Specifically the tract called Wawayanda or Woerawin was never located, nor were the several "certain tracts of land called Wawayanda" purchased by Dr. Bridges. The former learned in a short

died about 1730 at the Delaware Water-Gap.'' The names given by the writer do not inchide all the signers of the deed. One of the unnamed grantors was Clans, so called from Klaas (Dutch), "A tall ninny"; an impertinent, silly fellow ; a ninny-jack. The name may have accurately described the personality of the Indian.

HUDSON S RIVER ON THE WEST. 135

time, however, that his purchase was not "altogether a swamp," although itmay have included or adjoined one, and the latter found that his purchase included a number of pieces of very fine lands and a number of swamps, and especially the district known as the Drowned Lands, covering some 50,000 acres, in which were several elevations called islands, now mainly obliterated by drainage and traversed by turnpikes and railroads. Several water-courses were there also, notably the stream now known as the Wallkill, and that known as the Wawayanda or Warwick Creek, a stream remarkable for its tortuous course. What and where was Wawayanda? The early settlers on the patent seem to have been able to answer. Mr. Samuel Vantz, who then had been on the patent for fifty-five years, gave testimony in 1785, that Wawayanda was "Within a musket-shot of where DeKay lived." The reference v\^as to the homestead house of Col. Thomas DeKay, who was then dead since 1758. The foundation of the house remains and its site is well known. In adjusting the boundary line between New York and New Jersey it was cut oflf from Orange County and is now in Vernon. New Jersey, where it is stilt known as the "Wawayanda Homestead." Within a musket-shot of the site of the ancient dwelling flows Wawayanda Creek, and with the exception of the meadows through which it flows in a remarkably sinuous course, is the only object in proximity to the ])lace where DeKay lived, except the m.eadow and the valley in which it flows.