An exuberance of rodents!

Beaver lunch (Photo credit: carljohnson)

Again, Joel Munsell writing in 1876, this time of the creek known as the Rutten kill (as we’d spell kill today), which ran freely through what is now downtown Albany:

“Going back again a hundred years before the times mentioned as having tried men’s souls, we find ourselves in the neighborhood of the Dutch church. The portion of Handelaer street below State was not yet known as Court street, nor the upper portion as Market street [and therefore, none of it was yet Broadway, as it all is today]. Between State and Beaver was what was called the Great bridge, over the Rutten kil. The Rutten kil had its origin in copious springs on the upper side of Lark street, and as if out of the pond that once stood there, I perceive has arisen the spire of an imposing church edifice. Timbers of great length were sometimes ordered by the common council to span this creek in making repairs to the bridge. It was undoubtedly then a formidable stream, which had been populous with beaver and stocked with fish; no merely a sewer, with an exuberance of rodents!”