Chapter 16

=Hillsdale Village= has a beautiful location and affords a good central point for visiting Mount Everett, with its wide prospect (altitude 2,624 feet), Copake Lake six miles to the west, Bash-Bish Falls six miles south, and Po-ka-no five miles to the northeast, sometimes known as White's Hill. The Po-ka-no, Columbia County's noblest outlook, 1,713 feet, commands the Hudson Valley for eighty miles; and the owner says that he saw the fireworks from there the night of the Newburgh centennial in 1883. From the summit can be seen "Monument Mountain" and the Green Mountains of Vermont. At its base glides the "Green River Creek," which flows into the Housatonic near Great Barrington. From this point the drive can be continued to North Egremont, South Egremont, Great Barrington and Monument Mountain. Before the days of railroads the Columbia turnpike was the great trade artery of the city of Hudson. It was interesting to hear William Cullen Bryant recount his experiences in driving from his home in Great Barrington over the well-known highway on his way to New York. The _Housatonic_ and _Harlem Railroads_ tapped its life and have left many a sleepy village along the route, once astir in staging days. The stone for Girard College was drawn from Massachusetts quarries over this route and shipped to Philadelphia from Hudson. The Lebanon Valley, in the northeastern part of the county, is considered one of the most beautiful in the State, and said by Sir Henry Vincent, the English orator, to resemble the far-famed valley of Llangollen, in Wales. The Wy-a-mon-ack Creek flows through the valley, joining its waters with the Kinderhook. Quechee Lake is near at hand, where Miss Warner was born, author of "Queechee" and the "Wide Wide World."

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Welcome ye pleasant dales and hills, Where dream-like passed my early days! Ye cliffs and glens and laughing rills That sing unconscious hymns of praise!

_Wallace Bruce._

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=Lindenwald=, a solid and substantial residence, home of President Martin Van Buren, where he died in 1862, is two miles from the pleasant village of Kinderhook. Columbia County just missed the proud distinction of rearing two presidents, as Samuel J. Tilden was born in the town of Lebanon. Elisha Williams, John Van Buren and many others have given lustre to her legal annals.

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Ever fonder, ever dearer Seems our youth that hastened by, And we love to live in memory When our fond hopes fade and die.

_Wallace Bruce._

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=Hudson to Albany.=

=Athens.=--Directly opposite Hudson, and connected with it by ferry, is the classically named village of Athens. An old Mahican settlement known as Potick was located a little back from the river. We are now in the midst of the great

