Читать книгу 31 Bond Street - Ellen Horan - Страница 17

October 1856

Visiting the marshland of New Jersey on an October morning to examine real estate was an activity like going to the opera—a refined form of leisure wrapped tightly in the concept of wealth. Samuel picked her up on Twenty-fourth Street and brought her to the riverbank at the foot of Christopher Street. Emma carried an overnight bag. Samuel would ferry her across the river, and Dr. Burdell would meet her on the other side to give her a tour of his property. He would offer her a piece to buy, and she intended to accept.

After much thought and discussion, she had put aside a sum with which to purchase some land—it was money left by her husband for Augusta’s dowry. Dr. Burdell had convinced her that this land investment would swiftly gain in value. Although she was taking a gamble, she felt assured that the transaction would be successful and would secure a significant gain. Instead of feeling anxious, she felt closer to her goal, as if she were a bird gliding gracefully in circles, high above her prey.

Emma sat on the deck on a canvas chair, settling herself among the crude fittings of the small craft. There were just the two of them on the boat. Samuel steered silently, like a sentinel, his dark skin outlined against the sky at the stern. The boat glided past the dockyards, glassworks, distilleries, and furnaces of Greenwich Village, following the river motion south. The city split away as the river opened into the wide mouth of the harbor, swelling like an upturned silver dish.

They sailed toward New Jersey, into the narrow strait of the Kill van Kull, and the boat seemed lost in miles of grassland. Occasionally Emma looked up from her book, squinting into the blue and green expanse. Miles away, in the distance, a southbound train left a smudge of black against the horizon. The whistle blew, setting off a flock of egrets rising on the wing, thousands of them, spreading across the reeds, like a fluttering cloud.

Emma asked Samuel questions: “How far do the marshes stretch? How far is Newark? Do any roads pass over this land?” Samuel, wary, gazed toward the horizon and answered in monosyllables, only saying what was necessary. Emma kept her hand to her brow, shielding the glare. “Which part is Dr. Burdell’s land? she asked.

Samuel pointed to a promontory of discarded shells on the marsh side of New Jersey, “Past that ridge, it was the Indian’s road,” he said, of a faint white line shimmering into the salt marsh. All along New York harbor were small islands dotted with bone white beaches formed of shells, piled into middens and mysterious mounds. The Indians had used shells as currency, and these ancient shell paths formed bridges and roads through the lowlands, marking a path to the riches they once associated with the sea.

It was from an Indian that Samuel learned everything about the harbor—about the marsh elder, goosefoot, and sunflower, which produce edible seeds, and about the otters and giant bullfrogs, a freakish species that sing before a summer rain. He could have told her about his lazy summer days in a dugout canoe, dipping a bucket into the water, with Katuma, a Lenape, whose ancestors had once ruled this watery kingdom, and who worked the oyster barges. On lazy days, they fished together. Just below the surface was a harbor’s bounty of oysters, clams, scallops, mussels, and whelk that burrow in the sandy waterbeds.

And it was the Indians who had aided him and other runaway slaves through the Maryland swamps when he fled North. Tribes still lived along the fingers of land that jutted into the eastern waterways, and when they encountered a starving Negro fugitive, they fed him, teaching him to catch and roast a duck, and to smear his body with bear grease to ward away the bugs and the smell of the dogs.

Since coming to New York, Samuel had found work at the stables and was hired to drive Dr. Burdell. He spent his days riding papers and satchels up and down the streets of New York, or ferrying him along with other men back and forth across this piece of harbor, all the while hearing mischief wrapped in deeds and schemes that had no place under God’s sun.

“Where does the water end and the solid land begin?” Emma asked, dismayed, looking at the tall reeds and grasses that spread for miles.

“This swamp can swallow a man,” was all he said.

They reached the shore of Elizabeth Port, a tiny hamlet with whitewashed houses and a single church. It was afternoon, and Dr. Burdell was waiting near the dock with a buggy. Samuel drove while Emma and Dr. Burdell surveyed the land. They bounced along a dirt road that bordered the sea, flanked by rich meadows that seemed to lift up out of the swamp with deeply rooted stands of trees. The horse stopped when its hooves began to sink into the sticky mud. Ahead was the watery amorphous vista: a patchwork of meadows and marsh that spread for miles inland where one could see the tips of barns on a far horizon.

“We are dividing the land into lots, one hundred acres each. Each piece starts at the water and runs inland. Where the water is shallow it will be dug deep for docks and berths,” said Dr. Burdell, waving his hand along the salt marshes. “The dredged mud will be poured for higher land and roads. A railroad runs south from Hoboken, crossing this expanse of marsh, before it heads on to Philadelphia.” Emma was glad he did not suggest they get out of the carriage where the mud would be sucking at their shoes. “There are only two lots left,” he said. “You can see the best one from here—it ends at the Bound Creek, a freshwater stream that bisects this part of the marsh.”

Since they were on a rise, she could see the shell mounds and a clear stream starting at Newark Bay, cutting into the marshland, a spiraling creek that made a demarcation going east to west. “Farther up, the Hackensack and the Passaic Rivers converge, so the coal barges pass by here as well.” He spoke with such authority that one would think that all the commerce in the harbor was waiting to berth in this spot where now there were only bugs and spiny creatures and enormous fields of useless grasses, swaying for miles. “Buyers have been discreet in purchasing these lots, but it will soon result in a frenzy of speculation once the builders and financiers come on board.”

“Turn around, and head back,” Dr. Burdell ordered Samuel, directing him to turn back to Elizabeth Port. Samuel was familiar with the route and took little direction. They headed toward the village and stopped before a small wooden building that had a sign for a country notary. Dr. Burdell and Emma stepped inside, and the notary nodded a greeting. Dr. Burdell took papers from a satchel and spread them along a central table. He unrolled a map that had thin lines bisecting the furrows and marshes into rectangular plots. Emma studied the survey, trying to make sense of the markings. Dr. Burdell put his hand on her arm, and she felt his grip tighten as she hesitated. “That is the section I shall choose,” she said, finally, pointing to a dotted line that marked a plot along the water’s edge. She recognized a hook shape on the map that corresponded to a promontory she had seen from the boat ride; from the water it had looked like a bone that was raised out of the water, its dry ridge continuing like a highway through the wetland. The line of the freshwater creek was within its boundary. She hesitated again, and then nodded. “Yes, this is the one I will take.”