Upon the Hudson River"s "Long Reach" is the favorite locality of the winter "ice-boat races," this exhilarating sport in boats on runners speeding over the ice, before the wind, being much enjoyed. A few miles above Poughkeepsie the reach comes to an abrupt termination, in the bent and narrow pa.s.s, where the cliffs compress the channel and form the crooked strait known as the Crom Elbow, the Dutch and English words having the same meaning. Above, the western sh.o.r.e for a long distance is lined with apple orchards and vineyards, while the eastern bank for over thirty miles is a succession of villas interspersed with hamlets. Moving northward, the n.o.ble Catskill range comes into full view, gradually changing from distant gray to nearer blue, and then to green with the closer approach. Along the river for many miles, where these magnificent mountains give such a grand front outlook, there are a series of old Knickerbocker estates, many occupied by the descendants of the early settlers. Here was the princely home of the late William B. Dinsmore of Adams Express Company, a business begun in 1840 with two men, a wheelbarrow and a boy, Dinsmore being one of the men and the late John Hoey of Long Branch the boy. Dinsmore built his gorgeous palace on the Hudson--and died. On the western sh.o.r.e is Pell"s great apple orchard, shipping the fruit from twenty-five thousand trees all over the world. Some distance above, the Rondout Creek comes out through a deep gorge, having the twin cities of Rondout and Kingston nestling among its bordering hills. They have together over twenty-five thousand people. This was the outlet of the abandoned Delaware and Hudson Ca.n.a.l. Kingston Point, the mouth of the creek, was the place of earliest Dutch settlement in this part of New York, where they called it Wittwyck, or the "Wild Indian Town," and for defense built a redoubt, whence come the name of Rondout.
The historic city of Kingston spreads back to Esopus Creek, a short distance inland, and was the Esopus town of colonial times, the name coming from the Indian dwellers here, meaning "the river." The old "Senate House" of Kingston, built in 1676, was the first meeting-place of the New York Legislature, and it now contains a collection of Dutch and other relics. The Esopus Indians broke up the original settlements with a terrible ma.s.sacre, but Huguenot refugees came and re-peopled the place, and during the Revolution Esopus was such a "nest of rebels" that when the British came along in 1777 they burnt it. This punishment was inflicted because it was made the capital and the first New York State Const.i.tution had been framed here during the preceding February. The tale is told that the British landing to burn the town scared a party of Dutch laborers, who briskly scampered off.
One of them stepped on a hay-rake, and the handle flying up gave him a sharp rap on the head. Being frightened more than hurt, and sure that a Britisher closely pursued him, he fell on his knees, and imploringly exclaimed, "Mein Gott, I give up; hooray for King Shorge!" Kingston is a great producer of flagstones and manufactory of Rosendale cements, made from a fine-grained, hard, dark-blue stone, which is broken, burnt in kilns with coal, ground, and then prepared for market. Mixed with clean sharp sand, this cement becomes in time entirely impervious to water, and has all the strength of the best natural building stones.
GREAT HISTORIC ESTATES.
The solid old German burgher William Beckman came over from his native Rhine in 1647, and went sailing up the Hudson, his Fatherland memories being delighted at the sight of a n.o.ble hill on the eastern bank, opposite Rondout Creek. He settled there, building a house, and behind the hill started the town of Rhinebeck, a combination of his own name and that of his native river. This well-known Rhinecliff stands up alongside the Hudson, much like a vine-clad slope bordering the great German river, and is adorned with the ancient Beckman House, a stone structure built for a fort and dwelling. Famous estates surround Rhinebeck. Here is Ellerslie, the summer home of Levi P. Morton, formerly Vice-President, fronting the river for a long distance. The Astor estate of Rokeby, which was the home of William B. Astor and his son William Astor, is north of Rhinebeck, the house, surmounted by a tower, standing in a s.p.a.cious park about a mile back from the river.
Rokeby was a noted place in Revolutionary days, the home of General Armstrong, whose daughter married the elder Astor. Here is the Fleetwood estate, with its old house, built in 1700, having the "cannon-room" in front, with a port-hole facing the river. Here are Wilderstein and Grasmere, the home of the Livingston descendants, also Wildercliff, built by Rev. Freeborn Garrettson, one of the founders of the Methodist Church in America, its name signifying the "wild Indian"s cliff." Garrettson was educated in Maryland for the Church of England. As a matter of conscience he afterwards espoused the cause of the Methodists, then in their infancy, entered their ministry, freed his slaves, and preached the gospel of Methodism everywhere, declaring his firm faith in a special Providence, and often proving it in his own person. Once a mob seized him and was taking him to jail, when a sudden and overpowering flash of lightning dispersed them, and he was left unmolested. In 1788 he came to New York in missionary work, and was made Presiding Elder of the district between Long Island Sound and Lake Champlain. Coming to Clermont, among his converts was the sister of Chancellor Livingston, and he married her in 1793, shortly afterwards building his house at Wildercliff. This was long a home for Methodist clergymen, his daughter continuing his hospitality.