="Ice Industry,"= which reaches from below Staatsburgh to Castleton and Albany, well described by John Burroughs in his article on the Hudson: "No man sows, yet many men reap a harvest from the Hudson. Not the least important is the ice harvest, which is eagerly looked for, and counted upon by hundreds, yes, thousands of laboring men along its course. Ice or no ice sometimes means bread or no bread to scores of families, and it means added or diminished comforts to many more. It is a crop that takes two or three weeks of rugged winter weather to grow, and, if the water is very roily or brackish, even longer. It is seldom worked till it presents seven or eight inches of clear water ice. Men go out from time to time and examine it, as the farmer goes out and examines his grain or grass, to see when it will do to cut. If there comes a deep fall of snow the ice is 'pricked' so as to let the water up through and form snow ice. A band of fifteen or twenty men, about a yard apart, each armed with a chisel-bar, and marching in line, puncture the ice at each step, with a single sharp thrust. To and fro they go, leaving a belt behind them that presently becomes saturated with water. But ice, to be of first quality, must grow from beneath, not from above. It is a crop quite as uncertain as any other. A good yield every two or three years, as they say of wheat out west, is about all that can be counted upon. When there is an abundant harvest, after the ice houses are filled, they stack great quantities of it, as the farmer stacks his surplus hay. Such a fruitful winter was that of '74-5, when the ice formed twenty inches thick. The stacks are given only a temporary covering of boards, and are the first ice removed in the season. The cutting and gathering of the ice enlivens these broad, white, desolate fields amazingly. My house happens to stand where I look down upon the busy scene, as from a hill-top upon a river meadow in haying time, only here figures stand out much more sharply than they do from a summer meadow. There is the broad, straight, blue-black canal emerging into view, and running nearly across the river; this is the highway that lays open the farm. On either side lie the fields, or ice meadows, each marked out by cedar or hemlock boughs. The farther one is cut first, and when cleared, shows a large, long, black parallelogram in the midst of the plain of snow. Then the next one is cut, leaving a strip or tongue of ice between the two for the horses to move and turn upon. Sometimes nearly two hundred men and boys, with numerous horses, are at work at once, marking, plowing, planing, scraping, sawing, hauling, chiseling; some floating down the pond on great square islands towed by a horse, or their fellow workmen; others distributed along the canal, bending to their ice-hooks; others upon the bridges separating the blocks with their chisel bars; others feeding the elevators; while knots and straggling lines of idlers here and there look on in cold discontent, unable to get a job. The best crop of ice is an early crop. Late in the season or after January, the ice is apt to get 'sun-struck,' when it becomes 'shaky,' like a piece of poor timber. The sun, when he sets about destroying the ice, does not simply melt it from the surface--that were a slow process; but he sends his shafts into it and separates it into spikes and needles--in short, makes kindling-wood of it, so as to consume it the quicker. One of the prettiest sights about the ice harvesting is the elevator in operation. When all works well, there is an unbroken procession of the great crystal blocks slowly ascending this incline. They go up in couples, arm in arm, as it were, like friends up a stairway, glowing and changing in the sun, and recalling the precious stones that adorned the walls of the celestial city. When they reach the platform where they leave the elevator, they seem to step off like things of life and volition; they are still in pairs and separate only as they enter upon the 'runs.' But here they have an ordeal to pass through, for they are subjected to a rapid inspection and the black sheep are separated from the flock; every square with a trace of sediment or earth-stain in it, whose texture is not perfect and unclouded crystal, is rejected and sent hurling down into the abyss; a man with a sharp eye in his head and a sharp ice-hook in his hand picks out the impure and fragmentary ones as they come along and sends them quickly overboard. Those that pass the examination glide into the building along the gentle incline, and are switched off here and there upon branch runs, and distributed to all parts of the immense interior."

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But when in the forest bare and old The blast of December calls, He builds in the starlight clear and cold A palace of ice where his torrent falls.

_William Cullen Bryant._

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Where the frost trees shoot with leaf and spray And frost gems scatter a silver ray.

_William Cullen Bryant._

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How fair the thronging pictures run, What joy the vision fills-- The star-glow and the setting sun Amid the northern hills.

_Benjamin F. Leggett._

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Passing west of the Hudson Flats we see North Bay, crossed by the _New York Central Railroad_. Kinderhook Creek meets the river about three miles north of Hudson, directly above which is Stockport Station for Columbiaville. Four Mile Light-house is now seen on the opposite bank. Nutten Hook, or Coxsackie Station, is four miles above Stockport. Opposite this point, and connected by a ferry, is the village of--

