cent. The craft was peculiar. In the air | same motionless banks, stretching away before us. At sunrise we looked out upon the same picture, and at noon our voyage was ended at St. Vincent. she was quite majestic, with her two stories and double smoke-stacks. But under water she was only a flat-boat with a draught of two feet. A huge "kick-be hind" wheel extended completely across the stern, and made the boat shake as if with the palsy when we turned out from the bank and headed up stream. The river flowed with a still, muddy current, between high banks covered with bushes and small timber. Here and there we saw a clearing and some tumble-down cabins, the homes of the half-breeds. They are a strange race, in whose veins the blood of England, Scotland, and France is mingled with that of the Indian tribes. They are social, fond of excitement, gifted with great physical strength and endurance, but without the moral qualities of patience, industry, and order. In olden times they were the canoe-men and sledgedrivers of the Hudson Bay Company. We saw their clumsy dug-outs moored along the river-banks, and the numerous set lines indicated that they preferred the easiest possible way of fishing. Flocks of wild-duck and plover flew before us as we steamed slowly against the current, passing around sharp curves in the river, and almost doubling on our course. Kingfishers perched motionless on the overhanging branches, or swept swiftly past with their sharp chir-r-r-ing cry. The boat struck on many a stone and sandbar; but with a convulsive shiver that made all the wood-work crack, and a tremendous splashing of the great wheel, she scraped safely over. Then the dusk gathered on the stream and on the brown woods, and the light faded in the clear sky, until the moon came swimming over the tree-tops, and all was silver bright as we floated on, ever rounding new points only to see the same curve of water, the The chronicle of our Red River trip. would be incomplete if it lacked the record of our stay at the town of Hallock-atown small in population, large in hopes, and abundant in prairie-chickens. How shall I describe the primitive state of society in that infant city? how do justice to the excellence of the shooting, and more particularly to the great excitement of the impromptu dog-fight, especially at that moment when, in a peaceable desire to separate the contestants, I kicked the wrong dog? But at last all came to an end, and we were riding homeward for the last time across the prairie. The vast plain was golden brown in the light of the autumn sun. Here and there a great square of black earth was exposed in a new "breaking." Far away to the west we could see a faint blue line of timber. On the nearer woods that fringed the banks of Two Rivers the hues of the declining year were rich and sombre. Flocks of prairie-chickens went whirling away before us, with their clucking note that sounds like derisive laughter. High up in the air a long flock of wild-geese was moving swiftly across the sky. hung the mellow haze of Indian summer. There was a strange soft beauty in the scene, like that which rests upon the sea in a golden calm. And as the haze grew thicker, the sun sank lower and lower, like a ball of molten iron slowly cooling, until at last it was lost in the gathering gloom. Then the yellow stars came out with tremulous light. The smell of fallen leaves was in the air. And on the far horizon, rising and falling, sinking and flaring up again, burned a red line of prairie fires. Over all FOUR SALISBURY HOUSE, LEEDS, NEW YORK. OLD CATSKILL. OUR miles from the village of Catskill, upon the right bank of the river of that name, lies an alluvial plain of several hundred acres. This plain is raised a few feet above the usual level of the water, by which, however, it is covered, and also enriched, in times of flood. A continuous hillock like a terrace encompasses this fertile tract. Beyond the hillock are the Potick Mountains, and the precipitous range of Hamilton shales, which the Dutch called the Hoogeberg. This region-the plain, hillock, and adjacent. land-a hundred years ago went by the name of Catskill, the site of the village of that name upon the Hudson being known as T' Strand, or The Landing. In the early days of the Dutch supremacy the plain and the terrace around the plain were the dwelling-place of a tribe of about three hundred Indians. They were of Algonkin lineage, but whether their totem, or national symbol, was the wolf of the Delawares, or the wolf of the Mohicans, is a question which has been discussed by antiquarians, but which has not been determined. In later times, however, toward the close of the seventeenth century, the tribe became a mixed race of Mohicans, Delawares, Pemacooks, refugees from Connecticut, and Nanticokes, refugees from the Eastern Shore of Mary land. Their sachem was Mahak-Neminaw, whose name often occurs in the ancient records of the province. He was the type of his race. He was lazy and shiftless, and earned a precarious