Another historic estate, just above Rokeby, is Montgomery Place, the home of another Livingston, the widow of General Montgomery, who was in the colonial attack upon Quebec, by Wolfe, and afterwards, in the early days of the Revolution, led a forlorn hope against Quebec, and perished as Wolfe had before him. His young widow lived here a half-century, and her brother"s descendants now possess it.
Krueger"s Island, on the eastern sh.o.r.e, discloses in a grove a picturesque ruin, with broken arches, specially imported from Italy by a former owner of the island to give it a flavor of antiquity. The Catskills now rise in grander view, the Plattekill Clove comes down out of them, and Esopus Creek from the south flows into the Hudson.
The Dutch called this Zaeger"s Kill, which time corrupted into Saugerties, a pleasant factory village built behind the flats at the creek"s mouth, and having the Catskills for a splendid background.
Opposite, on the eastern bank, is Tivoli, and near here is located the parent estate of these historic homes. Robert Livingston came from Scotland to America in 1672 and married a member of the Schuyler family, who was the widow of a Van Rensselaer. He was a patrician of high degree, of the family of the Earls of Linlithgow, and seeking a home in the American wilderness, settled on the Hudson. He first lived at Albany, and being Secretary to the Indian Commissioners, he acquired extensive tracts of land fronting the river, which afterwards became the basis of great wealth. In 1710 these lands were consolidated under one English patent, giving him a princely domain of one hundred and sixty-two thousand acres for an "annual rent of twenty-eight shillings, lawful money of New York," equalling about $3.50. This "Livingston Manor" gave him a seat in the Colonial Legislature, and he built his manor-house upon a gra.s.sy point along the Hudson River bank, at the mouth of "Roeleffe Jansen"s Kill,"
flowing in a few miles north of Tivoli. The greater part of the manor descended to his son Robert, who built a finer mansion there, known as "Old Clermont," which the British burnt during the Revolution. In this house was born the grandson, the famous Chancellor of New York, Robert R. Livingston, who had so much to do with guiding the course of the State in that momentous era. He built the present Clermont mansion on the river bank above Tivoli. It is on a bluff sh.o.r.e, a grand estate surrounding it, and sloping gradually up to the hill-tops stretching to the horizon behind. This estate extended back originally to the Berkshire hills. The full glory of the Catskills is spread out in panorama before this noted mansion, with the distant hotels perched on the mountain tops.
Chancellor Livingston was sent Minister to France, and when he returned he brought over merino sheep, introducing them into this country. His great honor as a man of science comes from his connection with Fulton"s steamboat experiments. He met Fulton in Paris, and was closely connected with the first steamboat on the Hudson, which in fact could not have been built without his aid. By the help of Livingston"s money, Fulton in 1807 built this steamboat in New York, naming her the "Clermont" in his honor. The experiment was publicly derided as "Fulton"s Folly," but he persevered and succeeded. The "Clermont" was one hundred feet long, twelve feet beam and seven feet depth. In September, 1807, she made the first successful experimental trip from New York to Albany in thirty-six hours, charging the pa.s.sengers $7.50 fare. She afterwards made regular trips, and on October 5, 1807, the _Albany Gazette_ announced: "Mr. Fulton"s new steamboat left New York on the 2d, at ten o"clock A.M., against a strong tide, very rough water, and a violent gale from the north. She made a headway against the most sanguine expectations and without being rocked by the waves." Chancellor Livingston in Jefferson"s Administration negotiated the cession of Louisiana by France to the United States, and ripe with honors, he died at Clermont in 1813.
THE CATSKILL MOUNTAINS.
Opposite these great estates, the Catskill Mountains rise in all their glory, spreading across the western horizon at a distance of eight to ten miles from the Hudson River. They stretch for about fifteen miles, and the range covers some five hundred square miles. The most prominent peaks in the view are Round Top and the High Peak, rising thirty-seven hundred and thirty-eight hundred feet, and in front of them, on lower elevations, are the summer hotels that have such superb views over the Hudson River valley. The town of Catskill on the river--a flourishing settlement of five thousand people--is the usual point of entrance, and from it a railway extends back to the bases of the mountains. An inclined plane railway over a mile long then ascends the face of the range, sixteen hundred feet high, to the hotels. This "Otis Elevating Railway," which accomplishes its journey in about ten minutes, is said to be the greatest inclined road in the world. The Indians knew these grand peaks as the Onti Ora, or "Mountains of the Sky," thus named because in some conditions of the atmosphere they appear like a heavy c.u.mulus cloud hanging above the horizon. The weird Indian tradition was that among these mountains was held the treasury of storms and sunshine for the Hudson, presided over by the spirit of an old Indian squaw who dwelt within the range. She kept the day and the night imprisoned, letting out one at a time, and made new moons every month and hung them up in the sky, for they first appeared among these mountains, and then she cut up the old moons into stars. The great Manitou also employed her to manufacture thunder and clouds for the valley. Sometimes she wove the clouds out of cobwebs, gossamers and morning dew, and sent them off, flake by flake, floating in the air, to give light summer showers. Sometimes she would blow up black thunder-storms and send down drenching rains to swell the streams and sweep everything away. All these storms coming from the west appeared to originate in the mountains. The Indians also told of the imps that haunted their dells, luring the hunters to places of peril. When the Dutch colonists came along, they sent expeditions into the mountains, searching for gold and silver, but chiefly found wildcats, causing them to be named the Kaatsbergs, and from this their present t.i.tle has come to be, in time, the Kaatskills or the Catskills.
