The deep mouth of the creek, sheltered yet accessible, furnished one of the most convenient harbours for the river boats, and the fertile and pleasant lands were inviting to the farmer. But farmers do not make villages, and facilities for the landing of boats do not make trade. The Indian traffic in peltries, which in the first centur\' of its growth had been so important an item of its commercial life, naturally flowed from the interior with the stream. Then, too, in a primitive age, the course of a river is the course of a highway. Men followed the water from point to point rather than traverse unbroken wilderness, so that the first roads were surveyed by the hand that laid the beds of the water-courses. Between New York and Albany there were but two or three tributary streams that were of such size or were the natural outlets of so desirable a country as that which flowed l^y Wiltwyck. The benefit derived from this position was not abated till Kingston's position was an assured one, when it continued naturally to hold its place as a distributing and shipping centre, even after the Indian trade had died away and other highways had subtracted much from the original importance of the creek. When Kingston tried to rise from her own ashes the conditions were all changed. Thirty-five years after

Rondout and Kingston 467

its incorporation and sixty-three after the great fire, the total population of Kingston and Rondout together did not much exceed fifty-five hundred souls. In the succeeding thirty years, however, the population had increased fourfold, while the population of Ulster Count}' in the same ]3eriod had doubled. This increase was in |)art due to the development of certain industries, ])articularly the trade in bluestone and flagging, which amounts to millions of dollars every year.