
A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT'S ROOST.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.

Sir: I have observed that as a man advances in life, he is subject to
a kind of plethora of the mind, doubtless occasioned by the vast
accumulation of wisdom and experience upon the brain. Hence he is apt to
become narrative and admonitory, that is to say, fond of telling long
stories, and of doling out advice, to the small profit and great
annoyance of his friends. As I have a great horror of becoming the
oracle, or, more technically speaking, the "bore," of the domestic
circle, and would much rather bestow my wisdom and tediousness upon the
world at large, I have always sought to ease off this surcharge of the
intellect by means of my pen, and hence have inflicted divers gossiping
volumes upon the patience of the public. I am tired, however, of writing
volumes; they do not afford exactly the relief I require; there is too
much preparation, arrangement, and parade, in this set form of coming
before the public. I am growing too indolent and unambitious for any
thing that requires labor or display. I have thought, therefore, of
securing to myself a snug corner in some periodical work where I might,
as it were, loll at my ease in my elbow-chair, and chat sociably with
the public, as with an old friend, on any chance subject that might pop
into my brain.

In looking around, for this purpose, upon the various excellent
periodicals with which our country abounds, my eye was struck by the
title of your work--"THE KNICKERBOCKER." My heart leaped at the sight.
DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER, Sir, was one of my earliest and most valued
friends, and the recollection of him is associated with some of the
pleasantest scenes of my youthful days. To explain this, and to show how
I came into possession of sundry of his posthumous works, which I
have from time to time given to the world, permit me to relate a
few particulars of our early intercourse. I give them with the more
confidence, as I know the interest you take in that departed worthy,
whose name and effigy are stamped upon your title-page, and as they will
be found important to the better understanding and relishing divers
communications I may have to make to you.

My first acquaintance with that great and good man, for such I may
venture to call him, now that the lapse of some thirty years has
shrouded his name with venerable antiquity, and the popular voice has
elevated him to the rank of the classic historians of yore, my first
acquaintance with him was formed on the banks of the Hudson, not far
from the wizard region of Sleepy Hollow. He had come there in the course
of his researches among the Dutch neighborhoods for materials for his
immortal history. For this purpose, he was ransacking the archives of
one of the most ancient and historical mansions in the country. It was
a lowly edifice, built in the time of the Dutch dynasty, and stood on a
green bank, overshadowed by trees, from which it peeped forth upon the
Great Tappan Zee, so famous among early Dutch navigators. A bright
pure spring welled up at the foot of the green bank; a wild brook came
babbling down a neighboring ravine, and threw itself into a little woody
cove, in front of the mansion. It was indeed as quiet and sheltered a
nook as the heart of man could require, in which to take refuge from the
cares and troubles of the world; and as such, it had been chosen in old
times, by Wolfert Acker, one of the privy councillors of the renowned
Peter Stuyvesant.

This worthy but ill-starred man had led a weary and worried life,
throughout the stormy reign of the chivalric Peter, being one of those
unlucky wights with whom the world is ever at variance, and who are kept
in a continual fume and fret, by the wickedness of mankind. At the time
of the subjugation of the province by the English, he retired hither in
high dudgeon; with the bitter determination to bury himself from the
world, and live here in peace and quietness for the remainder of his
days. In token of this fixed resolution, he inscribed over his door the
favorite Dutch motto, "Lust in Rust," (pleasure in repose.) The mansion
was thence called "Wolfert's Rust"--Wolfert's Rest; but in process of
time, the name was vitiated into Wolfert's Roost, probably from its
quaint cock-loft look, or from its having a weather-cock perched on
every gable. This name it continued to bear, long after the unlucky
Wolfert was driven forth once more upon a wrangling world, by the
tongue of a termagant wife; for it passed into a proverb through the
neighborhood, and has been handed down by tradition, that the cock of
the Roost was the most hen-pecked bird in the country.

This primitive and historical mansion has since passed through many
changes and trials, which it may be my lot hereafter to notice. At the
time of the sojourn of Diedrich Knickerbocker it was in possession of
the gallant family of the Van Tassels, who have figured so conspicuously
in his writings. What appears to have given it peculiar value, in his
eyes, was the rich treasury of historical facts here secretly hoarded
up, like buried gold; for it is said that Wolfert Acker, when he
retreated from New Amsterdam, carried off with him many of the records
and journals of the province, pertaining to the Dutch dynasty; swearing
that they should never fall into the hands of the English. These, like
the lost books of Livy, had baffled the research of former historians;
but these did I find the indefatigable Diedrich diligently deciphering.
He was already a sage in year's and experience, I but an idle stripling;
yet he did not despise my youth and ignorance, but took me kindly by the
hand, and led me gently into those paths of local and traditional lore
which he was so fond of exploring. I sat with him in his little chamber
at the Roost, and watched the antiquarian patience and perseverance
with which he deciphered those venerable Dutch documents, worse than
Herculanean manuscripts. I sat with him by the spring, at the foot of
the green bank, and listened to his heroic tales about the worthies of
the olden time, the paladins of New Amsterdam. I accompanied him in his
legendary researches about Tarrytown and Sing-Sing, and explored with
him the spell-bound recesses of Sleepy Hollow. I was present at many of
his conferences with the good old Dutch burghers and their wives, from
whom he derived many of those marvelous facts not laid down in books
or records, and which give such superior value and authenticity to his
history, over all others that have been written concerning the New
Netherlands.

But let me check my proneness to dilate upon this favorite theme; I may
recur to it hereafter. Suffice it to say, the intimacy thus formed,
continued for a considerable time; and in company with the worthy
Diedrich, I visited many of the places celebrated by his pen. The
currents of our lives at length diverged. He remained at home to
complete his mighty work, while a vagrant fancy led me to wander about
the world. Many, many years elapsed, before I returned to the parent
soil. In the interim, the venerable historian of the New Netherlands
had been gathered to his fathers, but his name had risen to renown. His
native city, that city in which he so much delighted, had decreed all
manner of costly honors to his memory. I found his effigy imprinted upon
new-year cakes, and devoured with eager relish by holiday urchins; a
great oyster-house bore the name of "Knickerbocker Hall;" and I narrowly
escaped the pleasure of being run over by a Knickerbocker omnibus!

Proud of having associated with a man who had achieved such greatness,
I now recalled our early intimacy with tenfold pleasure, and sought to
revisit the scenes we had trodden together. The most important of
these was the mansion of the Van Tassels, the Roost of the unfortunate
Wolfert. Time, which changes all things, is but slow in its operations
upon a Dutchman's dwelling. I found the venerable and quaint little
edifice much as I had seen it during the sojourn of Diedrich. There
stood his elbow-chair in the corner of the room he had occupied;
the old-fashioned Dutch writing-desk at which he had pored over the
chronicles of the Manhattoes; there was the old wooden chest, with the
archives left by Wolfert Acker, many of which, however, had been fired
off as wadding from the long duck gun of the Van Tassels. The scene
around the mansion was still the same; the green bank; the spring beside
which I had listened to the legendary narratives of the historian; the
wild brook babbling down to the woody cove, and the overshadowing locust
trees, half shutting out the prospect of the great Tappan Zee.

As I looked round upon the scene, my heart yearned at the recollection
of my departed friend, and I wistfully eyed the mansion which he had
inhabited, and which was fast mouldering to decay. The thought struck me
to arrest the desolating hand of Time; to rescue the historic pile from
utter ruin, and to make it the closing scene of my wanderings; a quiet
home, where I might enjoy "lust in rust" for the remainder of my days.
It is true, the fate of the unlucky Wolfert passed across my mind; but
I consoled myself with the reflection that I was a bachelor, and that I
had no termagant wife to dispute the sovereignty of the Roost with me.

I have become possessor of the Roost! I have repaired and renovated it
with religious care, in the genuine Dutch style, and have adorned and
illustrated it with sundry reliques of the glorious days of the New
Netherlands. A venerable weathercock, of portly Dutch dimensions,
which once battled with the wind on the top of the Stadt-House of New
Amsterdam, in the time of Peter Stuyvesant, now erects its crest on
the gable end of my edifice; a gilded horse in full gallop, once the
weathercock of the great Vander Heyden Palace of Albany, now glitters in
the sunshine, and veers with every breeze, on the peaked turret over
my portal; my sanctum sanctorum is the chamber once honored by the
illustrious Diedrich, and it is from his elbow-chair, and his identical
old Dutch writing-desk, that I pen this rambling epistle.

Here, then, have I set up my rest, surrounded by the recollections of
early days, and the mementoes of the historian of the Manhattoes, with
that glorious river before me, which flows with such majesty through his
works, and which has ever been to me a river of delight.

I thank God I was born on the banks of the Hudson! I think it an
invaluable advantage to be born and brought up in the neighborhood of
some grand and noble object in nature; a river, a lake, or a mountain.
We make a friendship with it, we in a manner ally ourselves to it for
life. It remains an object of our pride and affections, a rallying
point, to call us home again after all our wanderings. "The things which
we have learned in our childhood," says an old writer, "grow up with our
souls, and unite themselves to it." So it is with the scenes among which
we have passed our early days; they influence the whole course of our
thoughts and feelings; and I fancy I can trace much of what is good and
pleasant in my own heterogeneous compound to my early companionship with
this glorious river. In the warmth of my youthful enthusiasm, I used to
clothe it with moral attributes, and almost to give it a soul. I admired
its frank, bold, honest character; its noble sincerity and perfect
truth. Here was no specious, smiling surface, covering the dangerous
sand-bar or perfidious rock; but a stream deep as it was broad, and
bearing with honorable faith the bark that trusted to its waves. I
gloried in its simple, quiet, majestic, epic flow; ever straight
forward. Once, indeed, it turns aside for a moment, forced from its
course by opposing mountains, but it struggles bravely through them, and
immediately resumes its straightforward march. Behold, thought I, an
emblem of a good man's course through life; ever simple, open, and
direct; or if, overpowered by adverse circumstances, he deviate into
error, it is but momentary; he soon recovers his onward and honorable
career, and continues it to the end of his pilgrimage.

