The Minnesinks, one of the largest clans, were originally dwellers on a minnis, or island, in the upper waters of the Delaware. The Mohegan Indians lived upon the upper shore of the Hudson. Northward of Esopus, on the west shore, the land was claimed by the Mohawks, who ruled the forests as far north as Champlain and through the valley of the Mohawk River. The}^ were to the more peaceable tribes of the south as a hawk is to a heron, being fierce, revengeful, and cruel almost beyond conception. Their occasional forays into the

444 The Hudson River

lands of their neighbours were events to be anticipated with dread and remembered with horror. Hidden under a modern post-office designation w^e frequently find half a dozen earlier place-names, as the geologist discovers in a river-bed successive deposits. "I am surprised to find," said a gentleman of an enquiring mind, "that Esopus had at one time a larger trade than Albany; yet I do not find Esopus on my map or on the time-table. Where w^as it?" Esopus has disappeared from the map, as have Wiltwyck, Atkarkarton, and Rondout, but all these old names, that are folded down and put away, like old garments in camphor and lavender, are covered by the corporate body of Kingston. Two hundred and fifty years of eventful history belong to this very Dutch borough, where Ten Broeks and Van Gaasbeeks, Schoonmakers and Swartwouts, sat under the spiritual ministrations of Domine Blom, or joined w^ith that excellent and valiant divine in driving away the Indian invaders that occasionally swooped down on the almost defenceless settlement. But truth compels the admission that the first notable proprietor of land at Kingston (or Atkarkarton) was not a Dutchman. This is on the authority of the Rev. I. Megapolensis, the third stated minister of the Collegiate Dutch Church of New^ York, who, in 1657, wrote: Thomas Chambers and a few others removed to Atkarkarton or Esopus, an exceedingly beautiful land, in 1652, and began the actual settlement of Ulster County; it was also known among the savages as " the pleasant land."