The creek extended inland with deep windings to the Trains meadow, a large tract of marsh-land which is still in great part existing in its original condition, nlling the large basin of lowland now partly occupied by North Woodside, and extending as far north as the Flushing turnpike.

On the east of this area the old Trains Meadow road made its crooked way between Maspeth and North Beach on Flushing bay. The name which was thus applied to the creek in the conveyance above mentioned, was probably that of the sea-shore path which followed its course, as pointed out by Tooker,32 corresponding as it does to the Delaware words shajahik, "seashore," and aney, "a path."

Such a pathway, if extended through the Mispat village as it might have been, on the line of Trimble avenue, would have been an important means of access to the still waters of the Sound, from the regions around the bay of New York, avoiding

AND MONOGRAPHS

INDIAN PATHS

travel by canoe through the treacherous currents of Hell Gate.

The natural line of communication between these places and the mainland north and west, was the Rockaway trail, which ran from the Brooklyn path along the base of the hilly ground known as the Green hills that form the central backbone of the island from Fort Hamilton to . North Hempstead. This path followed the line of the old Bedford and Jamaica highway, which the present Atlantic avenue and Jamaica avenue succeed.

The path was expanded into a King's highway in 1704, and for many years bore that name. It became known later as the Jamaica and Brooklyn plank road, and sometimes as the Old Ferry road. In the village of Bedford it crossed, at the Four Corners, the junction of the Clove road, which was an old lane that may still be traced in part in the line of Canarsie avenue from Montgomery street southward to its old junction with the Canarsie lane, now the south boundary of the Cemetery of the Holy Cross in Flatbush.