Excuse this rhapsody, into which I have been betrayed by a revival of
early feelings. The Hudson is, in a manner, my first and last love; and
after all my wanderings and seeming infidelities, I return to it with a
heart-felt preference over all the other rivers in the world. I seem
to catch new life as I bathe in its ample billows and inhale the pure
breezes of its hills. It is true, the romance of youth is past, that
once spread illusions over every scene. I can no longer picture an
Arcadia in every green valley; nor a fairy land among the distant
mountains; nor a peerless beauty in every villa gleaming among the
trees; but though the illusions of youth have faded from the landscape,
the recollections of departed years and departed pleasures shed over it
the mellow charm of evening sunshine.

Permit me, then, Mr. Editor, through the medium of your work, to
hold occasional discourse from my retreat with the busy world I have
abandoned. I have much to say about what I have seen, heard, felt, and
thought through the course of a varied and rambling life, and some
lucubrations that have long been encumbering my portfolio; together with
divers reminiscences of the venerable historian of the New Netherlands,
that may not be unacceptable to those who have taken an interest in his
writings, and are desirous of any thing that may cast a light back upon
our early history. Let your readers rest assured of one thing, that,
though retired from the world, I am not disgusted with it; and that if
in my communings with it I do not prove very wise, I trust I shall at
least prove very good-natured.

Which is all at present, from

Yours, etc.,

GEOFFREY CRAYON.

       *       *       *       *       *

TO THE EDITOR OF THE KNICKERBOCKER.

Worthy Sir: In a preceding communication, I have given you some brief
notice of Wolfert's Roost, the mansion where I first had the good
fortune to become acquainted with the venerable historian of the New
Netherlands. As this ancient edifice is likely to be the place whence
I shall date many of my lucubrations, and as it is really a very
remarkable little pile, intimately connected with all the great epochs
of our local and national history, I have thought it but right to give
some farther particulars concerning it. Fortunately, in rummaging a
ponderous Dutch chest of drawers, which serves as the archives of the
Roost, and in which are preserved many inedited manuscripts of Mr.
KNICKERBOCKER, together with the precious records of New-Amsterdam,
brought hither by Wolfert Acker at the downfall of the Dutch dynasty,
as has been already mentioned, I found in one corner, among dried
pumpkin-seeds, bunches of thyme, and pennyroyal, and crumbs of new-year
cakes, a manuscript, carefully wrapped up in the fragment of an old
parchment deed, but much blotted, and the ink grown foxy by time, which,
on inspection, I discovered to be a faithful chronicle of the Roost. The
hand-writing, and certain internal evidences, leave no doubt in my
mind, that it is a genuine production of the venerable historian of the
New-Netherlands, written, very probably, during his residence at the
Roost, in gratitude for the hospitality of its proprietor. As such, I
submit it for publication. As the entire chronicle is too long for the
pages of your Magazine, and as it contains many minute particulars,
which might prove tedious to the general reader, I have abbreviated and
occasionally omitted some of its details; but may hereafter furnish
them separately, should they seem to be required by the curiosity of an
enlightened and document-hunting public. Respectfully yours, GEOFFREY
CRAXON.

       *       *       *       *       *

A CHRONICLE OF WOLFERT'S ROOST.

FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE LATE DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER.

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 Tappan 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. 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 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 arrowheads 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
matter-of-fact tradition, which declares that the spring in question was
smuggled over from Holland in a churn, by Femmetie Van Slocum, wife of
Goosen Garret Van Slocum, 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.

The wizard sachem had a great passion for discussing territorial
questions, and settling boundary lines; 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 stream nor
ragged 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 there, he managed to extend his boundary-line from field
to field and stream to stream, until he found himself in legitimate
possession of that region of hills and valleys, bright fountains and
limpid brooks, locked in by the mazy windings of the Neperan and the
Pocantico. [Footnote: As every one may not recognize these boundaries
by their original Indian names, it may be well to observe, that the
Neperan is that beautiful stream, vulgarly called the Saw-Mill River,
which, after winding gracefully for many miles through a lovely valley,
shrouded by groves, and dotted by Dutch farm-houses, empties itself
into the Hudson, at the ancient drop of Yonkers. The Pocantico is that
hitherto nameless brook, that, rising among woody hills, winds in many a
wizard maze through the sequestered banks of Sleepy Hollow. We owe it to
the indefatigable researches of Mr. KNICKERBOCKER, that those beautiful
streams are rescued from modern common-place, and reinvested with their
ancient Indian names. The correctness of the venerable historian may be
ascertained, by reference to the records of the original Indian grants
to the Herr Frederick Philipsen, preserved in the county clerk's office,
at White Plains.]

This last-mentioned stream, or rather the valley through which it flows,
was the most difficult of all his acquisitions. It lay half way to the
strong-hold of the redoubtable sachem of Sing-Sing, and was claimed by
him as an integral part of his domains. Many were the sharp conflicts
between the rival chieftains for the sovereignty of this valley, and
many the ambuscades, surprisals, and deadly onslaughts that took place
among its fastnesses, of which it grieves me much that I cannot furnish
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 wizard sachem.
Notwithstanding all his medicine and charms, he fell in battle in
attempting to extend his boundary line to the east so as to take in the
little wild valley of the Sprain, and his grave is still shown near the
banks of that pastoral stream. He left, however, a great empire to his
successors, extending along the Tappan Zee, from Yonkers quite to Sleepy
Hollow; all which delectable region, if every one had his right, would
still acknowledge allegiance to the lord of the Boost--whoever he might
be. [Footnote: In recording the contest for the sovereignty of Sleepy
Hollow, I have called one sachem by the modern name of his castle or
strong-hold, viz.: Sing-Sing. This, I would observe for the sake
of historical exactness, is a corruption of the old Indian name,
O-sin-sing, or rather O-sin-song; that is to say, a place where any
thing may be had for a song--a great recommendation tor a market town.
The modern and melodious alteration of the name to Sing-Sing is said to
have been made in compliment to an eminent Methodist singing-master, who
first introduced into the neighborhood the art of singing through the
nose. D. K.]

The wizard sachem was succeeded by a line of chiefs, of whom nothing
remarkable remains on record. The last who makes any figure in history
is the one who ruled here at the time of the discovery of the country by
the white man. This sachem is said to have been a renowned trencherman,
who maintained almost as potent a sway by dint of good feeding as his
warlike predecessor had done by hard fighting. He diligently cultivated
the growth of oysters along the aquatic borders of his territories, and
founded those great oyster-beds which yet exist along the shores of the
Tappan Zee. Did any dispute occur between him and a neighboring sachem,
he invited him and all his principal sages and fighting-men to a solemn
banquet, and seldom failed of feeding them into terms. Enormous heaps of
oyster-shells, which encumber the lofty banks of the river, remain as
monuments of his gastronomical victories, and have been occasionally
adduced through mistake by amateur geologists from town, as additional
proofs of the deluge. Modern investigators, who are making such
indefatigable researches into our early history, have even affirmed that
this sachem was the very individual on whom Master Hendrick Hudson and
his mate, Robert Juet, made that sage and astounding experiment so
gravely recorded by the latter in his narrative of the voyage: "Our
master and his mate determined to try some of the cheefe men of the
country whether they had any treacherie in them. So they took them down
into the cabin and gave them so much wine and aqua vitae that they
were all very merrie; one of them had his wife with him, which sate so
modestly as any of our countrywomen would do in a strange place. In the
end one of them was drunke; and that was strange to them, for they
could not tell how to take it." [Footnote: See Juet's Journal, Purchas
Pilgrim.]

How far Master Hendrick Hudson and his worthy mate carried their
experiment with the sachem's wife is not recorded, neither does the
curious Robert Juet make any mention of the after-consequences of this
grand moral test; tradition, however, affirms that the sachem on landing
gave his modest spouse a hearty rib-roasting, according to the connubial
discipline of the aboriginals; it farther affirms that he remained a
hard drinker to the day of his death, trading away all his lands, acre
by acre, for aqua vitae; by which means the Roost and all its domains,
from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow, came, in the regular course of trade and
by right of purchase, into the possession of the Dutchmen.

Never has a territorial right in these new countries been more
legitimately and tradefully established; yet, I grieve to say, the
worthy government of the New Netherlands was not suffered to enjoy this
grand acquisition unmolested; for, in the year 1654, the local Yankees
of Connecticut--those swapping, bargaining, squatting enemies of the
Manhattoes--made a daring inroad into this neighborhood and founded a
colony called Westchester, or, as the ancient Dutch records term it,
Vest Dorp, in the right of one Thomas Pell, who pretended to have
purchased the whole surrounding country of the Indians, and stood ready
to argue their claims before any tribunal of Christendom.

This happened during the chivalrous reign of Peter Stuyvesant, and it
roused the ire of that gunpowder old hero; who, without waiting to
discuss claims and titles, pounced at once upon the nest of nefarious
squatters, carried off twenty-five of them in chains to the Manhattoes,
nor did he stay his hand, nor give rest to his wooden leg, until he had
driven every Yankee back into the bounds of Connecticut, or obliged
him to acknowledge allegiance to their High Mightinesses. He then
established certain out-posts, far in the Indian country, to keep an eye
over these debateable lands; one of these border-holds was the Roost,
being accessible from New Amsterdam by water, and easily kept supplied.
The Yankees, however, had too great a hankering after this delectable
region to give it up entirely. Some remained and swore allegiance to the
Manhattoes; but, while they kept this open semblance of fealty, they
went to work secretly and vigorously to intermarry and multiply, and by
these nefarious means, artfully propagated themselves into possession of
a wide tract of those open, arable parts of Westchester county, lying
along the Sound, where their descendants may be found at the present
day; while the mountainous regions along the Hudson, with the valleys
of the Neperan and the Pocantico, are tenaciously held by the lineal
descendants of the Copperheads.

