A gentle slope descends from it to a silver sheet of water bordered by high trees, between which peeps may be caught at the blue hills of the Hudson. To look upon its grass-grown yard where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think tliat there at least the dead might rest in peace. On one side of the church extends a wide woody dell, along which laves a large brook among broken rocks and trunks of fallen trees. Over a deep black part of the

» Surro'iate's office N. Y. No. XI. 85.

COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER. 335

stream, not far from the church, was formerly thrown a wooden bridge ; the road that led to it and the bridge itself were thicklyshaded by overhanging trees which cast a gloom about it even in the day time, but occasioned a fearful darkness at night."^

" It was in this church that the never-to-be-forgotten yankee pedagogue, Ichabod Crane, in rivalry of the old dominie, led off the choir, making the welkin ring with the notes of his nasal psalmody. It was too in the ravine, just back of the church, that this redoubtable hero, Ichabod, had his fearful midnight encounter with the headless horseman and forever disappeared from the sight of the goodly inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow."^

The grave yard is delightfully situated on the north side of the church, upon a gentle acclivity. " Some of the tomb-stones are of the rudest sculpture; upon many of them are inscribed, in Dutch, the names and virtues of the deceased, with their portraitures curiously carved in the similitude of cherubs."