Founding of

phia.

chestnut and walnut, sassafras and cedar, that grew luxuriantly in the areas now covered with brick and mortar. The settlers at first came more rapidly than log huts could be built, Philadelso that many were fain to become troglodytes for a while in caves along the river's bank. Building went on briskly, and settlers kept coming, until by the end of 1683, this new Philadelphia, this City of Brotherly Love, contained 357 dwellings, many of them framed wooden houses, many of them stoutly built of bright red brick, and sometimes so uniform in aspect that a chalk-mark would seem needed to distinguish one from its neighbours, as in the Arabian tale of the Forty Thieves. The great city on the Delaware, like the great city on the Hudson, had its characteristic features strongly marked from the very outset.

Penn's opin

country.

Penn was charmed with his woodland. In a letter he exclaims, "O how sweet is the quiet of these parts, freed from the anxious and troublesome solicitations, hurries, and perplexities of woeful Europe!" Again, he says, the land is like "the best vales of England wa- ion of the tered by brooks; the air, sweet; the heavens, serene like the south of France; the seasons, mild and temperate; vegetable productions abundant, chestnut, walnut, plums, muscatel grapes, wheat and other grain; a variety of animals, elk, deer, squirrel, and turkeys weighing forty or fifty pounds, water-birds and fish of divers kinds, no want of horses; and flowers lovely for colour, greatness, figure, and variety. . . . The stories of our necessity [have been] either the fear of our

friends or the scarecrows of our enemies; for the greatest hardship we have suffered hath been salt meat, which by fowl in winter and fish in summer, together with some poultry, lamb, mutton, veal, and plenty of venison, the best part of the year has been made very passable." 1 As regards the climate, however, the writer does not find it always mild and temperate; in another climate. (letter he says, "the weather often changeth without notice, and is constant almost in its inconstancy," an excellent description of nearly all weather in the United States, except on the coast of California.

A fickle

One of the most famous events of Penn's first visit to the New World was his treaty with a tribe of Delawares or Lenapé Indians under the elmtree at Shackamaxon. Documentary evidence concerning this affair is extremely deficient, but there is little doubt that such a treaty was made,2 probably in November, 1682, at Shackamaxon, under a great elm which was blown down in 1810. There is no doubt that the Indians from the first were greatly pleased with Penn's looks and manners. None can appreciate better than the red man that union of royal dignity with

The Shacka

maxon

treaty.

affable grace which characterized the handsome young cavalier. A lady who was present at a conference between Penn and the Indians, near Philadelphia, gave some detailed accounts of it which were afterward used by the

1 Clarkson's Life of Penn, i. 350, 402.

2 Memoirs of Pennsylvania Historical Society, vol. iii. part 2, p. 143.