Its successor, the King's highway, made two sharp bends at Twentieth and at Eighteenth avenues, perhaps due to village developments or to cultivated tracts. From the turn at 20th street there extended to Gravesend beach a lane known as De Bruyn's (Brown's) lane. This was probably an Indian trail, and seems to indicate the existence of a native station preceding the establishment of the Dutch village. It extends from 81st street to the old margin of the bay, beyond Cropsey avenue, and is near the line of Twentieth avenue. It was the dividing line between the plantations of Anthony Jansen and others in

AND MONOGRAPHS

INDIAN PATHS

1643 and 1657. As such its probable existence as a trail is indicated. It was utilized by the early settlers as a means of access to the salt hay meadows along the Bensonhurst shore.

From New Utrecht the path proceeded on the line of 84th street to Fifteenth avenue, along the tract which, in 1652, Cornells Van Werckhoven purchased of the natives of the locality. At that avenue, the Cortelyou lane was later constructed to the shore. Passing around the head of the marshy tract which is now included in Dyker Heights Park, the old highway entered the region of Nayack.

The locality known as Nayack (68) is of particular interest as the refuge of the natives of Manhattan who made the sale of their home on the lower part of that island to Peter Minuit. The name denotes a point or angle of land, and as such may be appropriately applied to the Fort Hamilton tract, bounded probably by Dyker Heights Park on the south, and extending perhaps as far north as Yellow hook to meet the bounds of the home-lands of the