       *       *       *       *       *

The chronicle of the venerable Diedrich here goes on to relate how that,
shortly after the above-mentioned events, the whole province of the New
Netherlands 'was subjugated by the British; how that Wolfert Acker, one
of the wrangling councillors of Peter Stuyvesant, retired in dudgeon to
this fastness in the wilderness, determining to enjoy "lust in rust" for
the remainder of his days, whence the place first received its name of
Wolfert's Roost. As these and sundry other matters have been laid before
the public in a preceding article, I shall pass them over, and resume
the chronicle where it treats of matters not hitherto recorded:

Like many men who retire from a worrying world, says DIEDRICH
KNICKERBOCKER, to enjoy quiet in the country, Wolfert Acker soon found
himself up to the ears in trouble. He had a termagant wife at home,
and there was what is profanely called "the deuce to pay," abroad. The
recent irruption of the Yankees into the bounds of the New Netherlands,
had left behind it a doleful pestilence, such as is apt to follow the
steps of invading armies. This was the deadly plague of witchcraft,
which had long been prevalent to the eastward. The malady broke out at
Vest Dorp, and threatened to spread throughout the country. The Dutch
burghers along the Hudson, from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow, hastened to
nail horseshoes to their doors, which have ever been found of sovereign
virtue to repel this awful visitation. This is the origin of the
horse-shoes which may still be seen nailed to the doors of barns and
farmhouses, in various parts of this sage and sober-thoughted region.

The evil, however, bore hard upon the Roost; partly, perhaps, from its
having in old times been subject to supernatural influences, during the
sway of the Wizard Sachem; but it has always, in fact, been considered a
fated mansion. The unlucky Wolfert had no rest day nor night. When the
weather was quiet all over the country, the wind would howl and whistle
round his roof; witches would ride and whirl upon his weathercocks, and
scream down his chimneys. His cows gave bloody milk, and his horses
broke bounds, and scampered into the woods. There were not wanting evil
tongues to whisper that Wolfert's termagant wife had some tampering
with the enemy; and that she even attended a witches' Sabbath in Sleepy
Hollow; nay, a neighbor, who lived hard by, declared that he saw her
harnessing a rampant broom-stick, and about to ride to the meeting;
though others presume it was merely flourished in the course of one of
her curtain lectures, to give energy and emphasis to a period. Certain
it is, that Wolfert Acker nailed a horse-shoe to the front door, during
one of her nocturnal excursions, to prevent her return; but as she
re-entered the house without any difficulty, it is probable she was
not so much of a witch as she was represented. [Footnote: HISTORICAL
NOTE.--The annexed extracts from the early colonial records, relate to
the irruption of witchcraft into Westchester county, as mentioned in the
chronicle:

"JULY 7, l670.--Katharine Harryson, accused of witchcraft on complaint of
Thomas Hunt and Edward Waters, in behalf of the town, who pray that she
may be driven from the town of Westchester. The woman appears before
the council.... She was a native of England, and had lived a year in
Weathersfield, Connecticut, where she had been tried for witchcraft,
found guilty by the jury, acquitted by the bench, and released out of
prison, upon condition she would remove. Affair adjourned.

"AUGUST 24.--Affair taken up again, when, being heard at large, it was
referred to the general court of assize. Woman ordered to give security
for good behavior," etc.

In another place is the following entry:

"Order given for Katharine Harryson, charged with witchcraft, to leave
Westchester, as the inhabitants are uneasy at her residing there, and
she is ordered to go off."]

After the time of Wolfert Acker, a long interval elapses, about which
but little is known. It is hoped, however, that the antiquarian
researches so diligently making in every part of this new country, may
yet throw some light upon what may be termed the Dark Ages of the Roost.

The next period at which we find this venerable and eventful pile rising
to importance, and resuming its old belligerent character, is during the
revolutionary war. It was at that time owned by Jacob Van Tassel, or Van
Texel, as the name was originally spelled, after the place in Holland
which gave birth to this heroic line. He was strong-built, long-limbed,
and as stout in soul as in body; a fit successor to the warrior sachem
of yore, and, like him, delighting in extravagant enterprises and hardy
deeds of arms. But, before I enter upon the exploits of this worthy cock
of the Boost, it is fitting I should throw some light upon the state of
the mansion, and of the surrounding country, at the time.

The situation of the Roost is in the very heart of what was the
debateable ground between the American and British lines, during the
war. The British held possession of the city of New York, and the island
of Manhattan on which it stands. The Americans drew up toward the
Highlands, holding their headquarters at Peekskill. The intervening
country, from Croton River to Spiting Devil Creek, was the debateable
land, subject to be harried by friend and foe, like the Scottish borders
of yore. It is a rugged country, with a line of rocky hills extending
through it, like a back bone, sending ribs on either side; but among
these rude hills are beautiful winding valleys, like those watered by
the Pocantico and the Neperan. In the fastnesses of these hills,
and along these valleys, exist a race of hard-headed, hard-handed,
stout-hearted Dutchmen, descendants of the primitive Nederlanders. Most
of these were strong whigs throughout the war, and have ever remained
obstinately attached to the soil, and neither to be fought nor bought
out of their paternal acres. Others were tories, and adherents to the
old kingly rule; some of whom took refuge within the British lines,
joined the royal bands of refugees, a name odious to the American ear,
and occasionally returned to harass their ancient neighbors.

In a little while, this debateable land was overrun by predatory bands
from either side; sacking hen-roosts, plundering farm-houses, and
driving off cattle. Hence arose those two great orders of border
chivalry, the Skinners and the Cowboys, famous in the heroic annals of
Westchester county. The former fought, or rather marauded, under the
American, the latter under the British banner; but both, in the hurry of
their military ardor, were apt to err on the safe side, and rob friend
as well as foe. Neither of them stopped to ask the politics of horse or
cow, which they drove into captivity; nor, when they wrung the neck of
a rooster, did they trouble their heads to ascertain whether he were
crowing for Congress or King George.

While this marauding system prevailed on shore, the Great Tappan Sea,
which washes this belligerent region, was domineered over by British
frigates and other vessels of war, anchored here and there, to keep an
eye upon the river, and maintain a communication between the various
military posts. Stout galleys, also, armed with eighteen-pounders, and
navigated with sails and oars, cruised about like hawks, ready to pounce
upon their prey.

All these were eyed with bitter hostility by the Dutch yeomanry along
shore, who were indignant at seeing their great Mediterranean ploughed
by hostile prows; and would occasionally throw up a mud breast-work on a
point or promontory, mount an old iron field-piece, and fire away at the
enemy, though the greatest harm was apt to happen to themselves from the
bursting of their ordnance; nay, there was scarce a Dutchman along the
river that would hesitate to fire with his long duck gun at any British
cruiser that came within reach, as he had been accustomed to fire at
water-fowl.

I have been thus particular in my account of the times and neighborhood,
that the reader might the more readily comprehend the surrounding
dangers in this the Heroic Age of the Roost.

It was commanded at the time, as I have already observed, by the stout
Jacob Van Tassel. As I wish to be extremely accurate in this part of
my chronicle, I beg that this Jacob Van Tassel of the Roost may not be
confounded with another Jacob Van Tassel, commonly known in border story
by the name of "Clump-footed Jake," a noted tory, and one of the refugee
band of Spiting Devil. On the contrary, he of the Roost was a patriot of
the first water, and, if we may take his own word for granted, a thorn
in the side of the enemy. As the Roost, from its lonely situation on the
water's edge, might be liable to attack, he took measures for defence.
On a row of hooks above his fire-place, reposed his great piece of
ordnance, ready charged and primed for action. This was a duck, or
rather goose-gun, of unparalleled longitude, with which it was said he
could kill a wild goose, though half-way across the Tappan Sea. Indeed,
there are as many wonders told of this renowned gun, as of the enchanted
weapons of the heroes of classic story.

In different parts of the stone walls of his mansion, he had made
loop-holes, through which he might fire upon an assailant. His wife was
stout-hearted as himself, and could load as fast as he could fire; and
then he had an ancient and redoubtable sister, Nochie Van Wurmer, a
match, as he said, for the stoutest man in the country. Thus garrisoned,
the little Roost was fit to stand a siege, and Jacob Van Tassel was the
man to defend it to the last charge of powder.

He was, as I have already hinted, of pugnacious propensities; and, not
content with being a patriot at home, and fighting for the security of
his own fireside, he extended his thoughts abroad, and entered into a
confederacy with certain of the bold, hard-riding lads of Tarrytown,
Petticoat Lane, and Sleepy Hollow, who formed a kind of Holy
Brotherhood, scouring the country to clear it of Skinner and Cow-boy,
and all other border vermin. The Roost was one of their rallying points.
Did a band of marauders from Manhattan island come sweeping through the
neighborhood, and driving off cattle, the stout Jacob and his compeers
were soon clattering at their heels, and fortunate did the rogues esteem
themselves if they could but get a part of their booty across the lines,
or escape themselves without a rough handling. Should the mosstroopers
succeed in passing with their cavalcade, with thundering tramp and dusty
whirlwind, across Kingsbridge, the Holy Brotherhood of the Roost would
rein up at that perilous pass, and, wheeling about, would indemnify
themselves by foraging the refugee region of Morrisania.

