These features oftheevent, with the booming of the cannon on the loaded vessels when the fire reached the .1, answered by echoes from a hundred hills, produced a scene of awful grandeur never witnessed before or since on the borders of the Hudson. It was a wild and fearful romance, that ended in the breaking of the boom and chain, and passage up the river of the British squadron with marauding troops. These laid in ashes, many a fair mansion belonging to

1, 1«'>.

THE TOWN OF CORTLANDT. 1 63

republicans as far north as Livingston's Manor, on tho lower verge of Columbia county."*

The late Gen. Pierre Van Cortlandt, the proprietor of "Antonie's Nose," or St. Anthony's Nose, which lies in the north-west corner of Cortlandt-town, used to give another version for the origin of that name, which deserves to be recorded here: --

"Before the Revolution a vessel was passing up the river under the command of a Captain Hogans, when immediately opposite this mountain, the mate looked rather quizzically first at the mountain and then at the captain's nose. The captain, by the way, had an enormous nose, which was not unfrequently the subject of good-natured remark, and he at once understood the mate's allusion. 'What,' says the captain, 'does that look like my nose ? call it then, if you please Antony's Nose.' The story was repeated on shore, and the mountain thenceforward assumed the name ; and has thus become an everlasting monument to the memory of the redoubtable captain, Antony Hogans and his nose."