lished sketch of the early settlers, their manners and customs, " was not as Dutch a county as many others, although many of its settlers were Hollanders and their descendants. The Dutch language was not so much spoken as in Rockland or Orange. In the southern part of the county the Huguenot and English stocks prevailed, and the near proximity of New York caused an advance in their customs and manners. In the Dutch Churches in the northern part of the county the congregations clung tenaciously to their language and usages, yielding to the encroach, ments of the English step by step and grudgingly."

The few adventurers who challenged fortune outside of Manhattan ' toward the close of the first quarter of the seventeenth century, and pushed up the river, invaded the primeval forests with a view of securing land for cultivation, or else established fisheries on the shore. Many probably made their first dwellings along the river in caves formed by digging into the bank ; but they soon learned from the Indians the construction of bark wigwams, which afforded a much more comfortable abode, and which, when improved by the devices which suggested themselves to the European mind, became the log cabins renowned in song and story. The house of logs from which the bark had been peeled was a mark of gentility and a second story was a luxury, although the occupant might have to reach his chamber under the roof-poles by ascending steps on the outside, or by climbing up a perpendicular ladder within the house. A dwelling of logs hewn and squared with the broad axe and adze was the highest of the kind. But about 1635 a class of immigrants began to arrive who gave a new character to the Hudson region. They were Hollanders and Huguenots, who came with large amounts of ready money to occupy vast grants of land, most of which had manorial rights attached to them.