=Coxsackie= (name derived from Kaak-aki, or place of wild geese, "aki" in Indian signifies place and it is singular to find the Indian word "Kaak" so near to the English "cackle"). Two miles north Stuyvesant Landing is seen on the east bank, the nearest station on the _New York Central & Hudson River Railroad_, by carriage, to Valatie and Kinderhook. The name Kinderhook is said to have had its origin from a point on the Hudson prolific in children; as the children were always out of doors to see the passing craft, it was known as Kinderhook, or "children's point." Passing Bronk's Island, due west of which empties Coxsackie Creek, we see Stuyvesant Light-house on our right, and approach New Baltimore, a pleasant village on the west bank, with sloop and barge industry. About a mile above the landing is the meeting point of four counties: Greene and Albany on the west, Columbia and Rensselaer on the east. Beeren Island, connected with Coeyman's Landing by small steamer, now a picnic resort, lies near the west bank, where it will be remembered the first white child was born on the Hudson. Here was the Castle of Rensselaertein, before which Antony Van Corlear read again and again the proclamation of Peter Stuyvesant, and from which he returned with a diplomatic reply, forming one of the most humorous chapters in Irving's "Knickerbocker." Threading our way through low-lying islands and river flats, and "slowing down" occasionally on meeting canal boats or other river craft, we pass Coeyman's on our left and Lower Schodack Island on our right, due east of which is the station of Schodack Landing. The writer of this handbook remembers distinctly a winter's evening walk from Schodack Landing, crossing the frozen Hudson and snow-covered island on an ill-defined trail. He was on his way to deliver his first lecture, February, 1868, and his subject was "The Legends and Poetry of the Hudson." Since that time he has written and re-written many guides to the river, so that the present handbook is not a thing of yesterday. The next morning, on his return to Schodack, he had for his companion a young man from twenty or thirty miles inland, who had never seen a train of cars except in the distance. On reaching the railway, one of the New York expresses swept by, and as he caught the motion of the bell cord he turned and said: "Do they drive it with that little string?" Lower Schodack Island, Mills Plaat (also an island) and Upper Schodack Island reach almost to--

=Castleton=, a pleasant village on the eastern bank, with main street lying close to the river. The cliffs, a few miles to the north, were known to the Indians as Scoti-ack, or place of the ever-burning council-fire, which gave the name of Schodack to the township, where King Aepgin, on the 8th of April, 1680, sold to Van Rensselaer "all that tract of country on the west side of the Hudson, extending from Beeren Island up to Smack's Island, and in breadth two days' journey."

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No spot in all the world where poetry and romance are so closely blended with the heroic in history as along the banks of our Hudson.

_Wallace Bruce._

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THE MAHICAN TRIBE originally occupied all the east bank of the Hudson north of Roeliffe Jansen's Kill, near Germantown, to the head waters of the Hudson; and on the west bank, from Cohoes to Catskill. The town of Schodack was central, and a signal displayed from the hills near Castleton could be seen for thirty miles in every direction. After the Mahicans left the Hudson, they went to Westenhook, or Housatonic, to the hills south of Stockbridge; and then, on invitation of the Oneidas, removed to Oneida County, in 1785, where they lived until 1821, when, with other Indians of New York, they purchased a tract of land near Fox River, Minnesota.

Domestic clans or families of the Mahicans lingered around their ancient seats for some years after the close of the Revolution, but of them, one after another, it is written, "They disappeared in the night." In the language of Tamerund at the death of Uncas, "The pale-faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red men has not yet come again. My day has been too long. In the morning I saw the sons of Unami happy and strong; and yet before the night has come, have I lived to see the last warrior of the race of the Mahicans."

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Autumn had given uniformity of coloring to the woods. It varied now between copper and gold, and shone like an infinitely rich golden embroidery on the Indian veil of mist which rested upon the heights along the Hudson.

_Harriet Martineau._

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According to Ruttenber, the names and location of the Indian tribes were not ascertained with clearness by the early Dutch settlers, but through documents, treaties and information, subsequently obtained, it is now settled that the Mahicans held possession "under sub-tribal organizations" of the east bank of the river from an undefined point north of Albany to the sea, including Long Island; that their dominion extended east to the Connecticut, where they joined kindred tribes; that on the west bank of the Hudson they ran down as far as Catskill, and west to Schenectady; that they were met on the west by the territory of the Mohawks, and on the south by tribes of the Lenni Lenapes or Delawares, whose territory extended thence to the sea, and west to and beyond the Delaware River. The Mahicans had a castle at Catskill and at Cohoes Falls. The western side of the Hudson, above Cohoes, belonged to the Mohawks, a branch of the Iroquois. Therefore, as early as 1630, three great nations were represented on the Hudson--

=The Mahicans, the Delawares and the Iroquois.= The early French missionaries refer to the "nine nations of Manhinyans, gathered between Manhattan and the environs of Quebec." These several nations have never been accurately designated, although certain general divisions appear under the titles of Mohegan, Wappinger, Sequins, etc. "The government of the Mahicans was a democracy. The office was hereditary by the lineage of the wife; that is, the selection of a successor on the death of the chief, was confined to the female branch of the family." According to Ruttenber, the precise relation between the Mahicans of the Hudson and the Mohegans under Uncas, the Pequot chief, is not known. In a foot-note to this statement, he says: "The identity of name between the Mahicans and Mohegans, induces the belief that all these tribes belonged to the same stock,--although they differed in dialect, in territory, and in their alliances." The two words, therefore, must not be confounded.