When at home at the Roost, the stout Jacob was not idle; but was prone
to carry on a petty warfare of his own, for his private recreation and
refreshment. Did he ever chance to espy, from his look-out place, a
hostile ship or galley anchored or becalmed near shore, he would take
down his long goose-gun from the hooks over the fire-place, sally
out alone, and lurk along shore, dodging behind rocks and trees, and
watching for hours together, like a veteran mouser intent on a rat-hole.
So sure as a boat put off for shore, and came within shot, bang! went
the great goose-gun; a shower of slugs and buck-shot whistled about the
ears of the enemy, and before the boat could reach the shore, Jacob had
scuttled up some woody ravine, and left no trace behind. About this
time, the Roost experienced a vast accession of warlike importance, in
being made one of the stations of the water-guard. This was a kind of
aquatic corps of observation, composed of long, sharp, canoe-shaped
boats, technically called whale-boats, that lay lightly on the water,
and could be rowed with great rapidity. They were manned by resolute
fellows, skilled at pulling an oar, or handling a musket. These lurked
about in nooks and bays, and behind those long promontories which run
out into the Tappan Sea, keeping a look-out, to give notice of the
approach or movements of hostile ships. They roved about in pairs;
sometimes at night, with muffled oars, gliding like spectres about
frigates and guard-ships riding at anchor, cutting off any boats that
made for shore, and keeping the enemy in constant uneasiness. These
mosquito-cruisers generally kept aloof by day, so that their harboring
places might not be discovered, but would pull quietly along, under
shadow of the shore, at night, to take up their quarters at the Roost.
Hither, at such time, would also repair the hard-riding lads of the
hills, to hold secret councils of war with the "ocean chivalry;" and in
these nocturnal meetings were concerted many of those daring forays, by
land and water, that resounded throughout the border.

       *       *       *       *       *

The chronicle here goes on to recount divers wonderful stories of the
wars of the Roost, from which it would seem, that this little warrior
nest carried the terror of its arms into every sea, from Spiting Devil
Creek to Antony's Nose; that it even bearded the stout island of
Manhattan, invading it at night, penetrating to its centre, and burning
down the famous Delancey house, the conflagration of which makes such a
blaze in revolutionary history. Nay more, in their extravagant daring,
these cocks of the Roost meditated a nocturnal descent upon New York
itself, to swoop upon the British commanders, Howe and Clinton, by
surprise, bear them off captive, and perhaps put a triumphant close to
the war!

All these and many similar exploits are recorded by the worthy Diedrich,
with his usual minuteness and enthusiasm, whenever the deeds in arms of
his kindred Dutchmen are in question; but though most of these warlike
stories rest upon the best of all authority, that of the warriors
themselves, and though many of them are still current among the
revolutionary patriarchs of this heroic neighborhood, yet I dare not
expose them to the incredulity of a tamer and less chivalric age,
Suffice it to say, the frequent gatherings at the Roost, and the hardy
projects set on foot there, at length drew on it the fiery indignation
of the enemy; and this was quickened by the conduct of the stout Jacob
Van Tassel; with whose valorous achievements we resume the course of the
chronicle.

       *       *       *       *       *

THIS doughty Dutchman, continues the sage DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER, was
not content with taking a share in all the magnanimous enterprises
concocted at the Roost, but still continued his petty warfare along
shore. A series of exploits at length raised his confidence in his
prowess to such a height, that he began to think himself and his
goose-gun a match for any thing. Unluckily, in the course of one of his
prowlings, he descried a British transport aground, not far from shore,
with her stern swung toward the land, within point-blank shot. The
temptation was too great to be resisted; bang! as usual, went the great
goose-gun, shivering the cabin windows, and driving all hands forward.
Bang! bang! the shots were repeated. The reports brought several
sharp-shooters of the neighborhood to the spot; before the transport
could bring a gun to bear, or land a boat, to take revenge, she was
soundly peppered, and the coast evacuated. This was the last of Jacob's
triumphs. He fared like some heroic spider, that has unwittingly
ensnared a hornet, to his immortal glory, perhaps, but to the utter ruin
of his web.

It was not long after this, during the absence of Jacob Van Tassel on
one of his forays, and when no one was in garrison but his stout-hearted
spouse, his redoubtable sister, Nochie Van Wurmer, and a strapping negro
wench, called Dinah, that an armed vessel came to anchor off the Roost,
and a boat full of men pulled to shore. The garrison flew to arms, that
is to say, to mops, broom-sticks, shovels, tongs, and all kinds of
domestic weapons; for, unluckily, the great piece of ordnance, the
goose-gun, was absent with its owner. Above all, a vigorous defence was
made with that most potent of female weapons, the tongue. Never did
invaded hen-roost make a more vociferous outcry. It was all in vain. The
house was sacked and plundered, fire was set to each corner, and in a
few moments its blaze shed a baleful light far over the Tappan Sea. The
invaders then pounced upon the blooming Laney Van Tassel, the beauty of
the Roost, and endeavored to bear her off to the boat. But here was the
real tug of war. The mother, the aunt, and the strapping negro wench,
all flew to the rescue. The struggle continued down to the very water's
edge; when a voice from the armed vessel at anchor, ordered the spoilers
to let go their hold; they relinquished their prize, jumped into their
boats, and pulled off, and the heroine of the Roost escaped with a mere
rumpling of the feathers.

The fear of tiring my readers, who may not take such an interest as
myself in these heroic themes, induces me to close here my extracts from
this precious chronicle of the venerable Diedrich. Suffice it briefly to
say, that shortly after the catastrophe of the Roost, Jacob Van Tassel,
in the course of one of his forays, fell into the hands of the British;
was sent prisoner to New York, and was detained in captivity for
the greater part of the war. In the mean time, the Roost remained a
melancholy ruin; its stone walls and brick chimneys alone standing,
blackened by fire, and the resort of bats and owlets. It was not until
the return of peace, when this belligerent neighborhood once more
resumed its quiet agricultural pursuits, that the stout Jacob sought the
scene of his triumphs and disasters; rebuilt the Roost, and reared again
on high its glittering weather-cocks.

Does any one want further particulars of the fortunes of this eventful
little pile? Let him go to the fountain-head, and drink deep of historic
truth. Reader! the stout Jacob Van Tassel still lives, a venerable,
gray-headed patriarch of the revolution, now in his ninety-fifth year!
He sits by his fireside, in the ancient city of the Manhattoes, and
passes the long winter evenings, surrounded by his children, and
grand-children, and great-grand-children, all listening to his tales of
the border wars, and the heroic days of the Roost. His great goose-gun,
too, is still in existence, having been preserved for many years in a
hollow tree, and passed from hand to hand among the Dutch burghers, as a
precious relique of the revolution. It is now actually in possession of
a contemporary of the stout Jacob, one almost his equal in years, who
treasures it up at his house in the Bowerie of New-Amsterdam, hard by
the ancient rural retreat of the chivalric Peter Stuyvesant. I am not
without hopes of one day seeing this formidable piece of ordinance
restored to its proper station in the arsenal of the Roost. Before
closing this historic document, I cannot but advert to certain notions
and traditions concerning the venerable pile in question. Old-time
edifices are apt to gather odd fancies and superstitions about them, as
they do moss and weather-stains; and this is in a neighborhood a little
given to old-fashioned notions, and who look upon the Roost as somewhat
of a fated mansion. A lonely, rambling, down-hill lane leads to it,
overhung with trees, with a wild brook dashing along, and crossing
and re-crossing it. This lane I found some of the good people of the
neighborhood shy of treading at night; why, I could not for a long time
ascertain; until I learned that one or two of the rovers of the Tappan
Sea, shot by the stout Jacob during the war, had been buried hereabout,
in unconsecrated ground.

Another local superstition is of a less gloomy kind, and one which I
confess I am somewhat disposed to cherish. The Tappan Sea, in front of
the Roost, is about three miles wide, bordered by a lofty line of waving
and rocky hills. Often, in the still twilight of a summer evening, when
the sea is like glass, with the opposite hills throwing their purple
shadows half across it, a low sound is heard, as of the steady, vigorous
pull of oars, far out in the middle of the stream, though not a boat
is to be descried. This I should have been apt to ascribe to some boat
rowed along under the shadows of the western shore, for sounds are
conveyed to a great distance by water, at such quiet hours, and I can
distinctly hear the baying of the watch-dogs at night, from the farms on
the sides of the opposite mountains. The ancient traditionists of the
neighborhood, however, religiously ascribed these sounds to a judgment
upon one Rumbout Van Dam, of Spiting Devil, who danced and drank late
one Saturday night, at a Dutch quilting frolic, at Kakiat, and set off
alone for home in his boat, on the verge of Sunday morning; swearing he
would not land till he reached Spiting Devil, if it took him a month of
Sundays. He was never seen afterward, but is often heard plying his oars
across the Tappan Sea, a Flying Dutchman on a small scale, suited to
the size of his cruising-ground; being doomed to ply between Kakiat and
Spiting Devil till the day of judgment, but never to reach the land.

There is one room in the mansion which almost overhangs the river, and
is reputed to be haunted by the ghost of a young lady who died of love
and green apples. I have been awakened at night by the sound of oars and
the tinkling of guitars beneath the window; and seeing a boat loitering
in the moonlight, have been tempted to believe it the Flying Dutchman of
Spiting Devil, and to try whether a silver bullet might not put an end
to his unhappy cruisings; but, happening to recollect that there was a
living young lady in the haunted room, who might be terrified by the
report of fire-arms, I have refrained from pulling trigger.

As to the enchanted fountain, said to have been gifted by the wizard
sachem with supernatural powers, it still wells up at the foot of the
bank, on the margin of the river, and goes by the name of the Indian
spring; but I have my doubts as to its rejuvenating powers, for though
I have drank oft and copiously of it, I cannot boast that I find myself
growing younger.

GEOFFREY CRAYON.

       *       *       *       *       *

SLEEPY HOLLOW.

BY GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.

HAVING pitched my tent, probably for the remainder of my days, in the
neighborhood of Sleepy Hollow, I am tempted to give some few particulars
concerning that spell-bound region; especially as it has risen to
historic importance under the pen of my revered friend and master, the
sage historian of the New Netherlands. Beside, I find the very existence
of the place has been held in question by many; who, judging from its
odd name and from the odd stories current among the vulgar concerning
it, have rashly deemed the whole to be a fanciful creation, like the
Lubber Land of mariners. I must confess there is some apparent cause for
doubt, in consequence of the coloring given by the worthy Diedrich to
his descriptions of the Hollow; who, in this instance, has departed
a little from his usually sober if not severe style; beguiled, very
probably, by his predilection for the haunts of his youth, and by a
certain lurking taint of romance whenever any thing connected with the
Dutch was to be described. I shall endeavor to make up for this amiable
error on the part of my venerable and venerated friend by presenting the
reader with a more precise and statistical account of the Hollow; though
I am not sure that I shall not be prone to lapse in the end into the
very error I am speaking of, so potent is the witchery of the theme.

