only one in the county. Their villages are Goshen, Bethlehem, and Little Britain, all remarkable for producing, in general, the best butter made in the colony. The people on the south side of the mountains are all Dutch; and Orange town, more commonly called by the Indian name Tappan, is a small but very pleasant inland village with a stone courthouse and church. The militia consists of about 1300 fighting men.

This county joins to the province of New-Jersey on the south; and the non-settlement of the partition line has been the greatest obstruction to its growth.

There is a very valuable tract called the Drowned Lands on the north side of the mountains, containing about 40 or 50,000 acres. The waters which descend from the surrounding hills, being but slowly discharged by the river issuing out of it, cover these vast meadows every winter, and hence they become extremely fertile. The fires, kindled up in the woods by the deer hunters in autumn, are communicated by the leaves to these meadows before the waters rise above the channel of the river, and a dreadful devouring conflagration overruns it, consuming the herbage for several days. The Walkill river, which runs through this extensive amphibious tract, if I may use the expression, is in the spring stored with eels of uncommon size and plenty, very useful to the farmers residing on its banks. The river is about two chains in breadth, where it leaves the drowned lands, and has a considerable fall. The bottom of it is a broken rock, and I am informed by Mr. Clinton, a gentleman of ingenuity and a mathematical turn, that the channel might for less than £2000 be sufficiently deepened to draw off all the water from the meadows. Some parts near the banks of the upland have been already redeemed from the floods; these spots are very fertile, and produce English grass, hemp, and Indian corn.

The mountains in the county of Orange are clothed thick with timber, and abound with iron ore, ponds, and fine streams for iron works. Goshen is well supplied with white cedar, and in some parts of the woods is found great plenty of black walnut.

Before I proceed to the description of the southern counties I beg leave to say few words concerning Hudson's river.

Its source has not as yet been discovered; we know in general that it is in the mountainous, uninhabited country, between the lakes Ontario and Champlain. In its course southward it approaches the Mohawks' river within a few miles at Saucondauga; from thence it runs north and northeasterly towards lake St. Sacrement, now called lake George, and is not above eight or ten miles distant from it; the course

then to New-York is very uniform, being in the main south twelve or fifteen degrees west.

The distance from Albany to lake George is computed at sixty-five miles: the river in that interval is navigable only to Batteaus, and interrupted by rifts, which occasion two portages of half a mile each.* There are three routes from Crown Point to Hadson's river in the way to Albany; one through lake George, another through a branch of lake Champlain, bearing a southern course, and terminating in a bason several miles east of lake George, called the South Bay. The third is by ascending the Wood Creek, a shallow stream about one hundred feet broad, which, coming from the southeast, empties itself into the south branch of the lake Champlain.

The place where these routes meet on the banks of Hudson's river, is called the Carrying Place: here fort Lyman, since called fort Edward, is built; but fort William Henry, a much stronger garrison, was erected at the south end of lake George, after the repulse of the French forces under the command of baron Dieskau on the 8th of September, 1755: general Shirley thought it more advisable to strengthen fort Edward in the concurrence of three routes, than to erect the other at lake George seventeen miles to the northward of it; and wrote a very pressing letter upon that head to sir William Johnson, who then commanded the provincial troops.

The banks of Hudson's river are for the most part rocky cliffs, especially on the western shore. The passage through the highlands affords a wild romantic scene for sixteen miles through steep and lofty mountains: the tide flows a few miles above Albany, the navigation is safe, and performed in sloops of about forty or fifty tons burden, extremely well accommodated to the river: about sixty miles above the city of NewYork the water is fresh, and in wet seasons much lower; the river is stored with variety of fish, which renders a summer's passage to Albany exceedingly diverting to such as are fond of angling.

The advantages of this river for penetrating into Canada, and protecting the southern colonies from the irruptions of the French, by securing the command of the lakes, and cutting off the communication between the French settlements on St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, though but lately attended to, must be very apparent to every judicious observer of the maps of the inland part of North America.

The French, as appears from the intended invasion in

*In the passage from Albany to fort Edward, the whole land carriage is about twelve or thirteen miles.

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1689, have long eyed the English possession of this province with jealousy, and it becomes us to fall upon every method for its protection and defence.

The singular conveniency of Hudson's river, to this province in particular, was so fully shown in one of the late papers, published in 1753, under the title of the Independent Reflector, that I cannot help reprinting the passage relating to it.

"High roads, which in most trading countries, are extremely expensive, and awake a continual attention for their reparation, demand from us, comparatively speaking, scarce any public notice at all. The whole province is contained in two narrow oblongs, extending from the city east and north, having water carriage from the extremity of one, and from the distance of one hundred and sixty miles of the other, and, by the most accurate calculation has not, at a medium, above twelve miles of land carriage throughout its whole extent. This is one of the strongest motives to the settlement of a new country, as it affords the easiest and most speedy conveyance from the remotest distances, and at the lowest expence. The effects of this advantage are greater than we usually observe, and are therefore not sufficiently admired.

