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XII
ON THE BORDERS OF THE CATSKILLS FROM Kingston a railroad runs back into the southern
Catskills, a region of noble wooded heights with trout streams in every glen;
and when you get beyond its wilder portion the mountains descend into vast
billowy hills with much open pasture land, and with farm fields clinging to the
lofty slopes. The name Catskill is of Dutch origin and means Wildcat Creek. The
creek which won this particular title by the old-time prevalence of catamounts
in its valley joins the Hudson about a score of miles above Kingston, and near
its mouth is a town bearing the same name. Here is another entrance to the
famous group of mountains and hills, and a railroad winds back into the tangled
valleys. But a more agreeable method of journeying thither is by driving. It
was thus I chose to go one day about the first of June, and as the horse jogged
along I had plenty of opportunity to look about and see the country. The road
rambled in and out of the hollows and over the hills, and was full of pleasant
and unexpected changes. It followed the line of least resistance. Straight
lines and angles are only suited to city thoroughfares, and a region where a
direct highway is almost impossible gives genuine satisfaction. Each time I
mounted a ridge I had a glorious view of the blue mountains ever looming higher
into the sky as I drew nearer; and there was many a delectable spot in the
vales — meadows golden with dandelions that imparted a glow of color delightful
to behold, an abundance of trees tenderly green with new leafage, and swift
streams sparkling in the sunshine. The birds were singing, and occasionally I
heard the tapping of a woodpecker, or saw a hawk soaring far aloft.
Now and then I passed a farmhouse.
The dwellings remote from the villages were apt to look neglected and often
were vacant. Evidently farming was not so attractive a calling as in years
past. But the rustic homes that had been transformed into summer hotels and
boarding places looked prosperous enough to make up. The opening of the
vacation season was near at hand and the women were busy about the woodwork and
windows with their scrubbing cloths and brushes, and the men were making needed
repairs or improvements and touching up the dwellings and fences with gay
paint. The painters were bound to have something striking to satisfy their own
sense of the beautiful and please the city people. I suppose a quiet simplicity
as compared with giddy streaks and patches seems hopelessly tame to rustic
dwellers and perhaps is uninteresting to many townspeople as well —
more’s the pity. During my drive I went up the famous Kaaterskill
Clove — a charming wilderness valley that opens back between two mountains. A
steep, narrow road, abounding with thank-you-m’ams, crept up one side of the
bordering ridges, and a noisy stream worried down the rocky depths of the
hollow with many a rapid and foaming leap. But what I especially wanted to see
was the portion of the mountains most closely associated with Rip Van Winkle. I
doubt if Irving had any definite spot in mind when he wrote the story, yet the
public long ago decided that Van Winkle’s house and the place where he slept
were high on the Hudson slope of South Mountain. An old road zigzags up to a
summit house, but is reputed to be so precipitous and rough that I left my
horse in the valley and climbed on foot. By and by I came to a little hut by
the roadside snugged into a wild hollow with wooded cliffs rising around on
three sides, and a deep gorge dropping away on the fourth side. This hut is
known as the Rip Van Winkle house. It is said to have been there for at least
fifty years, and no one knows its origin. Close to it is a ruinous hotel, and
both are much marked and scribbled with names of idling sightseers. A rude path
leads up the declivity to the left, and a short scramble brings one to a great
boulder inscribed “Rip’s Rock” — the
supposed place where he had his long sleep.
When I returned to Catskill I lodged
with a family that had originally lived in the mountains and they gave me a
good deal of entertaining information not only about the Catskills but about
other matters of local interest. “Yes,” said the man, “that little house was
where Rip lived, and the rock was where he slept. Him and his dog Snider went
up to that rock, and he tied the dog to a sapling and lay down for a nap. When
he woke up he looked for his dog Snider, and he couldn’t see anything of him,
and he called to him but got no answer. After a while he happened to cast his
eyes up in a tree and saw his dog’s bones hanging there. The sapling had grown
to be a big tree in twenty years and as it increased in height had carried the
dog up into the air.
