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 to attend all who meddled with them, as if they were under the guardian keep of the same spirits or goblins who once haunted the mountains and ruled over the weather. That gold and silver ore was actually procured from these mountains in days of yore we have histori- cal evidence to prove ; and the recorded word of Adrian Van der Donk, a man of weight, who was an eye-witness. If gold and silver were once to be found there, they must be there at present. It remains to be seen, in these gold-hunting days, whether the quest will be renewed ; and some daring adventurer, with a true Californian spirit, will penetrate the mysteries of these mount- ains, and open a golden region on the borders of the Hudson. Digitized by Microsoft® Chapter XXX Nantucket Quakers and Dutch Fighters TO celebrate the city of Hudson, judicial seat of Columbia County, requires the pen of Knick- erbocker. To the modern mind its reason for being seems as deliciously absurd as anything in the inconsequent adventures of Alice in Wonderland. A little company of sturdy New England men, from Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and Providence, de- cided in 1784 that they would found a city. The humour of the proposition lay in the fact that, being mighty in the handling of the harpoon and seasoned with the salt of many seas, they proposed to establish, one hundred and fifteen miles inland from New York, a city devoted to whaling and kindred industries. There is no suggestion that these grave humourists ever dreamed of finding whales in the Hudson, though there is a tradition that one mighty cetacean went in search of his ancient antagonists, or for some other reason ascended the waters of the river till he stranded on the Hudson Flats, to the great consternation of the regular navigators from Coxsackie to Saugerties. There is one strong argument to advance in favour 503 Digitized by Microsoft® 504 The Hudson River of the sanity of the proprietors of Hudson. Their plan succeeded. From old Claverack Landing, as the place was at first known, whalers were dispatched and re- turned reeking with unsavoury sperm. Other vessels brought their merchandise from the ends of the earth to this harbour, so secure against any wind that ever troubled the ocean. \/ A year after its settlement, Hudson was incorporated as a city. Its growth was phenomenal, only excelled, it is said, by that of Baltimore, and the proprietors waxed wealthy. For the large region of Columbia County it became at once the distributing centre for all manner of merchandise, and after a while manu- factures were established and prospered. The names of the proprietors were all familiar along the southern Massachusetts shore. Their leader was Thomas Jen- kins of Nantucket; while Marshal Jenkins of Martha's Vineyard, with others of the same surname, appear prominently in early records. Biblical names seemed to abound in the family of Thomas. We find Seth, Lemuel, and Benjamin in the second generation; the first named figuring as mayor. Marshal Jenkins was the grandfather of Major-General William Jenkins Worth, whose feats of arms in Mexico made him a popular hero and whose dust reposes under the gran- ite monument erected to him on Fifth Avenue, New York. In speculating upon the motives which induced the "thirty New Englanders, mostly Quakers," to choose Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Nantucket Quakers and Dutch Fighters 507 this site for their city, it is difficult to beheve that mere prudence or a commercial spirit impelled them. It is true that after the troublesome experiences of the war, when their vessels had been captured and destroyed and their liberties menaced by the British enemy, they must have experienced great satisfaction in finding so safe a retreat ; but it is also to be believed that to eyes accustomed to the unmitigated sand and unrelieved levels of Cape Cod, the green and fertile billows of the landscape that lies between the river and the " Katz- bergs" must have been like a vision of Paradise. Hudson has attracted several artists of repute — in- deed, has been the birthplace of more than