So and so did such and such a deed, and there was an end of it. We have a sample of such tales in the following veracious narrative: Previous to 1812, a riverman, or some one connected with one of the markets alongshore, was impressed by the captain of a British vessel. The people of the neighbourhood, roused by this highhanded proceeding, seized a boat belonging to the said captain, broke it up, and burned it. They then coni-

Along the Manhattan Shore 57

pelled the captain to release his prisoner. From that da\' Shanghai-ing fell into disrepute along the North River.

At Cruger's Dock occurred one of the deeds which in any other city under the stm would have been celebrated in song and woven into stor}', but which in Xew York was allowed to go almost unrecorded. Out of some dusty pile of records one draws the scanty account of the arrival of Captain Haviland, on the 13th of January, 1768, with a supply of stamps, and of the gathering at the dock that evening of a company of armed men, who captured the stamps and burned them. That is all. If it had been Boston, and a cargo of tea, how sonorously the deed would have been exploited ! At the foot of West loth Street -- or near it -- was the old State prison, which at least one boardinghouse-keeper in the vicinity advertised as an attraction. One of the early morning sights of the city is that of the market at West Street, near Gansevoort and Little West Tenth. This is one of the survivals from the old days of river boats and farm trucking, and is a part of the story of the Hudson. In the years 1780-85, the Vauxhall Gardens, at the North River end of Warren Street, were at the height of their vogue.