Here closes the golden legend of the Catskills, but another one of a similar import succeeds. In 1679, about two years after the shipwreck of Wilhelmus Kieft, there was again a rumour of the precious metals in these mountains. Mynheer Brant Arent Van Slechtenhorst, agent of the Patroon of Rensselaerswyck, had purchased, in behalf of the Patroon, a tract of the Catskill lands, and leased it out in farms. A Dutch lass, in the household of one of the farmers, found one day a glittering substance, which,

502 The Hudson River

on being examined, was pronounced silver ore. Brant Van Slechtenhorst forthwith sent his son from Rensselaerswyck to explore the mountains in quest of the supposed mines. The young man put up in the farmer's house, which had recently been erected on the margin of a mountain stream. Scarcely was he housed when a furious storm burst forth on the mountains. The thunders rolled, the lightnings flashed, the rain came down in cataracts; tlie stream was suddenly swollen to a furious torrent thirty feet deep; the farmhouse and all its contents were swept away, and it was only by dint of excellent swimming that young Slechtenhorst saved his own life and the lives of his horses. Shortly after this a feud broke out between Peter Stuyvesant and the Patroon of Rensselaerswyck, on account of the right and title to the Catskill Mountains, in the course of which the elder Slechtenhorst was taken captive by the potentate of the New Netherlands, and thrown into prison at New Amsterdam. We have met with no record of any further attempt to get at the treasures of the Catskills. Adventurers may have been discouraged bv the ill-luck which appeared to attend all who meddled with them, as if they were under the guardian keep of the same spirits or goblins who once haunted the mountains and ruled over the weather.