It was in October, 1G96, that he was dispatched to hunt down pirates, and at that time he must have had a fairly honest reputation. Less than five years later he met his doom on the gallows. His exceptional popularity as a pirate hero is doubtless due to the fanciful stories of his buried treasures, to which a certain substantial foundation was supposed to have been given by the unearthing of one of them -- in all probability the only one -- by the authorities. At the beginning of the eighteenth century Manhattan Island had attained a population of nearly six thousand souls, and about one thousand houses had been erected upon it. Westchester County, established upon practically the same boundary lines as exist to-day (considering the county in its original integrity), had acquired the elements of serious development in all its parts. Practically all its land had been appropriated by purchase. Means of convenient communication with New York had been secured, and a bridge across the Spuyten Duyvil Creek built. All of the six manorial estates had been granted by letters patent, and in part settled by tenants, with here and there the foundations of villages laid. The old settlements on the Sound had made steady advancement and new settlers had generally begun to occupy the non-manorial lands in the interior. The progress of the Sound settlements and of interior occupation outside of the manors remains to be glanced at in order to complete the history of the county to the period at which we have arrived. The Lye settlement, which grew out of purchases made by citizens of Greenwich, Conn., on the New York side of the Byram River, beginning in 1G60, flourished from the start, and gradually expanded over all the adjacent country. Included within the Colony of Connecticut bythe boundary compact of 1664, there never existed any question as to its political status until, under the new boundary adjustment of 1683, it was detached from Connecticut ami incorporated in New York.