to the house and, amid clouds of tobacco smoke and deep potations, discussed the merits of the departed pastor and the merits of the last horse sale. One of the traditionary stories of Catskill is told in Barber and Howe's Collections, the author, William Leete Stone, having perhaps added a touch of imag- ination to the original version of the tale. At an old stone house standing at Cairo, about ten miles to the northward of Catskill, there lived in the early part of the eighteenth century a young man of arbitrary, pas- sionate disposition; one whose passions often rose Digitized by Microsoft® 496 The Hudson River beyond control. A young woman, one of the "re- demptioners ' ' or white bond-servants of the time, ran away from the service of this man. He pursued her on horseback, and, finally overtaking her, tied her to the tail of his horse, which became frightened and dashed madly among the rocks and stones till the poor victim was killed and her body terribly mutilated. The man was tried for murder and found guilty, but through the influence of his family he escaped punish- ment, or, rather, the court decreed that he should be hanged when he attained the age of ninety-nine years. In addition to this sentence, he was to present himself annually to the judges when the court was in session, and wear always a cord about his neck as a memorial of his crime. He lived for many years, and continued each year to fulfil .the conditions of his sentence. People talked of the silken cord that he wore, and he was shunned and solitary in his life, while spectres of various sorts gathered around his isolated dwelling. Sometimes a fem^-le figure would appear alone, then a terrific white horse followed by a ghastly thing in tat- tered clothes, and again a wraith in a winding-sheet — altogether the neighbourhood of the house became un- canny. The Revolutionary war came and found the criminal an old man; his ninety-ninth year, that had been selected in what seems like grim pleasantry as the date of his execution, came, and he lived on. When over a hundred years of age he fell quietly asleep, and who shall doubt that the crime of his youth was Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® The Catskill Region 499 expiated by three quarters of a century of punish- ment. The details of this story have no doubt been col- oured, but there is a foundation in fact. The man in question did tie a servant to a rope, to make her return to his home, from which she had escaped; but he tied the other end of the rope to his own body and was him- self dragged to the ground when the horse ran away. He gave himself up to the authorities, who, it is said, acquitted him and let him go free. The history of Catskill has shown an industrial de- cline during some years of the past century. The town had a great deal of trade, particularly with West- em New York and Northern Pennsylvania, but the building of the Erie Canal and the establishment of the railroads upon the opposite sides of the river served successively to rob it of its advantages of posi- tion for trade. Back of Catskill village, a dozen or more miles away, rise the most impressive peaks on the outer wall of the mountain range that gives it its name. Not as lofty as many of the famous chains that are celebrated by travellers, the Catskills have a rare beauty of their own and are fully worthy of the admiration of the artist or the poet. Irving says : Of all the scenery of the Hudson, the Kaatskill Mountains had the most witching effect on my boyish imagination. Never shall I forget the effect upon me of the first view of them pre- dominating over a wide extent of country, part wild, woody, and Digitized by Microsoft® 5op The Hudson River rugged; part softened away into all the graces of cultivation. As we slowly floated along, I lay on the deck and watched them through a long summer's day; undergoing a thousand muta- tions under the magical effects of atmosphere ; sometimes seem- ing to approach, at other times to recede; now almost melting into hazy distance, now burnished by the setting sun, until, in the evening, they printed themselves against the glowing sky in the deep purple of an Italian landscape. As Kingston cherishes in her hall of fame the name of John Vanderlyn, artist, so Catskill points with pride to Thomas Cole, who, though of English birth, yet for many years, and indeed to the close of his life, lived and worked