We have mentioned but a few of them, and those with a brevity for which the sco])e and variety of the subject-matter of this book must be the excuse. After the Revolution, in 1797, Albany was made the permanent State capital of New York, and its importance from a political point of view drew to it many men of ability and reputation ; but its growth in population was not rapid until after the advent of the steamboat and the completion of the Erie Canal, which has

An Old Dutch Town 543

its terminus at the nortliern end (jf the cit_\'. During the years 1797 and 1848 two wide-s])read fires did a great deal of daniage. The city has four or five miles of water-front, and for several hundred feet back from the river the ground is low and nearly level, so that when the water rises by reason /1\^^ of an ice- dam or from some Xj

other cause, it frequently m \p '~ _ o\"erflows the lower streets, d ^'^ i J^^ and in former }^ears wrought [j|'j ,7^ great ha\'Oc at times. There are still living those who can SEAT. OK Al.RANY

recall how% during one spring freshet, a schooner floated in from the river and was found, when the waters had subsided, high and dry on State Street. As a curious anti-climax to the feudal system under which the ])eople of Rensselaerwyk lived ])rior to the War for Independence, there occurred in the earl\' half of the nineteenth century an agitation known as the anti-rent war, that stirred Alban\' and the surrounding countr}^ for man}' years. This trouble was the result of a persistent effort on the i^art of the heirs of the Van Rensselaer estate to collect rents which they claimed as their due u]Jon property formerly a part of that domain.