[Reginald Pelham Bolton (1922)] access to a supply of water, the nearest brook being about five hundred feet to the south, and the upper branch of Harlem creek extending on the east about an equal distance from the house-site. Riker12 says: "Harlem Lane, as we have reason to believe, was at first an Indian trail. Such forest paths, conveniently marked out by savage instinct, were often adopted by the white settlers as the best routes for highways. "In traveling from New Amsterdam to Spuyten Duyvil, at McGown's pass was the natural descent to the plain, the path striking its northern end, where it would as naturally fork to the left and right, for the equal con-venience of the pedestrian passing through the AND MONOGRAPHS 76 INDIAN PATHS ' Clove of the Kill ' to the North River, or along the base of the height to and up Breakneck Hill." Here these early settlers went about their daily labor of converting the virgin land into a productive farm, while the dusky savage, "whose trail lay near them, lead-ing from the forests of Wickquaskeek to New Amsterdam, passed to and fro on his trading errands and eyed with ill-dis-. guised suspicion this inroad upon his an-cient hunting grounds." At 124th street the little watercourse known to Dutch settlers as the fonteyn, was crossed. Rising near Broadway, it flowed east and south to the head of Harlem creek. A branch path may have extended along the line of Manhattan street to a landing at North river, on the line of 130th street, to which an ancient lane extended