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. That gold and silver ore was actually procured from these mountains in days of yore we have historical evidence to prove ; and the recorded word of Adrian Van der Donk, a man of weight, who was an eye-witness. If gold and silver were once to be found there, they must be there at present. It remains to be seen, in these gold-hunting days, whether the quest will be renewed; and some daring adventurer, with a true Calif ornian spirit, will penetrate the mysteries of these mountains, and open a golden region on the l.iorders of the Hudson.

Chapter XXX Nantucket Quakers and Dutch Fighters

TO celebrate the city of Hudson, judicial seat of Columl)ia County, requires the pen of Knickerbocker. To the modern mind its reason for being seems as deliciousl\ a1:)surd as anything in the inconsecjuent adventures of Alice in Wonderland. A little company of sturdy New England men, from Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and Providence, decided in 1784 that they would found a city. The humour of the proposition lay in the fact that, being mighty in the handling of the harpoon and seasoned with the salt of many seas, they proposed to establish, one hundred and fifteen miles inland from New York, a city devoted to whaling and kindred industries.