I believe it was the very peculiarity of its name and the idea of
something mystic and dreamy connected with it that first led me in my
boyish ramblings into Sleepy Hollow. The character of the valley seemed
to answer to the name; the slumber of past ages apparently reigned over
it; it had not awakened to the stir of improvement which had put all the
rest of the world in a bustle. Here reigned good, old long-forgotten
fashions; the men were in home-spun garbs, evidently the product of
their own farms and the manufacture of their own wives; the women were
in primitive short gowns and petticoats, with the venerable sun-bonnets
of Holland origin. The lower part of the valley was cut up into small
farms, each consisting of a little meadow and corn-field; an orchard
of sprawling, gnarled apple-trees, and a garden, where the rose, the
marigold, and the hollyhock were permitted to skirt the domains of the
capacious cabbage, the aspiring pea, and the portly pumpkin. Each had
its prolific little mansion teeming with children; with an old hat
nailed against the wall for the housekeeping wren; a motherly hen, under
a coop on the grass-plot, clucking to keep around her a brood of vagrant
chickens; a cool, stone well, with the moss-covered bucket suspended
to the long balancing-pole, according to the antediluvian idea of
hydraulics; and its spinning-wheel humming within doors, the patriarchal
music of home manufacture.

The Hollow at that time was inhabited by families which had existed
there from the earliest times, and which, by frequent intermarriage, had
become so interwoven, as to make a kind of natural commonwealth. As
the families had grown larger the farms had grown smaller; every new
generation requiring a new subdivision, and few thinking of swarming
from the native hive. In this way that happy golden mean had been
produced, so much extolled by the poets, in which there was no gold and
very little silver. One thing which doubtless contributed to keep up
this amiable mean was a general repugnance to sordid labor. The sage
inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow had read in their Bible, which was the only
book they studied, that labor was originally inflicted upon man as a
punishment of sin; they regarded it, therefore, with pious abhorrence,
and never humiliated themselves to it but in cases of extremity. There
seemed, in fact, to be a league and covenant against it throughout
the Hollow as against a common enemy. Was any one compelled by dire
necessity to repair his house, mend his fences, build a barn, or get in
a harvest, he considered it a great evil that entitled him to call in
the assistance or his friend? He accordingly proclaimed a 'bee' or
rustic gathering, whereupon all his neighbors hurried to his aid like
faithful allies; attacked the task with the desperate energy of lazy men
eager to overcome a job; and, when it was accomplished, fell to eating
and drinking, fiddling and dancing for very joy that so great an amount
of labor had been vanquished with so little sweating of the brow.

Yet, let it not be supposed that this worthy community was without its
periods of arduous activity. Let but a flock of wild pigeons fly across
the valley and all Sleepy Hollow was wide awake in an instant.
The pigeon season had arrived. Every gun and net was forthwith in
requisition. The flail was thrown down on the barn floor; the spade
rusted in the garden; the plough stood idle in the furrow; every one was
to the hillside and stubble-field at daybreak to shoot or entrap the
pigeons in their periodical migrations.

So, likewise, let but the word be given that the shad were ascending the
Hudson, and the worthies of the Hollow were to be seen launched in boats
upon the river setting great stakes, and stretching their nets like
gigantic spider-webs half across the stream to the great annoyance
of navigators. Such are the wise provisions of Nature, by which she
equalizes rural affairs. A laggard at the plough is often extremely
industrious with the fowling-piece and fishing-net; and, whenever a man
is an indifferent farmer, he is apt to be a first-rate sportsman. For
catching shad and wild pigeons there were none throughout the country to
compare with the lads of Sleepy Hollow.

As I have observed, it was the dreamy nature of the name that first
beguiled me in the holiday rovings of boyhood into this sequestered
region. I shunned, however, the populous parts of the Hollow, and sought
its retired haunts far in the foldings of the hills, where the Pocantico
"winds its wizard stream" sometimes silently and darkly through solemn
woodlands; sometimes sparkling between grassy borders in fresh, green
meadows; sometimes stealing along the feet of rugged heights under
the balancing sprays of beech and chestnut trees. A thousand crystal
springs, with which this neighborhood abounds, sent down from the
hill-sides their whimpering rills, as if to pay tribute to the
Pocantico. In this stream I first essayed my unskilful hand at angling.
I loved to loiter along it with rod in hand, watching my float as it
whirled amid the eddies or drifted into dark holes under twisted roots
and sunken logs, where the largest fish are apt to lurk. I delighted
to follow it into the brown accesses of the woods; to throw by my
fishing-gear and sit upon rocks beneath towering oaks and clambering
grape-vines; bathe my feet in the cool current, and listen to the summer
breeze playing among the tree-tops. My boyish fancy clothed all nature
around me with ideal charms, and peopled it with the fairy beings I
had read of in poetry and fable. Here it was I gave full scope to my
incipient habit of day dreaming, and to a certain propensity, to weave
up and tint sober realities with my own whims and imaginings, which has
sometimes made life a little too much like an Arabian tale to me, and
this "working-day world" rather like a region of romance.

The great gathering-place of Sleepy Hollow in those days was the church.
It stood outside of the Hollow, near the great highway, on a green bank
shaded by trees, with the Pocantico sweeping round it and emptying
itself into a spacious mill-pond. At that time the Sleepy Hollow
church was the only place of worship for a wide neighborhood. It was
a venerable edifice, partly of stone and partly of brick, the latter
having been brought from Holland in the early days of the province,
before the arts in the New Netherlands could aspire to such a
fabrication. On a stone above the porch were inscribed the names of the
founders, Frederick Filipsen, a mighty patroon of the olden time, who
reigned over a wide extent of this neighborhood and held his seat of
power at Yonkers; and his wife, Katrina Van Courtlandt, of the no less
potent line of the Van Courtlandts of Croton, who lorded it over a great
part of the Highlands.

The capacious pulpit, with its wide-spreading sounding-board, were
likewise early importations from Holland; as also the communion-table,
of massive form and curious fabric. The same might be said of a
weather-cock perched on top of the belfry, and which was considered
orthodox in all windy matters, until a small pragmatical rival was set
up on the other end of the church above the chancel. This latter bore,
and still bears, the initials of Frederick Filipsen, and assumed great
airs in consequence. The usual contradiction ensued that always exists
among church weather-cocks, which can never be brought to agree as to
the point from which the wind blows, having doubtless acquired, from
their position, the Christian propensity to schism and controversy.

Behind the church, and sloping up a gentle acclivity, was its capacious
burying-ground, in which slept the earliest fathers of this rural
neighborhood. Here were tombstones of the rudest sculpture; on which
were inscribed, in Dutch, the names and virtues of many of the first
settlers, with their portraitures curiously carved in similitude of
cherubs. Long rows of grave-stones, side by side, of similar names,
but various dates, showed that generation after generation of the same
families had followed each other and been garnered together in this last
gathering-place of kindred.

Let me speak of this quiet grave-yard with all due reverence, for I owe
it amends for the heedlessness of my boyish days. I blush to acknowledge
the thoughtless frolic with which, in company with other whipsters, I
have sported within its sacred bounds during the intervals of worship;
chasing butterflies, plucking wild flowers, or vying with each other
who could leap over the tallest tomb-stones, until checked by the stern
voice of the sexton.

The congregation was, in those days, of a really rural character. City
fashions were as yet unknown, or unregarded, by the country people
of the neighborhood. Steam-boats had not as yet confounded town with
country. A weekly market-boat from Tarry town, the "Farmers' Daughter,"
navigated by the worthy Gabriel Requa, was the only communication
between all these parts and the metropolis. A rustic belle in those days
considered a visit to the city in much the same light as one of our
modern fashionable ladies regards a visit to Europe; an event that may
possibly take place once in the course of a lifetime, but to be hoped
for, rather than expected. Hence the array of the congregation was
chiefly after the primitive fashions existing in Sleepy Hollow; or if,
by chance, there was a departure from the Dutch sun-bonnet, or the
apparition of a bright gown of flowered calico, it caused quite a
sensation throughout the church. As the dominie generally preached by
the hour, a bucket of water was providently placed on a bench near the
door, in summer, with a tin cup beside it, for the solace of those who
might be athirst, either from the heat of the weather, or the drouth of
the sermon.

Around the pulpit, and behind the communion-table, sat the elders of the
church, reverend, gray-headed, leathern-visaged men, whom I regarded
with awe, as so many apostles. They were stern in their sanctity, kept
a vigilant eye upon my giggling companions and myself, and shook a
rebuking finger at any boyish device to relieve the tediousness of
compulsory devotion. Vain, however, were all their efforts at vigilance.
Scarcely had the preacher held forth for half an hour, on one of his
interminable sermons, than it seemed as if the drowsy influence of
Sleepy Hollow breathed into the place; one by one the congregation sank
into slumber; the sanctified elders leaned back in their pews, spreading
their handkerchiefs over their faces, as if to keep off the flies; while
the locusts in the neighboring trees would spin out their sultry summer
notes, as if in imitation of the sleep-provoking tones of the dominie.

I have thus endeavored to give an idea of Sleepy Hollow and its church,
as I recollect them to have been in the days of my boyhood. It was in
my stripling days, when a few years had passed over my head, that I
revisited them, in company with the venerable Diedrich. I shall never
forget the antiquarian reverence with which that sage and excellent man
contemplated the church. It seemed as if all his pious enthusiasm for
the ancient Dutch dynasty swelled within his bosom at the sight.
The tears stood in his eyes, as he regarded the pulpit and the
communion-table; even the very bricks that had come from the mother
country, seemed to touch a filial chord within his bosom. He almost
bowed in deference to the stone above the porch, containing the names
of Frederick Filipsen and Katrina Van Courtlandt, regarding it as the
linking together of those patronymic names, once so famous along the
banks of the Hudson; or rather as a key-stone, binding that mighty Dutch
family connexion of yore, one foot of which rested on Yonkers, and the
other on the Groton. Nor did he forbear to notice with admiration, the
windy contest which had been carried on, since time immemorial, and with
real Dutch perseverance, between the two weather-cocks; though I could
easily perceive he coincided with the one which had come from Holland.