These attractive mountains are a group of the Alleghenies, having spurs extending northwest and west, at right angles to the general trend of the range, thus giving them quite a different form from that usual in the Allegheny ridges. They a.s.sume also more of the abrupt and rocky character of the Alpine peaks, and instead of the usual folds or fragments of arches commonly seen elsewhere, the Catskill crags are ma.s.ses of piled-up strata in the original horizontal position. They have a most precipitous declivity facing the east towards the river valley. Deep ravines, which the Dutch called "Cloves," are cut into them by the mountain torrents, descending in places in beautiful cascades, sometimes for hundreds of feet. This aggregation of rocky cliffs and rounded peaks, and the intersecting gorges and smiling verdant valleys, have become a great resort for the summer pleasure-seeker, with myriads of hotels and boarding-places, where it is said that eighty to a hundred thousand people will go in the season. Their eastern verge is drained by the Hudson, while the many brooks and kills flowing out to the westward are gathered into the two branches that form the Delaware River.
From their eastern front, where the huge hotels, built at twenty-four hundred feet elevation, are anch.o.r.ed by ponderous chain cables to keep them from being overthrown by the wind, there is an unrivalled view over the valley. The Hudson River stretches a silvery streak across the picture, and can be traced nearly a hundred miles from West Point up to Albany. Its distant diminutive steamboats slowly move, and like a shining thread, as the western sun strikes the car-windows and is reflected, a railway train glides along the bank ten miles away, seen so well, and yet so small. The perpendicular mountain wall brings the valley almost beneath one"s feet, the buildings looking like children"s toy houses, the trees like dwarfed bushes, and the fields, with their alternating green and brown colors, contrasting as the s.p.a.ces on a chess-board. Wagons crawl like little ants upon the narrow mud-colored lines representing roads. The broad valley, though its surface is rugged and has high hills surmounted by patches of woodland, is so far below that it appears from above as a flat floor.
Thus it stretches off to the river, with a sparkling pond here and there, and extending beyond to the eastern horizon the view is enclosed by the dark-blue Berkshire hills in Ma.s.sachusetts, forty miles away. Behind them, on favored days, rise like a misty haze, off to the northeast, the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It was in this region that James Fenimore Cooper located the "Leather Stocking Tales," for his home at Cooperstown was on the Catskills" western verge. Natty b.u.mppo climbed up the mountain to get this wonderful view. "What see you when you get there?" asked Edward. "Creation,"
said Natty, sweeping one hand around him in a circle, "all creation, lad," and then he continued, "If being the best part of a mile in the air, and having men"s farms at your feet, with rivers looking like ribands, and mountains bigger than the "Vision" seeming to be haystacks of green gra.s.s under you, give any satisfaction to a man, I can recommend the spot."
RIP VAN WINKLE AND THE KAATERSKILL.
These Catskill Mountains were purchased from the Indians on July 8, 1678, by a company of Dutch and English gentlemen, who took their t.i.tle at a solemn conclave held at the Stadt Huis in Albany, where the Indian chief Mahak-Neminea attended with six representatives of his tribe. The Indians seem to have soon disappeared, and the region for a century or more remained mythical and almost unexplored, thus contributing to the many fairy tales that have got mixed up with its history. It was among these wonderful mountains that Washington Irving was thus enabled to discover Rip Van Winkle. Down on the mountain side, upon the margin of a deep dark glen leading up from Catskill Village, stands Rip Van Winkle"s ancient little cabin. It is within the vast amphitheatre where Hendrick Hudson"s ghostly crew held their revels and beguiled him to drink from the flagon which put him into his sleep of twenty years. It was a curious revel, for with the gravest faces, and in mysterious silence, they rolled their nine-pin b.a.l.l.s, which echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder. The huge cliffs overhanging the dark glen were evidently put there for just such a ghostly scene, and even now the old denizens of the Catskills are said to never hear a summer thunder-storm reverberating among these mountains without concluding that the Dutch ship"s company from the "Half Moon" are again playing at their game of nine-pins. There is still pointed out the slab of rock on which Rip took his long sleep, and until recently there is said to have lived in the old cabin an alleged "Van Winkle" who made a pretence to be a descendant of the original Rip, and dispensed to the weary traveller liquids fully as sulphurous as those in the flagon of the ghostly crew. Among these mountains originated many of the quaint Dutch legends that have got so interwoven into the early history of New York that it is hard to separate the fact from the fiction.
