Part 20 (1/2)

=Rhinecliff=, 90 miles from New York. The village of Rhinebeck, two miles east of the landing, is not seen from the river. It was named, as some contend, by combining two words--Beekman and Rhine. Others say that the word beck means cliff, and the town was so named from the resemblance of the cliffs to those of the Rhine. There are many delightful drives in and about Rhinebeck, ”Ellerslie” being only about eight minutes by carriage from the landing.

_The Philadelphia & Reading Rhinebeck Branch_ meets the Hudson at Rhinecliff, and makes a pleasant and convenient tourist or business route between the Hudson and the Connecticut. It pa.s.ses through a delightful country and thriving rural villages. Some of the views along the Roeliffe Jansen's Kill are unrivaled in quiet beauty. The railroad pa.s.ses through Rhinebeck, Red Hook, Spring Lake, Ellerslie, Jackson Corners, Mount Ross, Gallatinville, Ancram, Copake, Boston Corners, and Mount Riga to State Line Junction, and gives a person a good idea of the counties of Dutchess and Columbia. At Boston Corners connection is made with the _Harlem Railroad_.

Upon thy tessellated surface lie The wave-gla.s.sed splendors of the sunset sky!

_Knickerbocker Magazine._

From State Line Junction it pa.s.ses through Ore Hill, Lakeville with its beautiful lake (an evening view of which is still hung in our memory gallery of sunset sketches), Salisbury, Chapinville, and Twin Lakes to Canaan, where the line crosses the _Housatonic Railroad._ This route, therefore, is the easiest and pleasantest for Housatonic visitors _en route_ to the Catskills. From Canaan the road rises by easy grade to the summit, at an elevation of 1,400 feet, pa.s.sing through the village of Norfolk, with its picturesque New England church crowning the village hill, and thence to Simsbury and Hartford.

=The City of Kingston.=--Rondout and Kingston gradually grew together until the bans were performed in 1878, and a ”bow-knot” tied at the top of the hill in the shape of a city hall, making them one corporation.

The name Rondout had its derivation from a redoubt that was built on the banks of the creek. The creek took the name of Redoubt Kill, afterward Rundoubt, and at last Rondout. Kingston was once called Esopus. (The Indian name for the spot where the city now stands was At-kar-karton, the great plot or meadow on which they raised corn or beans.)

Kingston and Rondout were both settled in 1614, and old Kingston, known by the Dutch as Wiltwyck, was thrice destroyed by the Indians before the Revolution. In 1777 the State legislature met here and formed a const.i.tution. In the fall of the same year, after the capture of Fort Montgomery and Fort Clinton by the British, Vaughan landed at Rondout, marched to Kingston, and burned the town. While Kingston was burning, the inhabitants fled to Hurley, where a small force of Americans hung a messenger who was caught carrying dispatches from Clinton to Burgoyne.

What ample bays and branching streams, What curves abrupt for glad surprise, And how supreme the artist is Who paints it all for loving eyes.

_Henry Abbey._

Rondout is the termination of the Delaware and Hudson Ca.n.a.l (whence ca.n.a.l boats of coal find their way from the Pennsylvania Mountains to tidewater), also of the _Ulster and Delaware Railroad_, by which people find their way from tidewater to the Catskill Mountains, which have greeted the eye of the tourist for many miles down the Hudson.

Originally all of the country-side in this vicinity was known as Esopus, supposed to be derived, according to Ruttenber, from the Indian word ”seepus,” a river. A ”sopus Indian” was a Lowlander, and the name is intimately connected with a long reach of territory from Esopus Village, near West Park, to the mouth of the Esopus at Saugerties. In 1675 the mouth of the Rondout Creek was chosen by the New Netherland Company as one of the three fortified trading ports on the Hudson; a stockade was built under the guidance of General Stuyvesant in 1661 inclosing the site of old Kingston; a charter was granted in 1658 under the name of Wiltwyck, but changed in 1679 to Kingston. Few cities are so well off for old-time houses that span the century, and there is no congregation probably in the United States that has wors.h.i.+pped so many consecutive years in the same spot as the Dutch Reformed people of Kingston. Five buildings have succeeded the log church of 240 years ago. Dr. Van Slyke, in a recent welcome, said: ”This church, which opens her doors to you, claims a distinction which does not belong even to the Collegiate Dutch Churches of Manhattan Island, and, by a peculiar history, stands identified more closely with Holland than any other of the early churches of this country.

When every other church of our communion had for a long time been a.s.sociated with an American Synod, this church retained its relations to the Cla.s.sis of Amsterdam, and, after a period of independency and isolation, it finally allied itself with its American sisterhood as late as the year 1808. We still have three or four members whose life began before that date.”

Yet there are those who lie beside thy bed For whom thou once didst rear the bowers that screen Thy margin, and didst water the green fields; And now there is no night so still that they Can hear thy lapse.

_William Cullen Bryant._

Dominie Blom was the first preacher in Kingston. The church where he preached and the congregation that gathered to hear him have been tenderly referred to by the Rev. Dr. Belcher:

”They've journeyed on from touch and tone; No more their ears shall hear The war-whoop wild, or sad death moan, Or words of fervid prayer; But the deeds they did and plans they planned, And paths of blood they trod, Have blessed and brightened all this land And hallowed it for G.o.d.”

=The Senate House=, built in 1676 by Wessel Ten Broeck, who would seem by his name to have stepped bodily out of a chapter of Knickerbocker, was ”burned” but not ”down,” for its walls stood firm. It was afterwards repaired, and sheltered many dwellers, among others, General Armstrong, secretary of war under President Madison. The Provincial Convention met in the court house at Kingston in 1777 and the Const.i.tution was formally announced April 22d of that year. The first court was held here September 9th and the first legislature September 10th. Adjourning October 7th, they convened again August 18th, 1779, and in 1780, from April 22d to July 2d, also for two months beginning January 27, 1783.

It was in the yard in front of the court house that the Const.i.tution of the State was proclaimed by Robert Berrian, the secretary of the Const.i.tutional Convention, and it was there that George Clinton, the first Governor of the State, was inaugurated and took the oath of office. It was in the court house that John Jay, chief justice, delivered his memorable charge to the grand jury in September, 1777, and at the opening said: ”Gentlemen, it affords me very sensible pleasure to congratulate you on the dawn of that free, mild, and equal government which now begins to rise and break from amidst the clouds of anarchy, confusion and licentiousness, which the arbitrary and violent domination of the King of Great Britain has spread, in greater or less degree, throughout this and other American states. And it gives me particular satisfaction to remark that the first fruits of our excellent Const.i.tution appear in a part of this State whose inhabitants have distinguished themselves by having unanimously endeavored to deserve them.” The court house bell was originally imported from Holland.

Pinched by famine and menaced by foe In the cruel winters of long ago, They worked and prayed and for freedom wrought, Freedom of speech and freedom of thought.