border the property on the south and west. Some distance west of the dwelling house, surrounded by orchards, is the family cemetery of the de Lanceys. This spot was appropriated by John Peter de Lancey, as a cemetery for the remains of the de Lancey family, and for that purpose devised to his son William Heathcote de Lancey, in trust forever, Szc &c; the family vault beneath Trinity church New York, not having been used since 1776.

Here repose the mortal remains of

Besides other memorials, to various members of the family.

The adjoining estate upon the east is Nelson Hill. This property formerly belonged to the Nelson family; Polycarpus Nelson having purchased it of Henry Penoyer, 1725.

Polycarpus died in 1738, leaving three sons -- Polycarpus, Edward and Maharshalaskbar. The name of the latter is supposed to have been derived from his maternal ancestor Akabashka, one of the Indian witnesses to the sale of John Harrison in 1695.

The two younger brothers devised their rights to Polycarpus. The property has since passed through the Horton, Ryer, Bailey, and Stanley families, to Benjamin M. Brown, Esq., whose heirs sold it to Andrew- Wilson, from whom the house and garden was purchased by the present owner Matthias Banta, Esq., and the rest of it by various parties.

The house occupies a beautiful situation on the slope of the hill overlooking the Sound and Mamaroneck bay. This place is remarkable for a very distant echo, the true object of which appears to be the opposite residence of Heathcote Hill. In the still dewy evenings of summer when the air is very elastic, and a dead stillness prevails, every word spoken in the neighboring house is plainly re-echoed from the northern bank. " Echo (says White) has always been so amusing to the imagination, that the poets have personified her; and, in their hands, she has been the occasion of many a beautiful fiction.