“There’s a wonderful lot of people come to the
mountains now compared with what came when I was a boy. Why, gracious goodness!
in the district where I was raised there was only scattered farms, and a
schoolhouse no bigger than my kitchen, but now the place is quite a town with
stores, hotels, churches and everything else. The people in that region have
about given up farming. We used to have some awful crops where at present they
only grow a little garden stuff. My father cut good timothy hay on land that
today is grown up to woods as big as my arm; but he and the other farmers could
hardly make a fair living. They just managed to keep the interest on their mortgages
paid up, and that was about all. Every Saturday we’d drive to Catskill with
butter and eggs, poultry, pork and other produce. We had some regular
customers, but mostly we’d sell to the stores and trade out what was due us. A
good deal of work was done with oxen. My father had a yoke. Once they ran away
when they was hitched to a dumpcart. Father and I were in the cart, and to stop
‘em he guided ‘em into a swamp hole. That did the trick, but they got mired so
deep we had to have help to haul ‘em out.
“My mother died, and then my father
swapped his farm for a place down here and went into the milk business. He had
to have some one to keep house, so he married again, and as his second wife had
a little cash they made a good start and did very well, though they bought
everything that went into the cows’ mouths. “With prices what they are now any
man back in the hills who wants to take care of his farm can make money hand
over fist. But most of ‘em think farming is too hard work and prefer to get
their profit from city boarders. Gee! Some of ‘em charge to beat the band.
They’re robbers! But then lots of these city people have money to burn. I took
a city man with his wife and two children in my team to one of the hotels last
summer; and, by golly, ‘ boy, he’d brought along two trunks full of playthings
for those kids, and he hired a big room at fifteen dollars a week to turn the
kids and their playthings loose in. “I’ve been surprised to notice how
little some city people knowed about the country. They’re supposed to be up to
snuff on everything in New York, but land alive! they do ask you the dumbdest
questions that ever was imagined. One day a fellow in a party I was taking for
a drive pointed and said, ‘There’s a flock of cows over there. Now will you
tell me which of ‘em give the buttermilk?’ “He was kind of a fresh duck but I
led him on till I made sure he was sincere and innocent, and then I said, ‘You
see that cow with the white face — well, that’s the one that gives the
buttermilk.’ “‘But how do you get it out of her?’
he says. “ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘we set a pail under her bag and take hold of her
tail and pump.’ “He believed me all right.” We had shad for breakfast, which the
lady of the house said they did not indulge in nowadays very often. “They’re
getting to be a luxury,” she said, “and so are most other river fish. I can
remember when the farmers used to come and get herring by the cartload to use
for fertilizer. Carp are about the only fish that are reasonable in price, and
I don’t care for them. They taste too muddy. The first one we had was bought
for us by a neighbor. He couldn’t get shad and said it was claimed this was
just as nice. If he’d been here when I’d got it cooked I could have throwed it
at him, I was so mad. Over the river they have a carp net three thousand feet
long and they pull in tons of those carp. The more they catch the more there
seems to be. A sheeny from New York comes around and buys the fish at from six
to nine cents a pound. The fishing is very profitable for the man that owns the
net, and yet to look at his buildings you wouldn’t think he was worth a dollar.