It was not until 1823 that the first summer hotel was built in the Catskills, a rude little structure standing where is now the Mountain House, near the summit of the inclined plane railway. The highest peak of the range is Slide Mountain, in the western Catskills, at the head of the Big Indian Valley, rising forty-two hundred and five feet. A large portion of this mountain, including the crest, is a New York State reservation, and from its top six States are in view. These Catskill peaks are built up of huge and jagged piles of crags and broken stone, through which the torrents have carved the "Cloves." The stratified rocks are easily split into layers, and they furnish the towns along the Hudson with much of the flagging used for footwalks.
Enormous boulders, some as big as a house, are liberally strewn about, where they were dropped by the great glacier. Among the grandest of the gorges, which the torrents have cleft, is the Kaaterskill Clove, its stream, after various windings, finally flowing eastward towards the Hudson. As the name Kaatskill comes from the cat, so the Kaaterskill is regarded as derived from an animal of most complete feline development, the "gentleman cat." The steep borders of this Kaaterskill Clove, a wonderful canyon, down in the bottom of which ice and snow remain during the summer, furnish many points of remarkable outlook, giving a startling realization of the vast scale of these mountains. The stream bubbles far below, heard but not seen, and the mountain peaks above are occasionally obscured by pa.s.sing clouds.
Adjoining this canyon is an immense gorge carved out of the hills, into which pours the majestic Kaaterskill Falls, plunging down an abyss of two hundred and sixty feet in two leaps, respectively of one hundred and eighty and eighty feet. The stream is dammed above the cataract, so that in times of drouth the water may be retained and the falls thus be exhibited at intervals by turning on the water, as is the case with various cataracts in Switzerland. Few waterfalls have had more praises sung than this ribbon of spray, which was a favorite both of Cooper and Bryant. An inscription on the rock at the foot preserves the memory of a faithful dog, who once jumped down to follow a stone, because he thought it his master"s bidding.
The unique description of the Kaaterskill Falls by Cooper"s Leather Stocking is interesting. He says, "The water comes crooking and winding among the rocks, first so slow that a trout might swim in it, and then starting and running just like any creature that wanted to make a far spring, till it gets to where the mountain divides like the cleft hoof of a deer, leaving a deep hollow for the brook to tumble into. The first pitch is nigh two hundred feet, and the water looks like flakes of driven snow afore it touches the bottom; and then the stream gathers itself together again for a new start, and may be flutters over fifty feet of flat rock before it falls for another hundred, where it jumps about from shelf to shelf, first turning this a-way, and then turning that a-way, striving to get out of the hollow, till it finally comes to the plain. To my judgment, it"s the best piece of work I"ve met with in the woods, and none know how often the hand of G.o.d is seen in the wilderness but them that rove it for a man"s life." William Cullen Bryant thus sings the praises of the Kaaterskill Falls:
""Midst greens and shades the Kaaterskill leaps From cliffs where the wood-flower clings; All summer he moistens his verdant steeps With the sweet, light spray of the mountain springs; And he shakes the woods on the mountain side, When they drip with the rains of autumn tide.
"But when in the forest bare and old, The blast of December calls, He builds, in the star-light clear and cold, A palace of ice where his torrent falls, With turret, and arch, and fret-work fair, And pillars blue as the summer air."
At the head of the Kaaterskill Clove are Haines"s Falls in a picturesque environment, the stream making two main leaps of one hundred and fifty and eighty feet, and other plunges lower down, descending in all four hundred and seventy-five feet, within the distance of a quarter of a mile. The water here is also dammed to make a better exhibition. A main railway route into the Catskills is from Kingston up the valley of Esopus Creek, gradually ascending to its sources in the southwestern part of the range. This leads past the highest peak, Slide Mountain, past Shandaken or "the rapid water," and up the Big Indian Valley, at the head of which the summit is crossed between the waters of the Hudson and the Delaware. The "Big Indian"
whose memory is thus preserved was Winnisook, a savage seven feet high. He fell in love with a white maiden of the lowlands, who, however, married one Joe Bundy instead, but got along so unhappily that she finally ran away to her dusky lover. Winnisook on one occasion came down to the lowlands with his tribe on a cattle-stealing expedition, and Joe Bundy shot and mortally wounded him, saying, "The best way to civilize the yellow serpent is to let daylight into his black heart." The Big Indian was afterwards found dead standing upright in the hollow of a large pine tree. The inconsolable maiden, overwhelmed with grief, is said to have spent the rest of her life near Winnisook"s grave, while the stump of the pine was preserved until the railroad came along and covered it with an embankment. The whole Catskill region is full of charming places, and the vast summer crowds who visit it never tire of the bracing atmosphere, and the magnificent and ever-changing panorama of cloud and sunshine and diversified landscape, exhibited from its magnificent mountain tops.