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Round about the Indian village Spread the meadows and the cornfields, Stood the groves of singing pine trees, And beyond them stood the forest,

_Henry W. Longfellow._

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It is also pleasant to remember that the Mahicans as a tribe were true and faithful to us during the war of the Revolution, and when the six nations met in council at Oswego, at the request of Guy Johnson and other officers of the British army, "to eat the flesh and drink the blood of a Bostonian," Hendrick, the Mahican, made the pledge for his tribe at Albany, almost in the eloquent words of Ruth to Naomi, "Thy people shall be our people, and whither thou goest we will be at your side."

=The Mourdener's Kill=, with its sad story of a girl tied by Indians to a horse and dragged through the valley, flows into the Hudson above Castleton. Two miles above this near the steamer channel will be seen Staats Island on the east, with an old stone house, said to be next in antiquity to the old Van Rensselaer House, opposite Albany. It is also a fact that this property passed directly to the ancestors of the present family, the only property in this vicinity never owned by the lord of the manor. Opposite the old stone house, the point on the west bank is known as Parda Hook, where it is said a horse was once drowned in a horse-race on the ice, and hence the name Parda, for the old Hollanders along the Hudson seemed to have had a musical ear, and delighted in accumulating syllables. (The word pard is used in Spenser for spotted horse, and still survives in the word leopard.)

The Castleton Bar or "overslaugh," as it was known by the river pilots, impeded for years navigation in low water. Commodore Van Santvoord and other prominent citizens brought the subject before the State legislature, and work was commenced in 1863. In 1868 the United States Government very properly (as their jurisdiction extends over tide-water), assumed the completing of the dykes, which now stretch for miles along the banks and islands of the upper Hudson. Here and there along our route between Coxsackie and Albany will be seen great dredges deepening and widening the river channel. The plan provides for a system of longitudinal dykes to confine the current sufficiently to allow the ebb and flow of the tidal-current to keep the channel clear. These dykes are to be gradually brought nearer together from New Baltimore toward Troy, so as to assist the entrance of the flood-current and increase its height.

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Where Hudson winds his silver way And murmurs at the tardy stay, Impatient at delay.

_William Crow._

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The engineers report that the greater part of the material carried in suspension in the Hudson river above Albany is believed to come from the Mohawk river, and its tributary the Schoharie river, while the sands and gravel that form the heavy and obstinate bars near Albany and chiefly between Albany and Troy, come from the upper Hudson.

The discharge of the Hudson between Troy and Albany at its lowest stage may be taken at about 3,000 cubic feet per second. The river supply, therefore, during that stage is inadequate in the upper part of the river for navigation, independent of tidal flow.

The greatest number of bars is between Albany and Troy, where the channel is narrow, and at least six obstructing bars, composed of fine and coarse gravel and coarse and fine sand, are in existence. In many places between Albany and Troy the navigable depth is reduced to 7½ feet by the presence of these bars.

From Albany to New Baltimore the depths are variable, the prevailing depth being 10 feet and over, with pools of greater depth separated by long cross-over bars, over which the greatest depth does not exceed 9 or 10 feet. Passing many delightful homes on the west bank and the mouth of the Norman's Kill (Indian name Ta-wa-sentha, place of many dead) and the Convent of the Sacred Heart, we see Dow's Point on the east and above this the--

=Van Rensselaer Place=, with its port holes on either side of the door facing the river, showing that it was built in troublesome times. It is the oldest of the Patroon manor houses, built in 1640 or thereabouts. It has been said that the adaptation of the old tune now known as "Yankee Doodle" was made near the well in the grounds of the Van Rensselaer Place by Dr. Richard Shuckberg, who was connected with the British army when the Colonial troops from New England marched into camp at Albany to join the British regulars on their way to fight the French. The tune was known in New England before the Revolution as "Lydia Fisher's Jig," a name derived from a famous lady who lived in the reign of Charles II, and which has been perpetuated in the following rhyme:

Lucy Locket lost her pocket, Lydia Fisher found it; Not a bit of money in it, Only binding 'round it.

