her emptying urn." Up the stream meandering through "prolixity of shade," where" willows dipt their pendent boughs, stooping as if to drink," we perceive, where it traverses Second street, the lowly shelter of Drinker, the anterior lord of Dock creek; and beyond him, the creek disappears in intervening trees, or in mysterious windings.

Penn was so pleased with the site of "the low sandy beach," as a landing place, (the rest of the river side being high precipitous banks) that he made it a public landing place for ever in his original city charter; and the little haven at the creek's mouth so pleased him, as a fit place for a harbour for vessels in the winter, and a security from the driving ice, that he also appropriated so much of it as lay eastward of the Little Dock creek to be a great dock for ever, to be deepened by digging when needful. The waters there were much deeper at first than after years, as the place got filled up by the negligence of the citizens. Charles Thomson, Esq. told me of his often seeing such vessels as sloops and schooners lading their flour for the West Indies on the sides of the Dock creek near to Second street; and a very aged informant (Mrs. Powell) had seen a schooner once as high as Girard's bank. Charles Thomson also told me of one family of the first settlers whose vessel wintered at the mouth of the creek.

This original tavern, from its location, was at first of first rate consequence as a place of business. It was the proper key of the city, to which all new-comers resorted, and where all small vessels, coming with building timber from Jersey, &c., or with traffic from New England, made their ready landing. The house was

also used as a public ferry, whence people were to cross over Dock creek to Society Hill, before the causeway and bridge over Front street were formed, and also to convey persons over to Windmill island, where was a windmill for grinding their grain, or to cross persons and horses over to Jersey. It was, in short, the busy mart for a few years of almost all the business the little town required.

"The spring," in a line due west from this house, on the opposite bank of the creek, was long after a great resort for taking in water for vessels going to sea, and had been seen in actual use by some aged persons still alive in my time, who described it as a place of great rural beauty, shaded with shrubbery and surrounded with rude sylvan seats.

Little Dock creek, diverging to the southeast, had an open passage for canoes and batteaux as high as St. Peter's church, through a region long laying in commons, natural shrubbery, and occasional forest trees, left so standing, long after the city, northward of Dock creek, was in a state of improvement.

The cottage of the Drinker family, seen up the main or northwestern Dock creek, located near the southwest corner of Walnut and Second street, was the real primitive house of Philadelphia. The father of the celebrated aged Edward Drinker had settled there some years before Penn's colonists came, and Edward himself was born there two years before that time; he lived till after the war of Independence, and used to delight himself often in referring to localities where Swedes and Indians occasionally hutted, and also where Penn and his friends remained at their first landing.

THE TREATY TREE, AND FAIRMAN'S MANSION.

[ILLUSTRATED BY A PLATE.]

"But thou, broad Elm! Canst thou tell us nought
Of forest chieftains, and their vanish'd tribes ?,
-Hast thou no record left

Of perish'd generations, o'er whose head

Thy foliage droop'd ?-thou who shadowed once
The rever'd Founders of our honour'd State."

THE site of this venerable tree is filled with local impressions. The tree itself, of great magnitude and great age, was of most impressive grandeur. Other cities of our Union have had their consecrated trees; and history abounds with those which spread in arborescent glory, and claimed their renown both from the pencil and the historic muse. Such have been "the royal oak," Shakspeare's "mulberry tree," &c.

"From his touch-wood trunk the mulberry tree
Supplied such relics, as devotion holds

Still sacred, and preserves with pious care."

In their state of lofty and silent grandeur they impress a soothing influence on the soul, and lead out the meditative mind to enlargement of conception and thought. On such a spot, Penn, with appropriate acumen, se!oted his treaty ground. There long stood the stately witness of the solemn covenant-a lasting emblem of the unbroken faith, "pledged without an oath, and never broken!"'