""Tis here the eastern sunbeams gild The hills which rise on either hand; Till showers of purple mist are spilled In glittering dewdrops o"er the land."
THE DUTCH AND THE SHAKERS.
When Hendrick Hudson came up the river he found sand-bars above the Catskills, and anch.o.r.ed his "Half Moon" near Mount Merino, at what is now the head of ship navigation upon the Hudson, one hundred and fifteen miles from New York. Just beyond, a high plateau sloping to the sh.o.r.e is covered by the city of Hudson, having a green island in front, and over opposite the little town of Athens, with a lighthouse in midstream between them. Hudson has ten thousand people, a picturesque city sloping up Prospect Hill, which rises five hundred feet for a n.o.ble background, and it once had more ships and commerce than the city of New York. A colony of thrifty Quakers from New England started the settlement, which had many fishermen and whalers, and a large fleet of ships sailing to Europe and the Indies, fifteen loaded vessels having cleared from its wharves in a single day. But Napoleon"s wars swept away its fleet and commerce, and the last ship was sold in 1845, so that its commercial greatness is only a tradition; although it has become a seat of considerable manufactures.
Its most noted citizen was General Worth, a hero of the Mexican War, whose monument stands on Fifth Avenue, New York. Both sides of the river here are inhabited by the Dutch, and in fact theirs is the universal language of the Hudson from Kingston up to Albany. These Dutch of New York have given the country some notable men, among them General Philip Schuyler, Colonel Van Rensselaer, General Stryker and others of the Revolution, and President Martin Van Buren. They view with pardonable pride the important share they have had in founding and building up the Empire State, and Rev. Dr. Henry A. Van d.y.k.e has poetically and ingeniously described the "Typical Dutchmen" of New York:
"They sailed from the sh.o.r.es of the Zuyder Zee Across the stormy ocean, To build for the world a new country According to their notion: A land where thought should be free as air And speech be free as water; Where man to man should be just and fair, And Law be Liberty"s daughter.
"When the English fleet sailed up the bay, The small Dutch town was taken; But the Dutchmen there had come to stay; Their hold was never shaken.
They could keep right on, and work and wait For the freedom of the nation; And we claim to-day that New York State Is built on a Dutch foundation."
From the Taghkanic range of the Berkshire hills, behind Hudson City, a pretty stream comes down in many falls and cascades to the river just northward, whose charming valley was known among the Dutch as "Het Klauver Rack," or the "Clover Reach," modernized since, however, into the Claverack Creek. The Columbia Springs are in this valley, and farther on is Kinderhook Village, while back on the hills at a thousand feet elevation above the river, most picturesquely located, are the Lebanon Springs. Here is the noted Shaker settlement of New Lebanon, founded by "Mother Ann" in the eighteenth century. The sect has been declining in recent years, however. This is the governing Shaker community, and it has been well said, of these celibates, that "by frugality and industry they give us many useful things, but they do not produce what the Republic most needs--men and women." They cultivate large tracts of land, produce and sell quant.i.ties of herbs, seeds and botanic medicines, and make baskets, brooms and sieves. Ann Lee was the wife of a blacksmith in Manchester, England, and had been the mother of several children. She had what she claimed as Divine revelations, and was confined in a lunatic asylum for reviling matrimony. Being released in 1770, she founded the new sect, announcing, "I am Ann, the Word," and to escape further persecution migrated to New York, where she was made its spiritual head.
Converting many, she established at New Lebanon the capital of the Shaker world, which has been called "the rural Vatican which claims a more despotic sway over the mind of man than ever the Roman Pontiff a.s.sumed." She claimed her Divine revelation to be that she was the female manifestation of Christ upon earth, the male manifestation having been Jesus, and the Deity being considered a duality, composed of both s.e.xes. The Shakers call themselves the "United Society of Believers in Christ"s Second Appearing." They have entire community of property, believe idleness to be sinful, and everyone able to work is employed. In worshipping they "exercise both soul and body," singing and dancing, and at times of fervent excitement making, with regularity and perfect rhythm, rapid bodily evolutions. In these they form in circles around a band of singers, to whose music they "go forth in the dances of them that make merry." Since the death of "Mother Ann" the Shaker community has been ruled by what is known as the "Holy Lead," composed of the first and second elders and elderesses. A peculiar tenet is that persons may join the sect after death, and among these posthumous members are Washington, Lafayette, Pocahontas, Napoleon and Tamerlane; and they hold that woman is supreme over mankind. Near the village and among the Berkshire hills, just over the border in Ma.s.sachusetts, is their "Mount Sinai," where, according to the tradition, the Shakers hunted Satan throughout a long summer night, finally killing and burying him. They tell us that Washington and Lafayette still keep guard over his grave, mounted on white horses, and can be seen on summer nights by any of the truly faithful who may pa.s.s that way.