The appearance of the troops called down the derision of the British officers, the hit of the doctor became known throughout the army, and the song was used as a method of showing contempt for the Colonials until after Lexington and Concord.

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When life is old And many a scene forgot the heart will hold Its memory of this.

_Fitz-Greene Halleck._

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=Rensselaer=, on the east bank of the river, was incorporated in 1896 by the union of Greenbush and East Albany. The old name of Greenbush, which still survives in East Greenbush, four miles distant, was given to it by the old Dutch settlers, and it was probably a "green-bushed" place in early days. Now pleasant residences and villas look out upon the river from the near bank and distant hillsides. Two railroad bridges and a carriage bridge cross the Hudson at this point. During the French war in 1775, Greenbush was a military rendezvous, and in 1812 the United States Government established extensive barracks, whence troops were forwarded to Canada.

=Albany=, 144 miles from New York. (_New York Central & Hudson River Railroad_, _Boston & Albany_, _West Shore_, _Delaware and Hudson_, the _Hudson River Day Line_ and _People's Line_.) Its site was called by the Indians Shaunaugh-ta-da (Schenectady), or the Pine Plains. It was next known by the early Dutch settlers as "Beverwyck," "William Stadt," and "New Orange." The seat of the State Government was transferred from New York to Albany in 1798. In 1714, when 100 years old, it had a population of about 3,000, one-sixth of whom were slaves. In 1786 it increased to about 10,000. In 1676, the city comprised within the limits of Pearl, Beaver and Steuben streets, was surrounded by wooden walls with six gates. They were 13 feet high, made of timber a foot square. It is said that a portion of these walls were remaining in 1812. The first railroad in the State and the second in the United States was opened from Albany to Schenectady in 1831. The pictures of these old coaches are very amusing, and the rate of speed was only a slight improvement on a well-organized stage line. From an old book in the State Library we condense the following description, presenting quite a contrast to the city of to-day: "Albany lay stretched along the banks of the Hudson, on one very wide and long street, parallel to the Hudson. The space between the street and the river bank was occupied by gardens. A small but steep hill rose above the centre of the town, on which stood a fort. The wide street leading to the fort (now State street) had a Market-Place, Guard-House, Town Hall, and an English and Dutch Church, in the centre."

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I wandered afar from the land of my birth, I saw the old rivers renowned upon earth, But fancy still painted that wide-flowing stream With the many-hued pencil of infancy's dream.

_Oliver Wendell Holmes._

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Tourists and others will be amply repaid in visiting the new Capitol building, at the head of State Street. It is open from nine in the morning until six in the evening. It is said to be larger than the Capitol at Washington, and cost more than any other structure on the American continent. The staircases, the wide corridors, the Senate chamber, the Assembly chamber, and the Court of Appeals room, attest the wealth and greatness of the Empire State. The visitor up State Street will note the beautiful and commanding spire of "St. Paul." The Cathedral is also a grand structure. The population of Albany is now 100,000, and its growth is due to three causes: First, the Capitol was removed from New York to Albany in 1798. Then followed two great enterprises, ridiculed at the time by every one as the _Fulton Folly and Clinton's Ditch_--in other words, steam navigation, 1807, and the Erie Canal, 1825. Its name was given in honor of the Duke of Albany, although it is still claimed by some of the oldest inhabitants that, in the golden age of those far-off times, when the good old burghers used to ask the welfare of their neighbors, the answer was "All bonnie," and hence the name of the hill-crowned city.

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