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 near that place. He is best known by the Voyage of Life, which at the time of its exhibition was considered, perhaps, the most remarkable painting pro- duced in America. Cole had a deeply reverent spirit, evinced no less in the works of his brush than in the poems by which he loved to express his strong appre- ciation of nature. Slowly unfolding to the enraptured gaze Her thousand charms. Here we may go aside for a short excursion into those enchanted hills where dwelt the old squaw who "made the new moons, and cut up the old ones into stars. " Her factory for making clouds is still in opera- tion as she sends them off, "flake after flake, to float in the air and give light summer showers," or "black thunder-storms and drenching rains, to swell the streams and sweep everything away." In the days of William Kieft, Governor of New Digitized by Microsoft® The Catskill Region 501 Amsterdam, he, in company with Adrian Vander Donck and others, met the chiefs of the Mohawks in confer- ence and noticed the metalHc lustre of certain pigments used by the savages in personal adornment. They procured some of this metal and Johannes de la Mon- tague put it in a crucible. When assayed it produced gold, to the great delight of the Governor and his friends, who managed, upon the arrangement of peace, to send an expedition in search of the source of treas- ure. The result of the expedition was a bucketful of ore that yielded pleasing results when put to the cruci- ble's test. The rest of the story may be told in Irving 's words : William Kieft now dispatched a confidential agent, one Arent Corsen, to convey a sackful of the precious ore to Holland. Cor- sen embarked at New Haven in a British vessel bound to Eng- land, whence he was to cross to Rotterdam. The ship set sail about Christmas, but never reached port. All on board perished. In 1647, when the redoubtable Petrus Stuyvesant took com- mand of the New Netherlands, William Kieft embarked on his return to Holland, provided with further specimens of the Cats- kill Mountain ore, from which he doubtless indulged golden an- ticipations. A similar fate attended him with that which had befallen his agent. The ship in which he had embarked was cast away, and he and his treasure were swallowed up in the waves. Here closes the golden legend of the Catskills, but another one of a similar import succeeds. In 1679, about two years after the shipwreck of Wilhelmus Kieft, there was again a rumour of the precious metals in these mountains. Mynheer Brant Arent Van Slechtenhorst, agent of the Patroon of Rensselaerswyck, had pur- chased, in behalf of the Patroon, a tract of the Catskill lands, and leased it out in farms. A Dutch lass, in the household of one of the farmers, found one day a glittering substance, which, Digitized by Microsoft® 502 The Hudson River on being examined, was pronounced silver ore. Brant Van Slechtenhorst forthwith sent his son from Rensselaerswyck to explore the mountains in quest of the supposed mines. The young man put up in the farmer's house, which had recently been erected on the margin of a mountain stream. Scarcely was he housed when a furious storm burst forth on the mountains. The thunders rolled, the lightnings flashed, the rain came down in cataracts; the stream was suddenly swollen to a furious tor- rent thirty feet deep ; the farmhouse and all its contents were swept away, and it was only by dint of excellent swimming that young Slechtenhorst saved his own life and the lives of his horses. Shortly after this a feud broke out between Peter Stuy- vesant and the Patroon of Rensselaerswyck, on account of the right and title to the Catskill Mountains, in the course of which the elder Slechtenhorst was taken captive by the potentate of the New Netherlands, and thrown into prison at New Amsterdam. We have met with no record of any further attempt to get at the treasures of the Catskills. Adventurers may have been dis- couraged by the ill-luck which appeared