found entertainment for himself and his family; and it is said that the noble hospitality of his host moved him to SCHUYLER MANSION, lyOO tears. Baroness Reidesel and Lady Harriet Ackland were aimoilg those who accompanied the vanquished British General, and the former has left on record an eulogium upon the character and generosity of her entertainer. There have been three Schuyler houses that have lasted until the present day to puzzle the searcher after landmarks. The home of General Philip Schuyler has Digitized by Microsoft® An Old Dutch Town 541 been thus described by Frederic G. Mather in an article written for the Magazine of American History in 1884: The Albany of the Revolution was still a stockaded city. To the northwar4 were "the flats," to the southward were "the pastures," where the city herdsmen cared for the cattle and drove them home at night. At a distance of half a mile from the stockade, and just beyond the pastures, stood the mansion of General Schuyler. It was of honest brick throughout, and not, like most of the city houses, a wooden structure with a ven- eered front of bricks ' ' brought from Holland. ' ' To-day the walls and the oaken window-sills show no reason why they might not last for centuries to come, unless the on Ward march of business shall demand the destruction of the relic. So long as it lasts, the Schuyler mansion stands as a link between the past and the present. An effort to capture . General Schuyler at his home was made at one time by a band of Tories and Indians, who surrounded the house and forced an entrance be- fore the inmates could effect their escape. When the latter had reached the upper floor, Mrs. Schuyler dis- covered that her infant, Catherine, had been left in a room upon the lower floor and would have returned for it if the General had not forcibly detained her. The savages and their allies were now in the house, pillag- ing the dining-room of the rich plate it contained. Unobserved in the turmoil, Margaret-, one of General Schuyler's daughters, slipped away and rescued the infant, though she narrowly missed death from a toma- hawk thrown by one of the Indians as she was ascend- ing the stairs. A Tory, taking her for one of the servants, called out, " Wench, where is your master? ' ' — Digitized by Microsoft® 542 The Hudson River "Gone to alarm the town," was the ready answer. Schuyler, hearing this, acted upon the hint, and, put- ting his head out of a window, called as though to a large body of men, to surround the house and capture the rascals ; upon which the invaders fled, but, unfor- tunately, took the plate with them. Alexander Hamilton married Elizabeth- Schuyler, and was counted by the General as one of his dearest friends. When Aaron Burr came first to practise in Albany he was befriended by Schuyler, to whom, through Hamilton, he was destined to deal one of the gravest blows he could endure. Among the chief of those interested in the construc- tion of the great waterway which we moderns know as the Erie Canal, but which to the wiseacres and wits of that day was familiar as Clinton's Ditch, Schuyler made, in company with Clinton and one or two others, a long horseback journey over the course now followed by the canal. The names of those that Albany delights to honour are legion. We have mentioned but a few of them, and those with a brevity for which the scope and variety of the subject-matter of this book must be the excuse. After the Revolution, in 1797, Albany was made the permanent State capital of New York, and its import- ance from a political point of view drew to it many men of ability and reputation ; but its growth in popu- lation was not rapid until after the advent of the steam- boat and the completion of the Erie Canal, which has Digitized by Microsoft® An Old Dutch Town 543 SEAL OF ALBANY its terminus at the northern end of the city. During the years 1797 and 1848 two wide-spread fires did a great deal of damage. The city has four or five miles of water-front, and for several hundred feet back from the river the ground is low and nearly level, so that when the water rises by reason of an ice-dam or from some other cause, it frequently overflows the lower streets, and in former years wrought great havoc at times. There are still living those who can recall how, during one spring freshet, a schooner floated in from the river and was found, when the waters had subsided, high and dry on