It skirted along the eastern base of the hilly range, bending here and there, within the bounds of St Nicholas avenue as it now runs, and slightly rising in grade to 141st street. It crossed there, and also at 143d street, the cascading brooks which bounded down the steep hillside from sources on the later estates of -General Maunsell and Alexander Hamilton, and uniting, ran into a marshy tract that extended until recent times along the base of the hill as far north as Harlem river, wholly barring farther progress along the level lowlands.

Compelled now to scale the heights, the red man found a difficulty in the varying seasonal conditions of the stream and marsh. In dry seasons it must have been easy to cross the brook and skirt the marsh to the line of the old Breakneck hill, steeply ascending to 147th street, the bugbear of the mail-coach of later times. In wet weather a clamber along the rocky hillside skirting the brook was a better route. In the Military Headquarters Map of 1782, three such routes are shown at this point,

AND MONOGRAPHS

INDIAN PATHS

all illustrating the strategic value of the place as that best suited to the scaling of the hill, and the seasonal difficulties which were encountered in the process.

Once landed on the high ground, the trail went easily and directly northward, through the dense woodland growth which, until many decades of Colonial advance had passed, covered the favorite hunting-ground of the Reckgawawanc, passing the future site of Jan Dykman's farmhouse at 153d street, and proceeding in nearly a direct line past the site of the home of Roger Morris, and his successor in ownership, the irrepressible Madame Jumel.