The village of Kinderhook is in the Claverack Valley, and out in front on the Hudson is its port, Stuyvesant Landing, where the testy old Governor, Peter Stuyvesant the "Headstrong," made his landing when he came up the river to attack the great Patroon, Killian Van Rensselaer.
Hendrick Hudson is said to have first named Kinderhook, or "Children"s Point," because he saw here a crowd of Indian children watching his vessel. On the Lindenwold estate at Kinderhook, embowered in linden trees, lived for many years President Martin Van Buren, a descendant of the early Dutch settlers, and the shrewdest New York politician of his time. Over on the western bank is the Chaney Tinker Lighthouse, mounted on a crag a hundred feet high, and the distant horizon is bounded by the Helderbergs, a long range of peaks, lower, however, than the Catskills. Above, at Schodack Landing on the eastern sh.o.r.e, was the seat of the council-fire of the Mohicans, called by the French the _Loups_ or Wolves. The word "Is-cho-da" in their language means the "fireplace," and from this has come the name. When Hudson ascended the river, he found the Mohicans occupying its sh.o.r.es for a hundred miles above Rondout Creek, but the race dwindled, until it became the handful to whom the noted Jonathan Edwards ministered in the eighteenth century, at Stockbridge, Ma.s.sachusetts. Hudson pa.s.sed a day with them at Schodack, was treated hospitably, and wrote that their land was "the finest for cultivation he ever set foot on." Two centuries later, Cooper lamented the _Last of the Mohicans_.
THE LAND OF THE PATROONS.
We have now come to the high and rocky Bear or Beeren Island, which in New York"s early days was the southern boundary on the river of the domain of the great Patroon, Killian Van Rensselaer. It marks the limit of two counties on either bank, Greene and Columbia below, joining Albany and Rensselaer above. Here stood the proud castle of Rensselaerstein, cannoned and fortified, where the Patroon"s agent, the bold and doughty Nicolas Kroon, compelled all the Dutch sloops coming up from New Amsterdam to dip their colors in token of his sovereignty, and pay tribute for the privilege of entering the sacred domain. We are told that all pa.s.sing craft yielded homage excepting two large whales, which in 1647 swam by and went up to the Mohawk, greatly terrifying the honest Albany burghers. Above the island, the Normanskill and other streams come down from the Helderbergs, making the shoals of the "Overslaugh," which the Government has improved by an extensive d.y.k.e system to deepen the river channel up to Albany.
There are long and narrow alluvial islands on these flats, among which tows of Erie Ca.n.a.l barges thread their careful way; and ahead, the city of Albany comes into view with its bridges in front, and the grand new Capitol building elevated high on the hill above the town, its red-topped pyramidal roofs seen from afar.
We are now at the domain of the great Patroon, the region around Albany and Troy. When Hudson anch.o.r.ed his ship below the shoals, he came with five of his sailors up to Albany in a row-boat and examined the location. The result was that from his report Albany was actually settled, five years later, in 1614, by the "United Nieu Nederlandts Company," who built a trading-post, thus making Albany, after Jamestown in Virginia, the oldest European settlement in the original thirteen colonies. The post was located on an island just below the city, near which the Normanskill flowed out through the forest on the western bank--the Indian Tawasentha, or "place of many dead." This island was called the "Kasteel," and in the "castle" a garrison of about a dozen Dutchmen conducted a profitable fur-trade with the Mohicans. Ultimately a freshet drove them to the mainland and they built a fort at the mouth of the Normanskill, and in 1623 a stockade was constructed above, at Albany, named Fort Orange in honor of the Prince of the Netherlands. In 1629 colonists were sent out from Holland, and the patroon system established. The Dutch West India Company made arrangements for extensively colonizing the New Netherlands, and pa.s.sed a charter of exemptions and privileges to encourage patroons (or patrons) to make settlements. Every patroon establishing a colony was to have there within four years, as permanent residents, at least fifty persons, over fifteen years of age, of whom one-fourth were to arrive the first year. A director of the company, Killian Van Rensselaer, a pearl merchant of Amsterdam, was granted a patroonship, and got the officials at Fort Orange to buy extensive tracts from the Indians. He thus, with three others, acquired a manor extending twenty-four miles along the Hudson, from Beeren Island up to the Mohawk River, and this manor, which afterwards became the sole property of his family, was subsequently enlarged to extend twenty-four miles back from the Hudson in both directions, and contained over seven hundred thousand acres. The Patroon was a feudal lord, possessing absolute t.i.tle to the soil, with power to administer civil and criminal justice, and enjoying other rights that reduced his colonists to a condition little better than serfs. His son Johannes inherited this patroonship from Killian, and it went by entail through five generations, when the United States laws barred further succession. The last Patroon, General Stephen Van Rensselaer, died in 1839, and his son Stephen, the sixth of the line, still styled by courtesy "the Patroon," died in 1868, aged eighty years. The original settlement of Fort Orange in the manor of Rensselaerwyck, as it was called, became a centre of the fur-trade, and a town quickly grew around the fort, which the English, upon their occupation in 1664, named Albany.
