Upon the opposite side of the creek a perpendicular wall rises many hundred feet, and then in slight inclination the mountain towers up at least a thousand feet higher, and forms a portion of the range known as the South Mountain. At the mouth of this cavernous gorge lies the pretty little village of Palensville, where we again cross the stream, and in a few moments find ourselves upon a beautiful and highly cultivated plain. From this point, along the base of the mountains to the road by which we enter them, or more directly to Katz-Kill, the drive is a delightful one.

From the lower borders of Columbia County, opposite Katz-Kill village, to Hyde Park, in Duchess County, a distance of thirty miles, the east bank of the Hudson is distinguished for old and elegant country scats, most of them owned and occupied by the descendants of wealthy proprietors who flourished in the last century, and were connected by blood and marriage with Robert Livingston, a Scotch gentleman, of the family of the Earls of Linlithgow, who came to America in 1672, and married a member of the Schuyler family, the widow of a Van Eensselaer. . He lived at Albany, and was secretary to the Commissioners of Indian Affairs for a long time. From 1684 to 1715 he had, from time to time, purchased of the Indians, and secured by patents from the English crown, large tracts of land in the present Columbia County. This land was then mostly wild and unprofitable, but became the basis of great family wealth.