Together we paced the ample church-yard. With deep veneration would
he turn down the weeds and brambles that obscured the modest brown
grave-stones, half sunk in earth, on which were recorded, in Dutch, the
names of the patriarchs of ancient days, the Ackers, the Van Tassels,
and the Van Warts. As we sat on one of the tomb-stones, he recounted to
me the exploits of many of these worthies; and my heart smote me, when I
heard of their great doings in days of yore, to think how heedlessly I
had once sported over their graves.

From the church, the venerable Diedrich proceeded in his researches up
the Hollow. The genius of the place seemed to hail its future historian.
All nature was alive with gratulation. The quail whistled a greeting
from the corn-field; the robin carolled a song of praise from the
orchard; the loquacious catbird flew from bush to bush, with restless
wing, proclaiming his approach in every variety of note, and anon would
whisk about, and perk inquisitively into his face, as if to get a
knowledge of his physiognomy; the wood-pecker, also, tapped a tattoo on
the hollow apple-tree, and then peered knowingly round the trunk, to
see how the great Diedrich relished his salutation; while the
ground-squirrel scampered along the fence, and occasionally whisked his
tail over his head, by way of a huzza!

The worthy Diedrich pursued his researches in the valley with
characteristic devotion; entering familiarly into the various cottages,
and gossiping with the simple folk, in the style of their own
simplicity. I confess my heart yearned with admiration, to see so great
a man, in his eager quest after knowledge, humbly demeaning himself
to curry favor with the humblest; sitting patiently on a three-legged
stool, patting the children, and taking a purring grimalkin on his lap,
while he conciliated the good-will of the old Dutch housewife, and drew
from her long ghost stories, spun out to the humming accompaniment of
her wheel.

His greatest treasure of historic lore, however, was discovered in an
old goblin-looking mill, situated among rocks and waterfalls, with
clanking wheels, and rushing streams, and all kinds of uncouth noises.
A horse-shoe, nailed to the door to keep off witches and evil spirits,
showed that this mill was subject to awful visitations. As we approached
it, an old negro thrust his head, all dabbled with flour, out of a hole
above the water-wheel, and grinned, and rolled his eyes, and looked like
the very hobgoblin of the place. The illustrious Diedrich fixed upon
him, at once, as the very one to give him that invaluable kind of
information never to be acquired from books. He beckoned him from his
nest, sat with him by the hour on a broken mill-stone, by the side of
the waterfall, heedless of the noise of the water, and the clatter
of the mill; and I verily believe it was to his conference with this
African sage, and the precious revelations of the good dame of the
spinning-wheel, that we are indebted for the surprising though true
history of Ichabod Crane and the headless horseman, which has since
astounded and edified the world.

But I have said enough of the good old times of my youthful days; let me
speak of the Hollow as I found it, after an absence of many years,
when it was kindly given me once more to revisit the haunts of my
boyhood. It was a genial day, as I approached that fated region. The
warm sunshine was tempered by a slight haze, so as to give a dreamy
effect to the landscape. Not a breath of air shook the foliage. The
broad Tappan Sea was without a ripple, and the sloops, with drooping
sails, slept on its grassy bosom. Columns of smoke, from burning
brush-wood, rose lazily from the folds of the hills, on the opposite
side of the river, and slowly expanded in mid-air. The distant lowing
of a cow, or the noontide crowing of a cock, coming faintly to the ear,
seemed to illustrate, rather than disturb, the drowsy quiet of the
scene.

I entered the hollow with a beating heart. Contrary to my apprehensions,
I found it but little changed. The march of intellect, which had
made such rapid strides along every river and highway, had not yet,
apparently, turned down into this favored valley. Perhaps the wizard
spell of ancient days still reigned over the place, binding up the
faculties of the inhabitants in happy contentment with things as they
had been handed down to them from yore. There were the same little farms
and farmhouses, with their old hats for the housekeeping wren; their
stone wells, moss-covered buckets, and long balancing poles. There were
the same little rills, whimpering down to pay their tributes to the
Pocantico; while that wizard stream still kept on its course, as of old,
through solemn woodlands and fresh green meadows: nor were there wanting
joyous holiday boys to loiter along its banks, as I have done; throw
their pin-hooks in the stream, or launch their mimic barks. I watched
them with a kind of melancholy pleasure, wondering whether they were
under the same spell of the fancy that once rendered this valley a fairy
land to me. Alas! alas! to me every thing now stood revealed in its
simple reality. The echoes no longer answered with wizard tongues; the
dream of youth was at an end; the spell of Sleepy Hollow was broken!

I sought the ancient church on the following Sunday. There it stood, on
its green bank, among the trees; the Pocantico swept by it in a deep
dark stream, where I had so often angled; there expanded the mill-pond,
as of old, with the cows under the willows on its margin, knee-deep in
water, chewing the cud, and lashing the flies from their sides with
their tails. The hand of improvement, however, had been busy with the
venerable pile. The pulpit, fabricated in Holland, had been superseded
by one of modern construction, and the front of the semi-Gothic
edifice was decorated by a semi-Grecian portico. Fortunately, the two
weather-cocks remained undisturbed on their perches at each end of the
church, and still kept up a diametrical opposition to each other on all
points of windy doctrine.

On entering the church the changes of time continued to be apparent. The
elders round the pulpit were men whom I had left in the gamesome frolic
of their youth, but who had succeeded to the sanctity of station of
which they once had stood so much in awe. What most struck my eye was
the change in the female part of the congregation. Instead of the
primitive garbs of homespun manufacture and antique Dutch fashion,
I beheld French sleeves, French capes, and French collars, and a
fearful-fluttering of French ribbands.

When the service was ended I sought the church-yard, in which I had
sported in my unthinking days of boyhood. Several of the modest brown
stones, on which were recorded in Dutch the names and virtues of the
patriarchs, had disappeared, and had been succeeded by others of white
marble, with urns and wreaths, and scraps of English tomb-stone poetry,
marking the intrusion of taste and literature and the English language
in this once unsophisticated Dutch neighborhood.

As I was stumbling about among these silent yet eloquent memorials of
the dead, I came upon names familiar to me; of those who had paid
the debt of nature during the long interval of my absence. Some, I
remembered, my companions in boyhood, who had sported with me on the
very sod under which they were now mouldering; others who in those days
had been the flower of the yeomanry, figuring in Sunday finery on the
church green; others, the white-haired elders of the sanctuary, once
arrayed in awful sanctity around the pulpit, and ever ready to rebuke
the ill-timed mirth of the wanton stripling who, now a man, sobered by
years and schooled by vicissitudes, looked down pensively upon their
graves. "Our fathers," thought I, "where are they!--and the prophets,
can they live for ever!"

I was disturbed in my meditations by the noise of a troop of idle
urchins, who came gambolling about the place where I had so often
gambolled. They were checked, as I and my playmates had often been, by
the voice of the sexton, a man staid in years and demeanor. I looked
wistfully in his face; had I met him any where else, I should probably
have passed him by without remark; but here I was alive to the traces of
former times, and detected in the demure features of this guardian of
the sanctuary the lurking lineaments of one of the very playmates I have
alluded to. We renewed our acquaintance. He sat down beside me, on one
of the tomb-stones over which we had leaped in our juvenile sports, and
we talked together about our boyish days, and held edifying discourse
on the instability of all sublunary things, as instanced in the scene
around us. He was rich in historic lore, as to the events of the last
thirty years and the circumference of thirty miles, and from him I
learned the appalling revolution that was taking place throughout the
neighborhood. All this I clearly perceived he attributed to the boasted
march of intellect, or rather to the all-pervading influence of steam.
He bewailed the times when the only communication with town was by the
weekly market-boat, the "Farmers' Daughter," which, under the pilotage
of the worthy Gabriel Requa, braved the perils of the Tappan Sea. Alas!
Gabriel and the "Farmer's Daughter" slept in peace. Two steamboats now
splashed and paddled up daily to the little rural port of Tarrytown. The
spirit of speculation and improvement had seized even upon that once
quiet and unambitious little dorp. The whole neighborhood was laid out
into town lots. Instead of the little tavern below the hill, where
the farmers used to loiter on market days and indulge in cider and
gingerbread, an ambitious hotel, with cupola and verandas, now crested
the summit, among churches built in the Grecian and Gothic styles,
showing the great increase of piety and polite taste in the
neighborhood. As to Dutch dresses and sun-bonnets, they were no longer
tolerated, or even thought of; not a farmer's daughter but now went to
town for the fashions; nay, a city milliner had recently set up in the
village, who threatened to reform the heads of the whole neighborhood.

I had heard enough! I thanked my old playmate for his intelligence, and
departed from the Sleepy Hollow church with the sad conviction that I
had beheld the last lingerings of the good old Dutch times in this once
favored region. If any thing were wanting to confirm this impression,
it would be the intelligence which has just reached me, that a bank is
about to be established in the aspiring little port just mentioned. The
fate of the neighborhood is therefore sealed. I see no hope of averting
it. The golden mean is at an end, The country is suddenly to be deluged
with wealth. The late simple farmers are to become bank directors and
drink claret and champagne; and their wives and daughters to figure in
French hats and feathers; for French wines and French fashions commonly
keep pace with paper money. How can I hope that even Sleepy Hollow can
escape the general inundation? In a little while, I fear the slumber of
ages will be at end--the strum of the piano will succeed to the hum of
the spinning-wheel; the trill of the Italian opera to the nasal quaver
of Ichabod Crane; and the antiquarian visitor to the Hollow, in the
petulance of his disappointment, may pronounce all that I have recorded
of that once favored region a fable.


       *       *       *       *       *

THE BIRDS OF SPRING.

BY GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT.