living by hunting and trapping. He liked to attend before the Council of the province at Albany, where he and his fellowsachem, Keesje Wey, could talk about the great Father across the water, and about keeping the chain of friendship bright, and receive in return long strings of wampum, woollen shirts, and gunpowder. He was fond of beer, when he could not get brandy, and steadfastly resisted every attempt which was made to civilize and to convert him. The last one hears of this noble savage is in 1682, when his brethren sold the remaining parcel-an estate of nearly four thousand acres-of his and their domain upon the Catskill. It is provided in the deed of purchase that Mahak-Neminaw, sachem of Catskill, not being present at the transfer, shall have, so soon as he comes home, two pieces of duffels and six cans of rum. The site of old Catskill was well chosen. Upon the terrace, out of the reach of the highest floods of the river, were the wigwams, the fortress, and the buryingground of the Indians. The forests abounded with game. The river and its beautiful tributaries were full of fish. A portion of the lowlands, cleared by the slow process of burning down the trees, | beyond the Mohawk, and encamp in a was tilled by the women with easy labor, grove of chestnut-trees at the northern and brought forth an abundant store of edge of the plain. They asserted that maize, beans, and pumpkins. If during their forefathers once owned the lowthe long winter the native occupants of land near by. this tract sometimes went hungry to the point of starvation, it was due to their child-like want of forethought and to their shiftless improvidence. The purchasers of the plain, with the surrounding territory for four miles in every direction, were Marten Gerritsen Van Bergen, komissarie, justice of the peace, and ruling elder in the Dutch church at Albany, and Silvester Salisbury, captain in the British army, and commander of his Majesty's forces. On the 8th of July, Neither Salisbury nor Van Bergen lived upon their estate at Catskill. But their sons, when they had grown up, left Albany, and took up their residence upon their patrimony. It was a transfer which brought to them serious loss of social and religious opportunities. They banished themselves in a great measure from the society of the Rensselaers, the Livingstons, the Van Schaicks, and the Ten Broecks; they gave up the ministry of Domine Schaets; they put themselves out 1678, the bargain was consummated with unusual formality, at the Stadt Huis at Albany, before Robert Livingston, secretary of the Council, and in the presence of the magistrates of the jurisdiction, and of a motley group of Catskill and Mohican Indians. Mahak-Neminaw and his six head-men, as representatives of the whole tribe, executed with rude and hieroglyphic signatures a deed of their great domain, and gave formal possession to the buyers. The sellers no longer had a permanent dwelling-place. Whither they went, or what their fate was, is no longer known. They, their chief alone excepted, are not again spoken of in any record of the province. The tradition, however, remains that in the time of our grandfathers a little band of Indians were wont to come every summer from their home of the line of appointment as magistrates of the city. Their new home was in a wilderness. The house which Francis Salisbury built for himself upon his share of the domain is still standing, as sound in foundation, walls, and roof beams as on the day, one hundred and seventy-three years ago, when it was finished. It was once the largest and most costly house between Newburgh and Albany. It is two stories high, about fifty feet wide, and about thirty-five feet deep. Its massive walls are of sandstone, which was quarried from ledges in the neighborhood, and are pierced on either story with loop-holes, narrow on the outside and wider on the inside-a lively memento of days long since gone by, when the yeomen of the upper valley of the Hudson lived in terror of the Iroquois. Along the southern front of this building, under the eaves, may still be seen the initials of the builder and the date of erection.-F. S., 1705. The house within has undergone but little alteration. Beams of yellow pine eighteen inches square, supporting the ceilings, project into the rooms of the first story. The windows are filled with small panes of old glass, of which some have become prismatic, like the bottles from a Cyprian tomb. The fire-places, though now disused, are huge caverns eight feet broad and three feet deep. The sides of these chimneys were once covered with square tiles of coarse Delft earthenware. These have fortunately been preserved, and a few months ago I had the pleasure of looking them over. Upon them are rudely painted, in blue, scenes taken from the Scriptures-the suicide of Judas, Pilate's washing of his hands, the cock that crew thrice. I failed to find among the collection a duplicate of the delightful tile which Mistress Maria Schuneman Van Vechten once showed me, whereon