THE ANTI-RENT WAR.
As population increased on the adjacent lands, they began taking leases from the Patroon, paying rent for their farms, and this produced one of the bitterest conflicts known in American politics, the New York "Anti-Rent War." After the Revolution the inhabitants increased rapidly, and General Stephen Van Rensselaer, then the Patroon, leased farms in perpetuity, upon the nominal consideration for eight years of "a peppercorn a year," and at the expiration of this time these leases drew a rent estimated at six per cent. interest on the land value, about $5 per acre, payable in the produce of the soil, fowls, and days" service with wagons and horses, the latter designed to secure road-making. When the old General died in 1839, the entail being abolished, he divided the manor between his two sons, Stephen getting Albany County on the west bank, and William, Rensselaer County on the east bank, including Troy. He had been a lenient landlord, but the tenants became anxious, especially about what was known as the "quarter sales clause" in their leases, giving the landlord the right to claim one-fourth the purchase money whenever the land pa.s.sed by purchase, this condition being really inserted to prevent alienation, as it did not become operative when the land was sold or descended to one of the original tenant"s family. The tenants proposed that the landlord should sell the reservations, releasing them from the rentals and making them owners in fee, but this was declined. The tenants then employed counsel, who advised that the landlord"s right was absolute, but suggested, while there was no legal remedy, that it would be good policy to make the rent collections so difficult, the landlord would be willing to come to terms; that they band together and give each other notice of the approach of bailiffs, so the service of legal process would be troublesome. William H.
Seward, Governor of New York, espoused their cause, and to this advice, he being a candidate for re-election in 1840, he added the recommendation that the "anti-renters" should organize and send to the Legislature men who would hold the balance of power between the great parties, thus forcing the pa.s.sage of laws relieving them.
Then began the "anti-rent" conflicts convulsing New York politics for years. They formed an active and powerful political party, and created other organizations, disguised as Indians, who attacked the law officers. These supposed red men killed a man at Grafton in Rensselaer County, and all legal efforts failed to discover the culprits. Other similar manors existed in different parts of New York State where payment of rents of much the same character was resisted, and these regions also were excited. Outbreaks continued several years, until in 1845 Governor Silas Wright issued a proclamation declaring Delaware County, on the western verge of the Catskills, in a state of insurrection. This caused additional trouble, but the "anti-renters"
disposed of Wright by defeating him for re-election in 1846, and he died soon afterwards. They elected their own candidate for Governor, John Young, who pardoned out of jail nearly everybody imprisoned for "anti-rent" crimes. The disputes finally got into the courts, and the Van Rensselaers, fatigued with the controversy, sold all their rights to a Colonel Church. He was sustained by legal decisions, and then adopted a compromising policy, which quieted the agitation. He released the rentals and gave fee-simple t.i.tles, so that at least three-fourths of the old manor became without rental. His method of compromise was based on a scale: for a farm of one hundred and sixty acres where the annual rent was twenty-two and one-half bushels of wheat, four fat fowls and one day"s service, the value was fixed at $26, being six per cent. interest on $433, and by paying this the tenant got his fee-simple t.i.tle. Thus the hara.s.sing conflict which frequently required troops to be called out at Albany and elsewhere was finally adjusted.
THE CITY OF ALBANY.
Albany, the New York State Capital, has over one hundred thousand people. The city rises from the strip of level land along the river bank, in a series of terraces, to a height of nearly two hundred feet, the top being surmounted by the Capitol Building in a s.p.a.cious park, back of which the surface extends westward in a sandy, almost level plain. The city spreads broadly along the river, where there are wharves, foundries, railway stations, mills, storehouses and lumber yards. Deep ravines are scarred into the hill behind them, and rows of fine old Knickerbocker houses line the hilly streets, with frequent church towers and spires rising above them. The main street, just back from the river, is Broadway, of varying width, but of the first commercial importance. At right angles to it, leading up the hill, is State Street, a n.o.ble avenue, one hundred and fifty feet wide, the front approach to the Capitol. This is the finest building in New York State, was thirty years in construction, and has cost $25,000,000. It is a quadrangle three hundred feet wide and four hundred feet deep, with an unfinished central tower, intended to be three hundred feet high, and Louvre pavilion towers at the angles. It is built in the French Renaissance, of a light-colored granite, pleasantly contrasting with the red-tiled roofs. Few of the pretentious buildings of the world occupy a more commanding situation, standing aloft like the Capitol at Washington, and, seen from afar, a complete old-time French chateau. Mr. E. A. Freeman has written of it, "If anyone had come up to me and told me in French, old or new, that the new Capitol was "Le Chateau de Monseigneur le duc d"Albanie," I could almost have believed him." Its architecture combines features adapted from the Louvre and Hotel de Ville of Paris and the Lyons Maison de Commerce. It stands in Capitol Square, a park of about eight acres, of which it covers three acres. The finest halls are the Senate and a.s.sembly Chambers, to which grand stairways lead, and the interior is decorated with rich carvings, rare marbles and emblematic frescoes. The New York State Library, of nearly two hundred thousand volumes, is in the building. Upon the six dormer windows opening in the interior court are emblazoned the heraldic insignia of six noted families distinguished in New York history--Stuyvesant, Schuyler, Livingston, Jay, Clinton and Tompkins.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _The State Capitol, Albany, N. Y._]
Southward from the Capitol Square is the s.p.a.cious and comfortable Executive Mansion, with an extensive lawn, on Eagle Street. On the same street, to the northeast of the Square, is the City Hall, a fine Gothic building with an elaborate bell tower. Also on Eagle Street is the Albany Medical College, having one of the finest Medical Museums in the country. Among its curios is the embalmed body of Calvin Edson, the "walking skeleton." This curious man came to Albany in 1830, being then forty-two years old and five feet two inches high, yet weighing only sixty pounds. He exhibited himself, and appeared in a play as _Jeremiah Thin_. He had a good appet.i.te, but the more he ate the thinner he grew, until in 1833, the food ceasing to nourish him, he literally starved to death amid plenty, and when the end came, weighed but forty-five pounds. His widow sold his body to the college, and he now stands in a gla.s.s case, preserved with the skin on, labelled "No.
