a new aqueduct, commenced in 1884 and finished in 1890, was constructed to the east of the earlier one. This has a capacity three times as great as the first, and taps the numerous lakes of a water- shed embracing between three and four hundred square miles. Above the bay into which the Croton enters is the old house of the Van Cortlandts, for we have now passed from the domain of Philipse to that of his neighbour and brother-in-law. From a paper pub- lished by Benson J. Lossing in Harper's Monthly, about ten years after his Hudson appeared in book form, we quote the following description of the Van Cortlandt manor-house : Up the narrowing bay at the east, below Croton Point and beyond the Hne of the Hudson River Railroad, may be seen, near its head, a quaint old mansion. The water, once deep, now rapidly changing into salt meadow land, is Croton Bay, in which Henry Hudson anchored his little exploring vessel. The mansion is the Van Cortlandts' manor- house, one of the most ancient and interesting, in its association of its class upon the Hudson. Recent [1876] discoveries, while repairing it, of loopholes for musketry near the floor of the dining- room clearly show that it originally composed a fort, which was probably built by Governor Dongan. John Van Cortlandt en- larged it to its present dimensions in the early years of Queen Anne's reign. Over the main entrance to the manor-house hangs the strong bow of Croton, the Sachem whose name has been given to the Kitchawan River and Bay, and within the mansion are interest- Digitized by Microsoft® Around Haverstraw Bay 295 ing mementoes of the country from which and the family from whom the Van Cortlandts came, — the Dukes of Courland, in Russia. The Van Cortlandt house has a ghost that wanders at times through the rooms with a sound of rustling silks, and another that treads heavily through the halls. But even earlier than the building of the manor- house, Chief Croton, the Sachem who ruled the point and neighbourhood of the stream that bears his name, haunted the spot with his warriors. An Indian fort had been built where the manor-house afterwards stood, and there the chief made his last stand against the fierce enemies that swept down on one of their forays from the north. Encompassed and overwhelmed, amid showers of arrows and surrounded by the smoke and flames of his burning palisades, he fought with desperate valour, as one by one his companions fell; till, at length, he stood alone and wounded; then, as his foes rushed forward, he fell headlong into the blaz- ing fire. But again and again, it is said, he has ap- peared in great crises, urging men to courageous deeds. The Kitchawans, or Kitchawonks, had an important village on the neck connecting the point with the main- land. The oyster beds in the vicinity were especially valued by them, and were, no doubt, the object of frequent disputes. The Indian name of the point was Senasqua. An early settler on the point was one Teller, and the land became known to rivermen as Digitized by Microsoft® 296 The Hudson River Teller's ; but after a while this man died, and his wife, Sarah, surviving him by some years, the neighbours, with easy formality, dubbed it Sarah's Point. Then the Cortlandt name was attached to it ; and after that. Doctor Underbill, having built his handsome Italian villa and established his famous grapery there, stood god-father to the locality. Somewhere in the course « of its history the name of old Chief Croton was attached to it, and is gradually superseding all the others. From the Underbill vineyards have gone out unnumbered thousands of bottles of sweet Catawba wine. ^ At the old ferry-house at Croton, a party of New York yeomen, under the command of Captain Daniel Williams, were surprised and captured in 1782 by a party of British cavalry. But there was one incident in the history of this place that seems to have been the small pivot upon which the great structure of America's future swung. From Haverstraw, on the other side of the river, on the twenty-second of September, 1780, Major Andre saw the war-ship Vulture drop down the river to escape a galling fire from Teller's Point. Fresh from his interview with Arnold, the British spy was anxious to return to New York by the only safe way, — the way by which he had come. His uneasiness at the depart- ure of the Vulture from her anchorage may be im- agined. Once on board of her, all danger of detection and capture would have flown, and the details of Arnold's treacherous plan would in all human proba- Digitized