My quiet residence in the country, aloof from fashion, politics, and the
money market, leaves me rather at a loss for important occupation, and
drives me to the study of nature, and other low pursuits. Having few
neighbors, also, on whom to keep a watch, and exercise my habits of
observation, I am fain to amuse myself with prying into the domestic
concerns and peculiarities of the animals around me; and, during the
present season, have derived considerable entertainment from certain
sociable little birds, almost the only visitors we have, during this
early part of the year.

Those who have passed the winter in the country, are sensible of the
delightful influences that accompany the earliest indications of spring;
and of these, none are more delightful than the first notes of the
birds. There is one modest little sad-colored bird, much resembling a
wren, which came about the house just on the skirts of winter, when not
a blade of grass was to be seen, and when a few prematurely warm days
had given a flattering foretaste of soft weather. He sang early in the
dawning, long before sun-rise, and late in the evening, just before the
closing in of night, his matin and his vesper hymns. It is true, he sang
occasionally throughout the day; but at these still hours, his song was
more remarked. He sat on a leafless tree, just before the window, and
warbled forth his notes, free and simple, but singularly sweet, with
something of a plaintive tone, that heightened their effect. The first
morning that he was heard, was a joyous one among the young folks of my
household. The long, deathlike sleep of winter was at an end; nature
was once more awakening; they now promised themselves the immediate
appearance of buds and blossoms. I was reminded of the tempest-tossed
crew of Columbus, when, after their long dubious voyage, the field birds
came singing round the ship, though still far at sea, rejoicing them
with the belief of the immediate proximity of land. A sharp return of
winter almost silenced my little songster, and dashed the hilarity of
the household; yet still he poured forth, now and then, a few plaintive
notes, between the frosty pipings of the breeze, like gleams of sunshine
between wintry clouds.

I have consulted my book of ornithology in vain, to find out the name
of this kindly little bird, who certainly deserves honor and favor far
beyond his modest pretensions. He comes like the lowly violet, the most
unpretending, but welcomest of flowers, breathing the sweet promise of
the early year.

Another of our feathered visitors, who follows close upon the steps of
winter, is the Pe-wit, or Pe-wee, or Phoebe-bird; for he is called by
each of these names, from a fancied resemblance to the sound of his
monotonous note. He is a sociable little being, and seeks the habitation
of man. A pair of them have built beneath my porch, and have reared
several broods there for two years past, their nest being never
disturbed. They arrive early in the spring, just when the crocus and
the snow-drop begin to peep forth. Their first chirp spreads gladness
through the house. "The Phoebe-birds have come!" is heard on all sides;
they are welcomed back like members of the family, and speculations are
made upon where they have been, and what countries they have seen
during their long absence. Their arrival is the more cheering, as it is
pronounced, by the old weather-wise people of the country, the sure sign
that the severe frosts are at an end, and that the gardener may resume
his labors with confidence.

About this time, too, arrives the blue-bird, so poetically yet truly
described by Wilson. His appearance gladdens the whole landscape.
You hear his soft warble in every field. He sociably approaches your
habitation, and takes up his residence in your vicinity. But why should
I attempt to describe him, when I have Wilson's own graphic verses to
place him before the reader?

  When winter's cold tempests and snows are no more,
  Green meadows and brown furrowed fields re-appearing:
  The fishermen hauling their shad to the shore,
  And cloud-cleaving geese to the lakes are a-steering;
  When first the lone butterfly flits on the wing,
  When red glow the maples, so fresh and so pleasing,
  O then comes the blue-bird, the herald of spring,
  And hails with his warblings the charms of the season.

  The loud-piping frogs make the marshes to ring;
  Then warm glows the sunshine, and warm glows the weather;
  The blue woodland flowers just beginning to spring,
  And spice-wood and sassafras budding together;
  O then to your gardens, ye housewives, repair,
  Your walks border up, sow and plant at your leisure;
  The blue-bird will chant from his box such an air,
  That all your hard toils will seem truly a pleasure.

  He flits through the orchard, he visits each tree,
  The red flowering peach, and the apple's sweet blossoms;
  He snaps up destroyers, wherever they be,
  And seizes the caitiffs that lurk in their bosoms;
  He drags the vile grub from the corn it devours,
  The worms from the webs where they riot and welter;
  His song and his services freely are ours,
  And all that he asks is, in summer a shelter.

  The ploughman is pleased when he gleams in his train,
  Now searching the furrows, now mounting to cheer him;
  The gard'ner delights in his sweet simple strain,
  And leans on his spade to survey and to hear him.
  The slow lingering school-boys forget they'll be chid,
  While gazing intent, as he warbles before them,
  In mantle of sky-blue, and bosom so red,
  That each little loiterer seems to adore him.

The happiest bird of our spring, however, and one that rivals the
European lark, in my estimation, is the Boblincon, or Boblink, as he is
commonly called. He arrives at that choice portion of our year, which,
in this latitude, answers to the description of the month of May, so
often given by the poets. With us, it begins about the middle of May,
and lasts until nearly the middle of June. Earlier than this, winter is
apt to return on its traces, and to blight the opening beauties of
the year; and later than this, begin the parching, and panting, and
dissolving heats of summer. But in this genial interval, nature is in
all her freshness and fragrance: "the rains are over and gone, the
flowers appear upon the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land." The trees are now in
their fullest foliage and brightest verdure; the woods are gay with the
clustered flowers of the laurel; the air is perfumed by the sweet-briar
and the wild rose; the meadows are enamelled with clover-blossoms; while
the young apple, the peach, and the plum, begin to swell, and the cherry
to glow, among the green leaves.

This is the chosen season of revelry of the Boblink. He comes amidst the
pomp and fragrance of the season; his life seems all sensibility and
enjoyment, all song and sunshine. He is to be found in the soft bosoms
of the freshest and sweetest meadows; and is most in song when the
clover is in blossom. He perches on the topmost twig of a tree, or on
some long flaunting weed; and as he rises and sinks with the breeze,
pours forth a succession of rich tinkling notes; crowding one upon
another, like the outpouring melody of the skylark, and possessing the
same rapturous character. Sometimes he pitches from the summit of a
tree, begins his song as soon as he gets upon the wing, and flutters
tremulously down to the earth, as if overcome with ecstasy at his own
music. Sometimes he is in pursuit of his paramour; always in full
song, as if he would win her by his melody; and always with the same
appearance of intoxication and delight.

Of all the birds of our groves and meadows, the Boblink was the envy of
my boyhood. He crossed my path in the sweetest weather, and the sweetest
season of the year, when all nature called to the fields, and the rural
feeling throbbed in every bosom; but when I, luckless urchin! was doomed
to be mewed up, during the livelong day, in that purgatory of boyhood, a
school-room. It seemed as if the little varlet mocked at me, as he flew
by in full song, and sought to taunt me with his happier lot. Oh, how
I envied him! No lessons, no tasks, no hateful school; nothing but
holiday, frolic, green fields, and fine weather. Had I been then more
versed in poetry, I might have addressed him in the words of Logan to
the cuckoo:

  Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
  Thy sky is ever clear;
  Thou hast no sorrow in thy note,
  No winter in thy year.

  Oh! could I fly, I'd fly with thee;
  We'd make, on joyful wing,
  Our annual visit round the globe,
  Companions of the spring!

Farther observation and experience have given me a different idea of
this little feathered voluptuary, which I will venture to impart, for
the benefit of my school-boy readers, who may regard him with the same
unqualified envy and admiration which I once indulged. I have shown him
only as I saw him at first, in what I may call the poetical part of his
career, when he in a manner devoted himself to elegant pursuits
and enjoyments, and was a bird of music, and song, and taste, and
sensibility, and refinement. While this lasted, he was sacred from
injury; the very school-boy would not fling a stone at him, and the
merest rustic would pause to listen to his strain. But mark the
difference. As the year advances, as the clover-blossoms disappear, and
the spring fades into summer, his notes cease to vibrate on the ear. He
gradually gives up his elegant tastes and habits, doffs his poetical and
professional suit of black, assumes a russet or rather dusty garb, and
enters into the gross enjoyments of common, vulgar birds. He becomes a
bon-vivant, a mere gourmand; thinking of nothing but good cheer, and
gormandizing on the seeds of the long grasses on which he lately swung,
and chaunted so musically. He begins to think there is nothing like "the
joys of the table," if I may be allowed to apply that convivial phrase
to his indulgences. He now grows discontented with plain, every-day
fare, and sets out on a gastronomical tour, in search of foreign
luxuries. He is to be found in myriads among the reeds of the Delaware,
banqueting on their seeds; grows corpulent with good feeding, and soon
acquires the unlucky renown of the ortolan. Whereever he goes, pop! pop!
pop! the rusty firelocks of the country are cracking on every side;
he sees his companions falling by the thousands around him; he is
the _reed-bird_, the much-sought-for tit-bit of the Pennsylvanian
epicure.

Does he take warning and reform? Not he! He wings his flight still
farther south, in search of other luxuries. We hear of him gorging
himself in the rice swamps; filling himself with rice almost to
bursting; he can hardly fly for corpulency. Last stage of his career,
we hear of him spitted by dozens, and served up on the table of the
gourmand, the most vaunted of southern dainties, the _rice-bird_ of the
Carolinas.

Such is the story of the once musical and admired, but finally sensual
and persecuted Boblink. It contains a moral, worthy the attention of all
little birds and little boys; warning them to keep to those refined
and intellectual pursuits, which raised him to so high a pitch of
popularity, during the early part of his career; but to eschew all
tendency to that gross and dissipated indulgence, which brought this
mistaken little bird to an untimely end.

Which is all at present, from the well-wisher of little boys and little
birds,

GEOFFREY CRAYON.

       *       *       *       *       *

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ALHAMBRA.

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE SKETCH-BOOK.

