Anthony the Trumpeter was dispatched on a warlike mission to the Patroon Van Rensselaer, when he came to the stream that forms the upper boundary of Manhattan Island. Warned not to cross, he still persisted in advancing, intending to gain the other shore by swimming. " Spuyt den Du3^vil!"he shouted, " I will reach Shoraskappock. " But his challenge to the Duyvil was unfortunately his last recorded utterance, as at that moment his Satanic Majesty, in the form of an enormous moss bunker, took him at his word and tried conclusions then and there. That was the end of Anthony the Trumpeter, but the phrase that he is supposed to have originated is repeated about a thousand times a day by trainmen on the railroad, wdio have 193 no idea of invoking Satanic interference with their duties.

194 The Hudson River

An amusing story is told of a good but somewhat dull woman who asked a neighbour for an explanation of the strange name that she heard shouted into the car where she was seated. The neighbour, who was none other than Mr. Benson G. Lossing, related the substance of the legend given here. As he proceeded his listener became more and more interested. An expression of pity and sympathy overflowed her eyes. " Did the poor man leave a family?" she finally asked. Upon the height behind Spuyten Duyvil there is the place of an old redoubt that occupied about the position of the Indian stronghold of Nipnichsen. A little way up the stream the Manor Lord, Frederick Filipse, purchased a ferry right and afterwards erected a bridge with a toll gate between the island and the main shore. Near the mouth of the creek occurred, in the early fifties, one of the most dreadful of the steamboat disasters of which the history of the Hudson presents not a few: it was the burning of the Henry Clay, which is more fully noticed in another chapter.