OF HUDSON'S RIVER. half ;

"

thence to the Delaware again, and so down to the place the later, Penn's successors were

of beginning.

Sixty years to secure as good a bargain surveyors of this tract, and, in order " as possible, prepared a road for the walk," provided expedi tious means of crossing the intersecting streams, and selected

the swiftest pedestrians in the province, that thereby might be accomplished as great a distance as possible within the time

The line on the Delaware was not fixed by the treaty,

limited.

and advantage was taken of the omission to run the course not extended north-east parallel with the river, but by one which and more, till it struck the Delaware near

for a hundred miles

the mouth of Laxawaxen creek, far above Easton.

A million

acres of land were thus embraced, when, by a fairer computa

hundred and

tion, three

their claim.

fifty

thousand would have confined

largest,

but not the least of the frauds which

the Lenapes had suffered.

In the Minnisink country they had

This was the also

been defrauded.

The famous Minnisink patent covered

lands which had been purchased from them but never paid for, the purchasers having made the grantors drunk pending the execution of the deed, obtained their signatures when they knew

not what they were doing, and then refused the promised com The pensation on the plea that it had already been given.

Esopus chiefs, and the Hackinsacks and Tappans, joined in the the borders of New Jersey and New York, as well complaint ;