Why, his barn is so full of holes you can throw a cat through anywhere.” Catskill’s early history was
comparatively tranquil. No serious conflicts occurred with the Indians, but
there is a tradition that near by on Wanton Island a fierce battle was fought
between the Mohawks and the Mohicans. The former at last retired to another
island where they built fires and pretended to encamp. But after arranging
sticks and stones near the fires and spreading blankets over them to give a
semblance of seated men they retired to the forest and waited in ambush till
the Mohicans appeared to complete their victory. At length, in the dead of
night, the Mohicans came and, tomahawks in hand, made a sudden rush and
assailed the blankets with great fury. This at once exposed them to the glow of
the fires, and in the confusion of their mistaken attack they fell a ready prey
to the arrows of the crafty Mohawks. A little to the north of Catskill,
across the river, is the city of Hudson. The place was settled in 1784 by
thirty New Englanders, mostly Quakers. They were men mighty in the handling of
the harpoon who had sailed on many seas, and though Hudson is over a hundred
miles inland they proposed to establish here a town devoted to whaling and
kindred industries. Strangely enough, they made a success on just these lines,
and not only whalers but other vessels brought their spoils to the town from
the ends of the earth. The growth of the place was phenomenal and the
proprietors waxed wealthy. But when steam navigation became a certainty, Hudson
as a seaport was doomed; yet not till 1845 was the last ship sold that had
engaged in the whaling business. The city is built on a bluff which
rises abruptly from the river, and the brow of the bluff affords a very
attractive view of the river. Clinging to the verge of this height is a
weatherworn, big-chimneyed house, evidently one of the oldest in the place. I
got acquainted with its occupant — a negro, and ancient like his dwelling. He
had always made his home in the vicinity, and so had his father before him. The
latter had been somewhat noted as a violinist. “He made that his business,”
said my acquaintance, “and travelled around with a horse and wagon to play at
balls and parties. There was quite a circuit he went over. He seemed to have a
natural mother-wit gift for giving people a good time. It was born into him and
he could make jokes so as to kill everyone laughing. His company was superior
and it was appreciated. Once he went to Pennsylvania and they offered him a
present of a house and lot worth six hundred dollars if he’d come there to
live; but money was no object to him and he wouldn’t go. Our family was all
musical, and I’ve played the violin a good deal in my day; but its worldly you
know, and I’ve given it up. I try to serve the Lord now.” In
early life my informant was for
some time a porter on a steamboat, and as a result of his experience
had
concluded there was “just as much difference between New
Englanders and the
people of the Middle States as between day and night.”
“On the boats where I
worked,” said he, “if a passenger didn’t
tip you for carrying his bag you’d
refuse to give it to him and tell him you’d lock it up. That
would fetch the
money from most of them, but not from a New Englander. He’d
get mad and say,
‘Where’s the cap’n?’ No, you
couldn’t work an Eastern man, but you could git the
New York and New Jersey men on skin games every time.” While we talked a boy passed
carrying some eels. “Those would suit me pretty well,” remarked my friend.
“I’ll eat eel before I will any other fish. Down on the Mississippi they have
an eel that’s very much like our eels only somewhat darker, and it has little
legs, or perhaps you might say each leg was a little hand with a claw into it.
In the spring of the year those eels are blind and bite everything that touches
‘em. I saw one in the water once close to a scow I was on, and I took an oar
and squeezed him against the side of the boat. He squealed just like a rat and,
by George! you ought to see him bite at the oar. If you get bitten by one,
whatever you are going to do you want to do in five minutes. The only thing
that’ll save you is to ketch a live chicken and cut it open and clap it onto
the bitten place. “Down in South America they have a
galvanic eel, and if he hits you you’re paralized and can’t move hand or foot.
That’s the reason the people don’t go in swimming there. I had a cat once on
shipboard that was a thieving sort of a creature, and I said, ‘Mr. Cat, when we
git near land where you can swim ashore, over you go.’ Well, we got to Para,
right under the equator in the middle of the globe, and I threw the cat
overboard from near the bow. The tide was setting toward shore and I walked aft
to see what became of the animal, but, my king! he wasn’t to be seen. One of
those galvanic eels must have struck him.” I asked the old negro about the various
legends of the Hudson, hoping to get new versions, but he said, “These people
along the river are superstitious and believe in lots of things, but I don’t
take any stock in such stories myself.” Down at the steamboat landing, while
waiting to continue my journey, I had a chat with another local resident.
Everything with him seemed to date from 1866, the year in which he married. “I
paid five dollars a month rent then for two rooms,” he said, “but a family
ain’t content now to live in that way, and the rent takes all a man earns. I
seen the time here in ‘66 when coal was fifteen dollars a ton; and the first
barrel of flour we bought cost eighteen dollars. But it was a poor week I
couldn’t make thirty-five or forty dollars around the wharves, and this was a
hundred per cent better town then than now.” I remarked on the frequency of the big icehouses we
could see across the river. “Yes,” he responded, “they stand so thick all the
way from Kingston to Albany that you can throw a stone from one to another the
whole distance. Men drive here from nine miles back in the country in the
winter to work icing, and they go home every night. They bring dinner pails
bigger’n that post in front of us, and they get two dollars a day and freeze to
death. They have to be up at three in the morning in order to arrive here ready
to begin at seven, and they freeze coming and they freeze again going home.
It’s no job I’d care for.”
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