They painted themselves grotesquely, built a large fire upon this rock, and danced around it with songs and yells, making strange contortions of face and limbs, under the direction of their conjurors or " medicine men." They would tumble, leap, run, and yell, when, as they said, the Devil, or Evil Spirit, would appear in the shape of a beast of prey, or a harmless animal; the former apparition betokened evil to their proposed undertaking, and

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the latter prophesied of good. For at least a century after the Europeans discovered the river, these hideous rites were performed upon this spot, and the Dutch skippers who navigated the Hudson, called the rock Den Duyvel's Dans Kamer. Here it was that Peter Stuyvesant's crew were "most horribly frightened by roystering devils," according to the veracious Knickerbocker.

Sixteen miles below Poughkeepsie, on the same side of the Hudson, is the small village of Fishkill Landing, having for a background, in a view of it from the river, the lofty range of the Fishkill Mountains, which form a portion of the Highlands proper, through which the Hudson flows a few miles below. Here is the Fishkill and Newburgh railway-station, and a long wharf that stretches over the shallow bed of the river to the deep channel far in the direction of Newburgh. That large town lies upon the steep slope on the western shore, and presents a beautiful appearance to the traveller by railway or steamboat, especially when it is lighted up by the morning sun. Around that old town, the site of the oldest permanent settlement in Orange County, are clustered many associations of the war for independence ; for near there the Continental Army was encamped ; there it was disbanded ; and in a house yet standing, and well preserved, Washington had his head-quarters for a loug time, as we shall observe presently.