1," and excepting discoloration is said to appear not very different from when living. On the northern side of the Square is the Albany Academy, one of the chief city schools, where Professor Joseph Henry was for several years an instructor, and noted as the place where he first demonstrated the theory of the magnetic telegraph by ringing a bell by an electric spark transmitted through a mile of wire strung around the room. The Dudley Astronomical Observatory is a small but imposing building upon an eminence overlooking the Hudson, having a munificent endowment begun by Mrs. Blandina Dudley in memory of her husband, a wealthy Albany merchant. A charming spot is Washington Park, westward from the Capitol, an enclosure of eighty-one acres, surrounded by ornamental villas, with magnificent views and most tastefully arranged. Part of this Park is land given the city by King James II.
INTERESTING BUILDINGS.
The most noted old Albany building is at the northern end of Broadway, in grounds extending to the river, and surrounded by fine trees, the ancient Van Rensselaer Mansion, commonly called the "Patroon"s,"--a broad house with porch and wide central hall. This occupies the site of the first mansion, which was covered with a roof of reeds. Over on the opposite side of the river at Greenbush, the "Greene Bosch" or "pine woods" of the original settlers, is the Patroon"s other residence, built of bricks from Holland, by the second Patroon Johannes. Port-holes were cut in the walls for the musketeers, it having been a fort in the Indian forays. The family burial-ground adjoins the mansion. State Street, at the corner of Pearl, which is parallel with Broadway, is the most interesting historic locality of ancient Albany. Here stood that elaborate dwelling of the Knickerbockers, regarded as the best specimen of old Dutch architecture in New York State, the "Vanderheyden Palace," an extensive building with two tall gables facing the street. One of the old burghers, Johannes Beekman, built it in 1725, and during the Revolution Jacob Vanderheyden of Troy bought it, and lived there many years in the almost regal state of the Dutch aristocracy. Washington Irving tells of it in the story of Dolph Heyliger, in _Bracebridge Hall_, as the residence of "Herr Anthony Vanderheyden," and when Irving transformed Van Ta.s.sel"s old farmhouse into his villa at Sunnyside he made a gable in imitation of one of these, and also captured the old weather-vane of the "Palace"--a horse going at full speed--to mount on top of it. Upon the opposite corner was the quaint "Lydius House," the home of Rev. John Lydius, the owner of a great manor at Fort Edward, farther up the Hudson, and in front of it stood the crooked elm, giving the locality the name of the "Old Elm Tree Corner." This tree is said to have been planted by Philip Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who lived in an adjoining house. The "Lydius House" had been built as a parsonage for the clergyman sent out to the old Dutch church, Rev. Gideon Schaats, the bricks, tiles, iron and woodwork, together with the church bell and pulpit, all coming from Holland in 1657, in the same ship. During many years its only occupant was Balthazar Lydius, an eccentric bachelor, a tall, spare, morose and irritable Dutchman, fond of bottle and pipe, and having a round bullet head thinly sprinkled with white hair. He gloried in his celibacy until the infirmities of age came upon him, when it is said he gave a pint of gin for an Indian squaw, called her his wife, and they lived contentedly together until he died. This was the oldest brick building in the United States; its part.i.tions were made of mahogany and the exposed beams were richly carved.
The antique pulpit, which came across in the ship with the materials of the "Lydius House," has done duty from then until now in various Dutch churches of Albany. It is of carved oak, octagonal in form. The original church stood in the middle of State Street, a low building with a tall pyramidal roof and little steeple, since removed to widen the street. The church gallery was quite low, while the huge stove warming the building was put upon a platform so high that the s.e.xton had to step on it from the gallery when he wanted to kindle the fire.