousands, trusting in the imaginary value of their lands, launched forth into luxury absolutely startling. New men burst from their obscurity, like mushrooms of a night, in all the pomp and circumstance of wealth. Republican simplicity began to be discarded. They consulted books of heraldry; they affected equipage, and coats of arms, and massive plate, and sumptuous living. They pampered their bodies, entertained their friends, cheated their debtors. Splendid mansions arose as if by magic. Lawns, and gravelled-walks, and flower-gardens, and embellished grounds, delighted the eye, and gave the appearance of substance. Villages enlarged their borders, and aspired to the rank of cities; wide avenues intersected the country in all directions, and the wiseacres, with pupils dilated with amazement, exclaimed, 'What a change!' It seemed as if the bubble never would burst. It went on expanding, and expanding, while the palaces and perspective scenes revealed on its surface, stood forth with the distinctness of a solid reality. Avarice cast its far-seeing eye on the prairies; towns on a magnificent scale were founded in the far, far west; the dismal swamps of the south were exposed at auction in our cities, and there was not enough cultivated land for bread.

No true lover of God and his country, who remained untouched by the prevailing spirit, could look upon its progress without fear and trembling. Its moral effect was to enslave the souls already too devoted to riches; to stifle all the virtuous affections; to give nothing in exchange for love; to banish from circulation the pure gold of our natures, producing in the end a stoppage of payment, and bankruptcy of the heart.

But there was another light in which one could not but regard the preposterous schemes of those who made haste to be rich. They were not only culpable, they were ridiculous. And he who would heartily deplore them in the extent, would be disposed to laugh at them in the detail.

During this remarkable phasis of the public mind, Long-Island, in common with other places, was attacked with the rage for speculation. At first, her sturdy farmers, separated like the Britons from the whole world, and little apt to be swayed by popular influences, bade fair to sleep through the revolution. They were too much engrossed in their honest pursuits, to give it any particular attention; and when all the world beside were running mad, retained their sober senses. They drove their long arks,' or market-wagons, filled with blaäing calves, and bleating sheep, and headless poultry, on a snail's pace to the city, and never had they disposed of their 'truck' at more satisfactory prices. They certainly had 'no reason to complain,' nor did they dream, at first, of parting with the soil which yielded them such rich abundance. But at last, to such a pitch did things arrive, that they could no longer shut their minds to

conviction. They became sensible that a great revolution was going on; that a ‘tide had set' in the affairs of men, which, ‘taken at the flood,' would lead to fortune.' Then they woke up, rubbed their eyes, looked round in amazement, and exclaimed, that the sun had risen, that they must be up, and doing,' and 'make hay while the sun shone.' Rumors reached them, and a confirmation of rumors, that their former friends and neighbors, who possessed more enterprise than they, had dashed boldly forth, and were now placed handsomely above the reach of the world. Hardly an effort seemed to be required; and if a man would not lift his little finger to make a fortune, he deserved to be poor all the days of his life.' And now commenced the same eager haste, and scrambling for riches; the same dismembering of estates, and the same partitioning of lands. The plough was laid aside; husbandry was neglected, and the spirit of speculation arose and breathed over the tranquil life of the island, disturbing its waters, as the moon influences the beating pulses of the sea. Men were changed in their natures, and became lunatic. The slothful exhibited a distempered energy; the poor now abhorred their poverty, and the rich were not satisfied with their wealth. The benevolent had nothing to spare, and the miser's hand, which had grown stiff and rigid in holding, was relaxed to grasp at more, while the deep and corrupting waters of his wealth rose and throbbed with a tide which threatened to break their barriers.

First of all, the little bustling city of Brooklyn caught the infection. This was not to be wondered at, situated as she is with respect to the commercial metropolis, the great centre of life, and heart of the country. The sand-banks and hills in her suburbs were cut down, meadows and mill-ponds filled up, lamp-posts were planted far into the country, and paving-stones concealed the soil so lately covered with verdure. The nurseries and kitchen-gardens in that vicinity, the flower-beds and green-houses, whence so many sweet bouquets were culled for the maidens of Gotham, were all laid waste, and every foot of land was in request, from the Wallabout to Gowanus.* Then the Dutch farmers of New-Utrecht, Flat-Lands, and the Narrows, became possessed, and cut the most fantastic tricks before high heaven,' selling their hereditary estates and implements of husbandry, so that could their sires have risen from the grave, they would have broken their very pipes with astonishment.

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Three miles beyond the suburbs of Brooklyn, there is a piece of ground which was a few years since completely covered with rocks and briars. So unpromising was its aspect, that human industry had never attempted to redeem it. Before the times of speculation, a Frenchman came there, and bought the whole of this wild spot, and no one could conjecture his object. He might have been one of that class of his countrymen who are sometimes met with in retired places, driven from home by domestic troubles, or broken fortunes, who live in obscurity, and retain some scanty elegancies of life. For while other men, crushed or broken-hearted, prefer to lie down and die in

*THE Dutch settled the south end of Long Island, and some of them, called Walloons, fixed themselves about Brooklyn; and it is said, from them comes the name of Wallabout, where the Navy Yard now is. DUNLAP'S HISTORY OF NEW-YORK.

their own land, the sanguine Frenchman goes cheerfully into banishment, bearing with him an 'invincible armada' of choicest spirits, buoyed perpetually above misfortune, a model of contentment to the world.

