Though its limited area offered relatively restricted facilities for wild animal life, the range of rugged hills that extend from its northeast corner at St George, to the old county town of Richmond near its center, probably sheltered quantities of small game and birds that supplemented the fish and shell-fish which teemed in the shallow waters surrounding the island and provided the natives with their readiest means of subsistence. The eastern and western shore-lines were deeply indented with marshy tracts, some extending far inland. The area available for cultivation was thus considerably reduced by mountain, marsh, and sand-dunes,

AND MONOGRAPHS

INDIAN PATHS .

so that all the important native settlements are found to have been established around the shores, and only in a few places were small stations located inland.

The native ownership of the borough was divided, its residents being members of several chieftaincies, who were settled upon that part of the coast contiguous to their mainland relatives, those on the north being the Hackensack and possibly the Tappan, those on the west and at the southern extremity the Raritan, and on the east and possibly in some inland positions, the natives of Nayack, those onetime residents of Manhattan who removed to Fort Hamilton. As these were all" of Unami-Delaware affinity, they appear to have lived in amicable relations and to have had a well-recognized right and title to their share in the ownership of the little island.

Favored by nature as it was, and situated in so commanding a position, the island unfortunately attracted the cupidity of the white man, and his usual process of expropriation of its unhappy" tenantry