On the north of Van Cortlandt Philipse again appears; the Highland Patent, as it was called, taking in nearly all of Putnam Coimty and reaching to Fishkill creek. Rondout came next, including the land between Fishkill and Wappinger's creek. The Schuylers ruled where Poughkeepsie now is, and Falconer's purchase lay to the north. Above Falconer's was the Henry Beekman tract, that had Esopus as its northern boundary, and above that the Schuyler name again appears.

92 The Hudson River

The manor of Livingston, from Rhinebeck /to Catskill Station, lay next to Rensselaerwyk, that reached as far as Troy. It will be noticed that nearly all of the land chosen by the earliest colonists was upon the east bank of the river, where the alluring valleys and rolling hills afforded a chance for husbandry, while the more forbidding cliffs and headlands of the western shore remained for the most part unsettled, except at a few favourable points. But above the Highlands the physical conditions of the shores commence gradually to change, and the narrowing stream affords a less formidable line of division. The Van Rensselaer patent was the first to cover both sides of the Hudson. The C[uestion is often raised whether the men who colonised the Hudson shores were to any extent educated or cultivated persons. Curiosity on such a point is natural, considering how many of the families now socially prominent in New York trace descent from them. Let us in the first place remember that the scholarly men and those whose lives are passed amidst luxurious surroundings seldom make colonists. To strike into the wilderness for anything more than a dash of adventure usually indicates that one has more to gain than to lose, and that his habit is active rather than contemplative. If noble families are represented in any colony, it is apt to be through their needy cadets, and the}' will usuall}- be found in company with those