The hills are most of them good and suitable for cultivation. The soil in general is gravelly clay, and sandy loam, producing all kinds of fruit and grass in plenty.

» Religious .Soc. Co. Rec, Lib. B. 79. * Spafford's Gazetteer.

COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER. 245

There are some valuable quarries on the banks of the Hudson, that yield great quantities of beautiful building stones. The forests are principally of oak, chesnut, hickory, ash and walnut.

Among the mineral productions may be mentioned the Dolomitic marble, which occurs in various places ; also several localities of feldspar, especially in the vicinity of Tarrytown.

246 HISTORY OF THE

HARRISON.

Harrison, sometimes called the purchase and Harrison's precinct,^ is situated 3 miles east of the village of White Plains, distant 30 miles from New York, and 134 miles from Albany; bounded northerly by North Castle, east and southerly by Rye, west by Mamaroneck, \Yhite Plains and North Castle. Its length north and south is about nine miles, and its medial width near three miles, but like most of the other towns in this county, its form is irregular, having no right lines for its boundaries. The present township was organized 7th of March, 1788. ^

The tirst proprietor of this land of whom anything is known, was Shanasockwell or Shanarocke, sagamore of Poningoe, who, with other Indians in 1661 conveyed to John Budd of Southhold, Long Island ; " one neck of land lying on the mayne called Apawammeis, (Budds neck, Rye,) also range, feeding and grasse for cattle, twenty English miles into the country ^^ Under this purchase the inhabitants of Rye subsequently claimed the whole territory, a demand which the province of New York refused to sanction.