Under that roof the illustrious "Washington was a frequent guest when the army was in that vicinity ; and the parlour was once honoured by the presence of the immortal Franklin. There may be seen many mementoes of the past : the horns of a stag killed on the manor, when deer ran wild there ; the buttons from the yager coat worn by one of the captors of Andre ; a box made of the wood of the Mideavour, the ship in which Cook navigated the globe, et cetera.

On the morning after my arrival, accompanied by Mrs. Van Cortlandt, I rode to the village of Croton, a mile distant, to visit one of twin sisters, who were ninety years old in August, I860.*' On our way we turned into the cemetery of the Van Cortlandt family, upon a beautiful point of land, commanding an extensive view of the Hudson southward. A little west of the cemetery, at the neck of land which connects Croton Point with the main, stood the old fort or castle of Kitch-a-wan, said to have been one of the most ancient Indian foi'tresses south of the Highlands. It was built by the Sachem Croton, when he assembled his parties for

* Those sisters were living at the beginning of 18G(5.

THE HUDSON. 315

hunting or war. In a beautiful nook, a little east of the site of the fort, on the borders of Haunted Hollow, is the Kitcli-a-wan burying-ground. Around this locality hovers the memory of many a weird story of the early times, when the superstitious people believed that they often saw, in the groves and glens there, the forms of the departed red men. They called them the Walking Sachems of Teller's Point.