which they formerly carried in their hearts, and breathed forth in their words; but now are sentenced to bear about for ever-in their tails. 2 And now I am going to tell a fact, which I doubt much my readers will hesitate to believe; but if they do, they are welcome not to believe a word in this whole history, for nothing which it contains is more true. It must be known then that the nose of Antony the trumpeter was of a very lusty size, strutting boldly from his countenance like a mountain of Golconda; being sumptuously bedecked with rubies and other precious stones-the true regalia of a king of good fellows, which jolly Bacchus grants to all who bouse it heartily at the flagon. Now thus it happened, that bright and early in the morning, the good Antony having washed his burly visage, was leaning over the quarter-railing of the galley contemplating it in the glassy wave below-just at this moment, the illustrious sun, breaking in all his splendor from behind one of the high bluffs of the Highlands, did dart one of his most potent beams full upon the refulgent nose of the sounder of brass-the reflection of which shot straightway down, hissing hot, into the water, and killed a mighty sturgeon that was sporting beside the vessel! This huge monster being with infinite labor hoisted on board, furnished a luxurious repast to all the crew, being accounted of excellent flavor, excepting about the wound, where it smacked a little of brimstone-and this, on my veracity, was the first time that ever sturgeon was eaten in these parts by Christian people.* When this astonishing miracle came to be made known to Peter Stuyvesant, and that he tasted of the unknown fish, he, as may well be supposed, marvelled exceedingly; and as a monument thereof, he gave the name Antony's Nose to a 1 the diamond mines of Golconda, near Hyderabad, India. 2 the Roman god of wine. *The learned Hans Megapolensis, treating of the country about Albany, in a letter which was written some time after the settlement thereof, says: "There is in the river great plenty of Sturgeon, which we Christians do not make use of; but the Indians eat them greedilie."-Author's Note. stout promontory in the neighborhood—and it has continued to be called Antony's Nose' ever since that time. But hold-Whither am I wandering ?-By the mass, if I attempt to accompany the good Peter Stuyvesant on this voyage, I shall never make an end, for never was there a voyage so fraught with marvellous incidents, nor a river so abounding with transcendent beauties, worthy of being severally recorded. Even now I have it on the point of my pen to relate, how his crew were most horribly frightened, on going on shore above the Highlands, by a gang of merry, roistering devils, frisking and curveting on a huge flat rook, which projected into the river and which is called the Duyvel's Dans-Kamer to this very day. But no! Diedrich Knickerbocker-it becomes thee not to idle thus in thy historic wayfaring. 2 Recollect that while dwelling with the fond garrulity of age over these fairy scenes, endeared to thee by the recollections of thy youth, and the charms of a thousand legendary tales which beguiled the simple ear of thy childhood; recollect that thou art trifling with those fleeting moments which should be devoted to loftier themes.-Is not Time-relentless Time!shaking, with palsied hand, his almost exhausted hour-glass before thee ?-hasten then to pursue thy weary task, lest the last sands be run, ere thou hast finished thy history of the Manhattoes. Let us then commit the dauntless Peter, his brave galley, and his loyal crew, to the protection of the blessed St. Nicholas; who, I have no doubt, will prosper him in his voyage, while we await his return at the great city of New-Amsterdam.' 1 See map, p. 10. 2 Devil's Dance-hall. Irving's first journey up the Hudson was made in the year 1800, when he was seventeen years of age. He went to Albany in a sloop, and in this account of Stuyvesant's voyage there is doubtless much remembrance of that early trip. "What a time of intense delight," he writes, "was that first sail through the Highlands! I sat on the deck as we slowly tided along at the foot of those stern mountains, and gazed with wonder and admiration at cliffs impending far above me, crowned with forests, with eagles sailing and screaming around them; or listened to the unseen stream dashing down precipices; or beheld rock, and tree, and cloud, and sky reflected in the glassy stream of the river. And then how solemn and thrilling the scene III.-WOLFERT'S ROOST. 2 6 CHRONICLE I. ABOUT five-and-twenty miles from the ancient and renowned city of Manhattan,' formerly called New-Amsterdam, and vulgarly called New-York, on the eastern bank of that expansion of the Hudson, known among Dutch mariners of yore,. as the Tappaan Zee,' being in fact the great Mediterranean Sea of the New-Netherlands,' stands a little old-fashioned stone mansion, all made up of gable-ends, and as full of angles and corners as an old cocked hat. It is said, in fact, to have been modelled after the cocked hat of Peter the Headstrong,' as the Escurial was modelled after the gridiron of the blessed St. Lawrence. Though but of small dimensions, yet, like many small people, it is of mighty spirit, and values itself greatly on its antiquity, being one of the oldest edifices, for its size, in the whole country. It claims to be an ancient seat of empire, I may rather say an empire in itself, and like all empires, great and small, has had its grand historical epochs. In speaking of this doughty and valorous little pile,' I shall call it by its usual appellation of "The Roost;" though that is a name given to it in modern days, since it became the abode of the white man. Its origin, in truth, dates far back in that remote region commonly called the fabulous age, in which vulgar fact as we anchored at night at the foot of these mountains, clothed with overhanging forests; and everything grew dark and mysterious; and I heard the plaintive note of the whip-poor-will from the mountain-side, or was startled now and then by the sudden leap and heavy splash of the sturgeon."Life and Letters, i., 19. 