It is easy to find Frenchman in our cities who have known better days, fulfilling some very humble occupation with an undaunted gayety, laughing, and dancing, and setting melancholy at defiance; while in the agricultural districts, the more advanced in age may be seen tilling the soil, or nurturing the grape, and laboring contentedly until the end of their days. Such an one purchased, and did not despair of, this miserable spot. He shattered the rocks to pieces, and digging pits, some he sank deep into the earth, others he carried far away, and with the rest constructed a high and substantial wall. And he enriched the soil, and planted trees and shrubbery, and laid out the whole in a garden. Never did human industry achieve a more certain victory, or the 'stony ground' repay more generously for culture. So admirably was it arranged, that instead of a few, you would have thought there were many acres. He disposed of it according to his own peculiar taste; not with an apparent, stiff design, but with an agreeable, graceful negligence, causing every part of it to be intersected with meandering walks, imitating nature, and artfully concealing art. It was like some wild place in the Godmade country, where the hand of man has not intruded; where nature pursues her own course, and the birds sing their own songs, and the water-brooks rush in their own channels, and every new turn reveals some sudden charm, and unexpected beauty. The woodbines and sweet-briars rambled wherever they willed; the parasitic plants were trained as with a gentle government, and the roses, like children escaped from control, sprang up every where smiling. And there were bowers, and rustic seats, and ponds of golden fish. The Frenchman had a wife and daughter. Charming! It was pleasant to go out of the crowded town, and walk abroad with these ' pardonnez mõis,' so kind, so amorous, and so entertaining; plucking for you the plants with generous haste, and telling you their names botanical. But a company came there, and bought the garden for money, and levelled the stone walls, and tore down the green-houses, and rooted up all the trees, and produced a worse confusion than when the place was covered with rocks. And the old Frenchman died, and the wife and charming daughter retired to another seat, the very image of the first. It was full of grapes - a little vineyard of Engedi. And there they lived, and they called it Chartreuse, and much good may it do them. But what of those who committed sacrilege for lucre? Did they satisfy the cravings of their greedy souls? No. They met with their just deserts, and so it will be with all those who turn a smiling garden into a howling wilderness.

A few miles from this place, in the heart of the country, the speculators have founded a magnificent city, fondly cherishing the hope that in some future time the richer classes would bring thither 'their arms and their chariots,'

'Samo posthabita,'

preferring it even to New-York. They laid out four-and-twenty

avenues, called after all the States of the Union. They addressed a circular, couched in handsome terms, to all classes of citizens in the metropolis. They invited the artizan, the mechanic, and the manufacturer, who could there pursue their arts more easily, and be free from the exorbitant rents and charges of the town; and the man of leisure, for the site was unequalled for country-seats, and the air came pure and fresh from the bay. Indeed, there was no interest crushed or languishing in the city, which would not be promoted in EAST NEW-YORK. The enterprising founders, to give an impulse to 'improvements,' built a tavern; I should have called it a hotel. They got a post-office established, which will be a great convenience to the future population. It yielded four-and-sixpence during the last quarter, and should letters become more abundant, will, in time to come, return an important revenue to the general government. With respect to this place, there is every thing to hope for; the water is good, the avenues are wide and beautiful, and nothing is wanting but houses and inhabitants to make East New-York a very great town.

The speculating spirit at last invaded all the ancient towns and villages on the island. Flatbush and Nyack, Newtown and Hell-Gate; Head-o'-the-Fly and White Pot, the Alley and the Bowerie, Black Stump and Buttermilk Hollow; Flushing, noted for its Princely gardens, and the rural Jamaica, abounding in beautiful maidens, and the sandy Rockaway, and the barren Springfield; Great Plains and Little Plains; Bog Lots and Drowned Meadows; Cedar Swamp and Crab Meadow; Hempsted, occasionally called Clam-Town, Mosquitoe Cove, now called Glen Cove,* Success

I INCLINE to think there is much, very much in a name; and have heard it most ingeniously denied that a rose by any other name' would smell so sweet. The LongIslanders, for instance, have refused to admit this principle. The growth of their pleasant hamlets, whose original Indian appellatives have been changed for such barbarous ones as the abovementioned, has been, in consequence, very much retarded. For although Mosquitoe Cove is a rose of Sharon' among villages, with such a name it could never smell sweet' in the nostrils of the age. That literary seedsman, Lawrie Todd, who lived for many years in his museum in Liberty-street, surrounded by tulipbeds and singing birds, and every thing else that looked, or smelled, or sounded sweetly, removed at last to Mosquitoe Cove, to spend a contented old age. There, amid

Charms which Nature to her votary yields,'

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he found ample scope for a correct taste, and was acknowledged by the inhabitants as a legislature and reformer. He changed the name of Mosquitoe Cove into Glen Cove, which was the beginning of a revolution in names all over the island. This we are sure will be attended with advantage; but the people of Cow-Bay are at present in a very bad box. Town meetings have been held to consider the propriety' of altering the name of that place, but there is too much halting betwixt two opinions.' Many wanted to call it Robinia, from a plenty of locust trees in those parts, but the multitude had a jealousy of a Mr. Robbins, and so after much disputing concluded' that the present name was 'about right,' and got Robinia into such bad odor, that nobody ever spoke of it without snuffling. What is now to be done is uncertain, but if they persist in their obstinacy, and 'seek no change,' and 'least of all such change' as Mr. Robbins would give them, the place will never be frequented by those contemplative persons who go a-angling. I assure you, good people, that a rose by any other name' wont smell as sweet.' 'Good name' in man or woman, or in any thing else, is the immediate jewel of the soul.'

It is to be regretted, that the whole country will not follow the example of LongIsland, at least in this respect. We would blot out Homer, Virgil, Seneca, and Ovid, from the map, and all such names, but the immortal one of WASHINGTON. They are as little appropriate as that of the poor wretch of the Barebone brotherhood, who called himself Mesopotamia. Let the old Indian names be restored. They are, for the most part,