There are a few of them left, -- grizzled, keen-eyed, hard-fisted, broad shouldered, -- a race by themselves, unhappily passing away, -- the men who followed the river. They were in many cases the sons and grandsons of sires who had browned in the sun and wind and shed the blood from their cracked fingers on the frozen sails and sheets of their craft long before Fort Washington had a name or Newburgh was anything more than a place that shipped excellent butter. They carried peltries and flour from Rensselaerwyk and Esopus, and ran the dreaded gauntlet of the Highlands, saying their prayers in Dutch when the awful shadow of the phantom ship crossed their bows in the moonlight under Point no Point. From generation to generation they transmitted the legends and the secrets of boatcraf t that no mere landsman can ever know and -- never one among them all had the wit or the skill to put pen to paper and set it down for our delectation and his own enduring fame. In ancient days it became necessary at times to restrain the adventurous skippers by legislative act, or by an order of the New Amsterdam Court, which amounted to the same thing. In one of the old documents which throw a flood of light upon the early manners and customs we read that:

The Passing of the White Wings 107 Whereas divers Skippers and Sloop captains have requested leave to sail to Esopus and Willemstadt with their vessels, whereby this city would be almost wholly stripped of craft, and the citizens greatly weakened, to prevent which those of the Court of this city are ordered to summon all skippers and sloop captains of this city before them, and to instruct them that no more than two sloops shall go at one time, by lot or rotation, to Willemstadt and Esopus and one sloop to the South river; nor shall they take any passengers with them from here without a pass; for such is found necessary for the better security of this city.