During a summer's residence in the old Moorish palace of the Alhambra,
of which I have already given numerous anecdotes to the public, I used
to pass much of my time in the beautiful hall of the Abencerrages,
beside the fountain celebrated in the tragic story of that devoted
race. Here it was, that thirty-six cavaliers of that heroic line were
treacherously sacrificed, to appease the jealousy or allay the fears of
a tyrant. The fountain which now throws up its sparkling jet, and sheds
a dewy freshness around, ran red with the noblest blood of Granada,
and a deep stain on the marble pavement is still pointed out, by the
cicerones of the pile, as a sanguinary record of the massacre. I have
regarded it with the same determined faith with which I have regarded
the traditional stains of Rizzio's blood on the floor of the chamber of
the unfortunate Mary, at Holyrood. I thank no one for endeavoring to
enlighten my credulity, on such points of popular belief. It is like
breaking up the shrine of the pilgrim; it is robbing a poor traveller of
half the reward of his toils; for, strip travelling of its historical
illusions, and what a mere fag you make of it!

For my part, I gave myself up, during my sojourn in the Alhambra, to all
the romantic and fabulous traditions connected with the pile. I lived in
the midst of an Arabian tale, and shut my eyes, as much as possible, to
every thing that called me back to every-day life; and if there is any
country in Europe where one can do so, it is in poor, wild, legendary,
proud-spirited, romantic Spain; where the old magnificent barbaric
spirit still contends against the utilitarianism of modern civilization.

In the silent and deserted halls of the Alhambra; surrounded with the
insignia of regal sway, and the still vivid, though dilapidated traces
of oriental voluptuousness, I was in the strong-hold of Moorish story,
and every thing spoke and breathed of the glorious days of Granada,
when under the dominion of the crescent. When I sat in the hall of the
Abencerrages, I suffered my mind to conjure up all that I had read of
that illustrious line. In the proudest days of Moslem domination, the
Abencerrages were the soul of every thing noble and chivalrous. The
veterans of the family, who sat in the royal council, were the foremost
to devise those heroic enterprises, which carried dismay into the
territories of the Christians; and what the sages of the family devised,
the young men of the name were the foremost to execute. In all services
of hazard; in all adventurous forays, and hair-breadth hazards; the
Abencerrages were sure to win the brightest laurels. In those noble
recreations, too, which bear so close an affinity to war; in the tilt
and tourney, the riding at the ring, and the daring bull-fight; still
the Abencerrages carried off the palm. None could equal them for the
splendor of their array, the gallantry of their devices; for their noble
bearing, and glorious horsemanship. Their open-handed munificence made
them the idols of the populace, while their lofty magnanimity, and
perfect faith, gained them golden opinions from the generous and
high-minded. Never were they known to decry the merits of a rival, or to
betray the confidings of a friend; and the "word of an Abencerrage" was
a guarantee that never admitted of a doubt.

And then their devotion to the fair! Never did Moorish beauty consider
the fame of her charms established, until she had an Abencerrage for a
lover; and never did an Abencerrage prove recreant to his vows. Lovely
Granada! City of delights! Who ever bore the favors of thy dames more
proudly on their casques, or championed them more gallantly in the
chivalrous tilts of the Vivarambla? Or who ever made thy moon-lit
balconies, thy gardens of myrtles and roses, of oranges, citrons, and
pomegranates, respond to more tender serenades?

I speak with enthusiasm on this theme; for it is connected with the
recollection of one of the sweetest evenings and sweetest scenes that
ever I enjoyed in Spain. One of the greatest pleasures of the Spaniards
is, to sit in the beautiful summer evenings, and listen to traditional
ballads, and tales about the wars of the Moors and Christians, and the
"buenas andanzas" and "grandes hechos," the "good fortunes" and "great
exploits" of the hardy warriors of yore. It is worthy of remark, also,
that many of these songs, or romances, as they are called, celebrate
the prowess and magnanimity in war, and the tenderness and, fidelity in
love, of the Moorish cavaliers, once their most formidable and hated
foes. But centuries have elapsed, to extinguish the bigotry of the
zealot; and the once detested warriors of Granada are now held up by
Spanish poets, as the mirrors of chivalric virtue.

Such was the amusement of the evening in question. A number of us were
seated in the Hall of the Abencerrages, listening to one of the most
gifted and fascinating beings that I had ever met with in my wanderings.
She was young and beautiful; and light and ethereal; full of fire, and
spirit, and pure enthusiasm. She wore the fanciful Andalusian dress;
touched the guitar with speaking eloquence; improvised with wonderful
facility; and, as she became excited by her theme, or by the rapt
attention of her auditors, would pour forth, in the richest and
most melodious strains, a succession of couplets, full of striking
description, or stirring narration, and composed, as I was assured, at
the moment. Most of these were suggested by the place, and related to
the ancient glories of Granada, and the prowess of her chivalry. The
Abencerrages were her favorite heroes; she felt a woman's admiration of
their gallant courtesy, and high-souled honor; and it was touching and
inspiring to hear the praises of that generous but devoted race, chanted
in this fated hall of their calamity, by the lips of Spanish beauty.

Among the subjects of which she treated, was a tale of Moslem honor, and
old-fashioned Spanish courtesy, which made a strong impression on me.
She disclaimed all merit of invention, however, and said she had merely
dilated into verse a popular tradition; and, indeed, I have since found
the main facts inserted at the end of Conde's History of the Domination
of the Arabs, and the story itself embodied in the form of an episode in
the Diana of Montemayor. From these sources I have drawn it forth, and
endeavored to shape it according to my recollection of the version of
the beautiful minstrel; but, alas! what can supply the want of that
voice, that look, that form, that action, which gave magical effect to
her chant, and held every one rapt in breathless admiration! Should this
mere travestie of her inspired numbers ever meet her eye, in her stately
abode at Granada, may it meet with that indulgence which belongs to her
benignant nature. Happy should I be, if it could awaken in her bosom
one kind recollection of the lonely stranger and sojourner, for
whose gratification she did not think it beneath her to exert those
fascinating powers which were the delight of brilliant circles; and who
will ever recall with enthusiasm the happy evening passed in listening
to her strains, in the moon-lit halls of the Alhambra.

       *       *       *       *       *

GEOFFREY CRAYON.

THE ABENCERRAGE.

A SPANISH TALE.

On the summit of a craggy hill, a spur of the mountains of Ronda, stands
the castle of Allora, now a mere ruin, infested by bats and owlets, but
in old times one of the strong border holds of the Christians, to keep
watch upon the frontiers of the warlike kingdom of Granada, and to hold
the Moors in check. It was a post always confided to some well-tried
commander; and, at the time of which we treat, was held by Rodrigo de
Narvaez, a veteran, famed, both among Moors and Christians, not only for
his hardy feats of arms, but also for that magnanimous courtesy which
should ever be entwined with the sterner virtues of the soldier.

The castle of Allora was a mere part of his command; he was Alcayde, or
military governor of Antiquera, but he passed most of his time at this
frontier post, because its situation on the borders gave more frequent
opportunity for those adventurous exploits which were the delight of the
Spanish chivalry. His garrison consisted of fifty chosen cavaliers, all
well mounted and well appointed: with these he kept vigilant watch
upon the Moslems; patrolling the roads, and paths, and defiles of the
mountains, so that nothing could escape his eye; and now and then
signalizing himself by some dashing foray into the very Vega of Granada.

On a fair and beautiful night in summer, when the freshness of the
evening breeze had tempered the heat of day, the worthy Alcayde sallied
forth, with nine of his cavaliers, to patrol the neighborhood, and
seek adventures. They rode quietly and cautiously, lest they should be
overheard by Moorish scout or traveller; and kept along ravines and
hollow ways, lest they should be betrayed by the glittering of the full
moon upon their armor. Coming to where the road divided, the Alcayde
directed five of his cavaliers to take one of the branches, while he,
with the remaining four, would take the other. Should either party be in
danger, the blast of a horn was to be the signal to bring their comrades
to their aid.

The party of five had not proceeded far, when, in passing through a
defile, overhung with trees, they heard the voice of a man, singing.
They immediately concealed themselves in a grove, on the brow of a
declivity, up which the stranger would have to ascend. The moonlight,
which left the grove in deep shadow, lit up the whole person of the
wayfarer, as he advanced, and enabled them to distinguish his dress and
appearance with perfect accuracy. He was a Moorish cavalier, and his
noble demeanor, graceful carriage, and splendid attire showed him to
be of lofty rank. He was superbly mounted, on a dapple-gray steed, of
powerful frame, and generous spirit, and magnificently caparisoned.
His dress was a marlota, or tunic, and an Albernoz of crimson damask,
fringed with gold. His Tunisian turban, of many folds, was of silk and
cotton, striped, and bordered with golden fringe. At his girdle hung a
scimitar of Damascus steel, with loops and tassels of silk and gold. On
his left arm he bore an ample target, and his right hand grasped a long
double-pointed lance. Thus equipped, he sat negligently on his steed, as
one who dreamed of no danger, gazing on the moon, and singing, with a
sweet and manly voice, a Moorish love ditty.

Just opposite the place where the Spanish cavaliers were concealed, was
a small fountain in the rock, beside the road, to which the horse turned
to drink; the rider threw the reins on his neck, and continued his song.

The Spanish cavaliers conferred together; they were all so pleased with
the gallant and gentle appearance of the Moor, that they resolved not to
harm, but to capture him, which, in his negligent mood, promised to be
an easy task; rushing, therefore, from their concealment, they thought
to surround and seize him. Never were men more mistaken. To gather up
his reins, wheel round his steed, brace his buckler, and couch his
lance, was the work of an instant; and there he sat, fixed like a castle
in his saddle, beside the fountain.

The Christian cavaliers checked their steeds and reconnoitered him
warily, loth to come to an encounter, which must end in his destruction.

The Moor now held a parley: "If you be true knights," said he, "and seek
for honorable fame, come on, singly, and I am ready to meet each in
succession; but if you be mere lurkers of the road, intent on spoil,
come all at once, and do your worst!"

The cavaliers communed for a moment apart, when one, advancing singly,
exclaimed: "Although no law of chivalry obliges us to risk the loss of a
prize, when clear