1 See p. 38, note. 2 commonly.. 3 The name "Tappaan " appears on very early maps, as applied to the expansion of the Judson south of Croton Point. 4 The name means "in the middle of the world." 5 the name of the Dutch possessions in America. 6 See Introduction, p. 17. 8 the royal palace at Madrid: a reminiscence of Irving's years in Spain. 9 a term often applied to great buildings; here somewhat humorous. Irving's cottage," The Roost," was afterward, as has been said (p. 18), called "Sunnyside." becomes mystified, and tinted up with delectable fiction. The eastern shore of the Tappan Sea was inhabited in those days by an unsophisticated race, existing in all the simplicity of nature; that is to say, they lived by hunting and fishing, and recreated themselves occasionally with a little tomahawking and scalping. Each stream that flows down from the hills into the Hudson, had its petty sachem, who ruled over a hand's breadth of forest on either side, and had his seat of government at its mouth. The chieftain who ruled at the Roost, was not merely a great warrior, but a medicine-man, or prophet, or conjurer, for they all mean the same thing in Indian parlance. Of his fighting propensities, evidences still remain, in various arrow-heads of flint, and stone battle-axes, occasionally digged up about the Roost of his wizard powers, we have a token in a spring which wells up at the foot of the bank, on the very margin of the river, which, it is said, was gifted by him with rejuvenating powers, something like the renowned Fountain of Youth' in the Floridas, so anxiously but vainly sought after by the veteran Ponce de Leon. This story, however, is stoutly contradicted by an old Dutch matterof-fact tradition, which declares that the spring in question was smuggled over from Holland in a churn, by Femmetie Van Blarcom, wife of Goosen Garret Van Blarcom, one of the first settlers, and that she took it up by night, unknown to her husband, from beside their farm-house near Rotterdam; being sure she should find no water equal to it in the new country-and she was right. : 2 The wizard sachem had a great passion for discussing territorial questions, and settling boundary lines, in other words, he had the spirit of annexation; this kept him in continual feud with the neighboring sachems, each of whom stood up stoutly for his hand-breadth of territory; so that there is not a petty 1 The Fountain of Youth, whose waters made one young again, was eagerly sought by the Spaniards. 2 the discoverer of Florida. He was 1521 killed in a fight with the Indians in 1501, on an expedition in search of the fabled island of Bimini, in which was the famous fountain. stream nor rugged hill in the neighborhood, that has not been the subject of long talks and hard battles. The sachem, however, as has been observed, was a medicine-man, as well as warrior, and vindicated his claims by arts as well as arms; so that, by dint of a little hard fighting here, and hocus pocus (or diplomacy) there, he managed to extend his boundary line from field to field and stream to stream, until it brought him into collision with the powerful sachem of Sing-Sing. Many were the sharp conflicts between these rival chieftains for the sovereignty of a winding valley, a favorite hunting ground watered by a beautiful stream called the Pocantico. Many were the ambuscades, surprisals, and deadly onslaughts that took place among its fastnesses, of which it grieves me much that I cannot pursue the details, for the gratification of those gentle but bloody-minded readers, of both sexes, who delight in the romance of the tomahawk and scalping-knife. Suffice it to say, that the wizard chieftain was at length victorious, though his victory is attributed, in Indian tradition, to a great medicine, or charm, by which he laid the sachem of Sing-Sing and his warriors asleep among the rocks and recesses of the valley, where they remain asleep to the present day, with their bows and war-clubs beside them.' This was the origin of that potent and drowsy spell, which still prevails over the valley of the Pocantico, and which has gained it the well-merited appellation of Sleepy Hollow. Often, in secluded and quiet parts of that valley, where the stream is overhung by dark woods and rocks, the ploughman, on some calm and sunny day, as he shouts to his oxen, is surprised at hearing faint shouts from the hill-sides in reply; being, it is said, the spell-bound warriors, who half start from their rocky couches and grasp their weapons, but sink to sleep again. The conquest of the Pocantico was the last triumph of the The same legend is current in Germany, where the great emperor Frederick Barbarossa sleeps with all his men, some say in the vaults of his old palace of Kaiserslautern, some say in the castle of Rodenstein, some under the Kyffhäuser. |