The topography of this section of Long Island was peculiar, presenting strong contrasts of high and low land. Originally, and indeed within the memory of citizens still living, that part of Brooklyn lying south and west of the line of Nevins Street was practically a peninsula, with the Wallabout Bay or present Navy Yard on one side of the neck, and on the other, a mile across, the extensive Gowanus creek and marsh, over which now run Second, Third, and Fourth Avenues. The creek set in from the bay where the Gowanus Canal is retained, and rendered the marsh impassable at high-water as far as the line of Baltic Street. Blocks of buildings now stand on the site of mills that were once worked by the ebb and flow of the tides. The lower part of what is known as South Brooklyn was largely swamp land in 1776. Here the peninsula terminated in a nearly isolated triangular piece of ground jutting out into the harbor, called Red Hook, which figured prominently in the military operations. From this projection to the furthest point on the Wallabout was a distance of three miles, and the scenery along the bank presented a varied and attractive appearance to the resident of New York. The "heights" rose conspicuously in all the beauty of their natural outline; lower down the shore might be seen a quaint Dutch mill or two; on the bluffs opposite the Battery, the mansions of Philip and Robert Livingston were prominent; and not far from where the archway crosses Montague Street stood the Remsen and, nearer the ferry, the Colden and Middagh residences. From every point of view the perspective was rural and inviting.[18]
[Footnote 18: In describing some of the characteristic features of Long Island, Smyth, the traveler already quoted, mentions what seemed to him "two very extraordinary places." "The first," he says, "is a very dangerous and dreadful strait or passage, called _Hell-Gates_, between the East River and the Sound; where the two tides meeting cause a horrible whirlpool, the vortex of which is called the Pot, and drawing in and swallowing up every thing that approaches near it, dashes them to pieces upon the rocks at the bottom.... Before the late war, a top-sail vessel was seldom ever known to pass through Hell-Gates; but since the commencement of it, fleets of transports, with frigates for their convoy, have frequently ventured and accomplished it; the Niger, indeed, a very fine frigate of thirty-two guns, generally struck on some hidden rock, every time she attempted this passage. But what is still more extraordinary, that daring veteran, Sir James Wallace, to the astonishment of every person who ever saw or heard of it, carried his Majesty's ship, the Experiment, of fifty guns, safe through Hell-Gates, from the east end of the Sound to New York; when the French fleet under D'Estaing lay off Sandy Hook, and blocked up the harbor and city of New York, some ships of the line being also sent by D'Estaing round the east end of Long Island to cruise in the Sound for the same purpose, so that the Experiment must inevitably have fallen into their hands, had it not been for this bold and successful attempt of her gallant commander." The other spot was Hempstead Plains, which presented the "singular phenomenon," for America, of having no trees.]