"The province of Pensylvania, has a fine soil, and through the importations of Germans, abounds with inhabitants; but being a vast inland country, its produce must, of consequence, be brought to a market over a great extent of ground, and all by land carriage. Hence it is, that Philadelphia is crowded with wagons, carts, horses, and their drivers; a stranger at his first entrance would imagine it to be a place of traffic, beyond any one town in the colonies, while, in New-York in particular, to which the produce of the country is all brought by water, there is more business, at least business of profit, though with less show and appearance. Not a boat in our river is navigated with more than two or three men at most; and these are perpetually coming in from and returning to all parts of the adjacent country, in the same employments that fill the city of Philadelphia with some hundreds of men, who, in respect to the public advantage, may justly be said to be laboriously idle: for, let any one nicely compute the expense of a wagon with its tackling, the time of two men in attending it, their maintenance, four horses, and the charge of their provender, on a journey of one, though they often come two hundred miles, and he will find these several particulars amount to a sum far from being inconsiderable. ́All this time the New-York farmer is in the course of his proper business, and the unincumbered acquisitions of his calling; for at a medium, there is scarce a farmer in the province that

cannot transport the fruits of a year's labour from the best farm in three days, at a proper season, to some convenient landing, where the market will be to his satisfaction, and all the wants from the merchant cheaply supplied; besides which, one boat shall steal into the harbour of New-York, with a lading of more burden and value than forty wagons, one hundred and sixty horses, and eighty men into Philadelphia; and perhaps with less noise, bluster, or show than one. "Prodigious is the advantage we have in this article alone, I shall not enter into an abstruse calculation to evince the exact value of it in all the lights in which it may be considered; thus much is certain, that barely on account of our easy carriage, the profits of farming with us exceed those in Pennsylvania at least by thirty per cent.; and that difference, in favour of our farmers, is of itself sufficient to enrich them: while the others find the disadvantage they are exposed to so heavy, (especially the remote inhabitants of their country,) that a bare subsistence is all they can reasonably hope to obtain. Take this province throughout, the expense of transporting a bushel of wheat is but two-pence for the distance of one hundred miles, but the same quantity at the like distance in Pennsylvania, will always exceed us one shilling at least. The proportion between us in the conveyance of every thing else is nearly the same; how great then are the incumbrances to which they are exposed! What an immense charge is saved to us! how sensible must the embarrassments they are subject to be to a trading people!"

RICHMOND

County consists of Staten Island, which lies nine miles south-westward from the city of New-York. It is about eighteen miles long, and at a medium six or seven in breadth, on the south side is a considerable tract of good level land, but the island is in general rough, and the hills high; the inhabitants are principally Dutch and French, the former have a church, but the latter having been long without a minister, resort to an episcopal church in Richmond town, a poor mean village and the only one on the island, the parson of the parish receives £40 per annum, raised by a tax upon the county.

Southward of the main coast of this and the colony of Connecticut lies Long Island, called by the Indians Matowacs, and named, according to an act of assembly in king William's reign, Nassau; its length is computed at one hundred and twenty miles, and the mean breadth twelve. The lands on the north and south side are good, but in the middle, sandy and

barren; the southern shore is fortified against any invasion from the sea by a beach inaccessible to ships, and rarely to be approached, even by the smallest long-boats, on account of the surge which breaks upon it with great fury, even when the winds are light. The coast, east and west, admits of regular soundings far into the ocean, and as the lands are in general low for several hundred miles, nothing can be more advantageous to our ships than the high lands of Neversink near the entrance at the Hook, which are scarce six miles in length, and often seen thirty leagues from the sea; this island affords the finest roads in America, it being very level and but indifferently watered: it is divided into three counties.

KINGS

County lies opposite to New-York on the north side of Long Island; the inhabitants are all Dutch, and enjoying a good soil, near our markets, are generally in easy circumstances. The county, which is very small, is settled in every part, and contains several pleasant villages, viz. Bushwick, Breucklin, Bedford, Flat-Bush, Flat-Lands, New-Utrecht, and Gravesend.

QUEENS

County is more extensive, and equally well settled: the principal towns are Jamaica, Hempstead, Flushing, Newtown, and Oysterbay. Hempstead plain is a large, level, dry, champaign heath, about sixteen miles long and six or seven wide, a common land belonging to the towns of Oysterbay and Hempstead. The inhabitants are divided into Dutch and English presbyterians, episcopalians, and qua

kers.

There are but two episcopal missionaries in this county, one settled at Jamaica, and the other at Hempstead; and each of them receives £60 annually, levied upon all the inhabitants.

SUFFOLK

Includes all the eastern part of Long Island, Shelter Island, Fisher's Island, Plumb Island, and the Isle of White. This large county has been long settled, and, except one small episcopal congregation, consists entirely of English presbyterians. Its principal towns are Huntington, Smith town, Brookhaven, Southampton, Southhold, and Easthampton. The farmers are for the most part graziers, and living very