was drawn Lazarus coming out of his tomb. The restored and overjoyed man is waving over his head a small Dutch flag. Upon the walls of the southeastern room, during Francis Salisbury's life, hung the precious heirlooms which his father, Silvester, brought with him from England-the coat of arms of the Welsh Salisburys, knights of Llewenny; a picture concerning which the tradition is that it is a portrait of Anne Boleyn by Holbein; two rapiers mounted in silver, of dainty workmanship, and stamped, one with the date 1544, the other with the date 1616. The house which Gerritsen Van Bergen built for himself in 1729 is also standing. But while it has been made inhabitable by the alterations it has undergone, its picturesqueness has been greatly marred. The house is of brick-no other ancient house in the town of Catskill is of this material-and was of one story, with a roof of steep pitch covered with large concave tiles of red earthenware. The story goes that the bricks and roof tiles were imported from Holland; but as kilns for both bricks and tiles were built in Albany so early as 1657, the tradition is at least doubtful. In 1732, twelve or fourteen yeomen, with their families and dependents-sixty to eighty persons all told-had settled upon Domine Weiss was a native of one of the Palatinates, and was trained in the great theological school of the University of Heidelberg. In 1727 he was sent to Philadelphia, apparently as a sort of foreign missionary to the heathen; removed thence to Huntersfield, on the Schoharie, and from Huntersfield came to Catskill. The testimonials he received from Heidelberg and from his flock in Philadelphia attest his orthodoxy and zeal-testimonials which he copied with proper pride and in bad handwriting into the Doep Boek, or Book of Baptisms, of the Catskill these lands and in the region south of the The inhabitants of Coxsackie were of like mind, and joined their neighbors of Catskill in inviting George Michael Weiss to become their minister. The call bears the date of the 8th of February, 1732. The united congregations agreed to pay Weiss a yearly salary of fifty pounds, to provide for him a house, garden, and fire-wood, and to give him a horse, saddle, and bridle. He agreed to preach twice on every Sunday in Dutch-thirty days in Catskill, and twenty-two days in Coxsackie-to administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and to instruct the children in the Heidelberg Catechism. A portion of his parishioners, however, being German, he also engaged to give their children religious instruction in their mother-tongue. It is especially remarked of him that he could speak Latin with great fluency-more correctly, it is to be hoped, than he could write Dutch. Domine Weiss's ministrations lasted four years, when he went back to Philadelphia. From 1736 until August, 1753, the church at Catskill remained without a pastor. Then followed the long and faithful life-service of Domine Johannes Schuneman.. The Schunemans were Germans, and were among the Palatines whom Queen Anne, between the years 1708 and 1711, had sent to New York. The Lower Palatinate had been cruelly ravaged by the French. In the sore distress of the poor inhabitants, they petitioned Queen Anne to transport them to America. Several hundreds were accordingly brought over in government transports. It was the first German immigration into New York of importance. The new-comers were peasants, but they were a thrifty and industrious people. They were established at East Camp, on the Hudson, on a tract of six thousand acres which the province bought from Robert Livingston, and at West Camp, directly opposite, on unap free passage to this country, but they were also fed and clothed and furnished with tools for a year. It was the intention of the government to employ them in raising hemp, and in making tar, pitch, and resin, and in getting out masts of pine for the royal navy. But the enterprise proved a failure. Many of the colonists migrated to the valley of the Schoharie; others bought the land upon which they had been placed. Seventeen days after the call had been given, on the 25th of February, 1732, the church at Catskill was organized by the election of a consistory and by the instal-propriated lands. They not only had a lation of the pastor. The next year the church edifice was built, and was duly consecrated. Domine Petrus Van Driessen, of Albany, preached in the morning from that glowing verse in the Twentyseventh Psalm in which David sings of his desire to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple. The new pastor preached in the afternoon, but from what text will never be known. When he had made the entry of the services of dedication in the church book, he dropped a blot of ink upon the record of chapter and verse, then smeared the blot with his thumb, and obliterated the figures forever. Among these German refugees were the Fieros, Webers, Plancks, Dietrichs, Newkirks, and Schmidts, whose sons afterward became well-to-do yeomen in the town |