Anyone who has traced the Hudson Kaatskill remember the mountains. They are a dismemberment of the great family of the Appalachian Mountains and east of rising divisan noble majesty and dominating all the surrounding region river. All changes of time or season, every hour, manifested by some variation in the magical shadows and appearance of these mountains, regarded as the most perfect barometer for all the good women of the region. When the weather is beautiful and serene, the mountains appear clothed in purple and blue highlighting his daring on the clear evening sky lines; but sometimes, even when the horizon be clear, they are decorated on top with a hood of gray vapors that light and radiate like a crown of glory in the last rays of the setting sun.
At the foot of these mountains enchanted travelers can discover curly light smoke rising from a village, whose shingle roofs gleam among the trees when blue dyes height melt into the fresh greenery of the nearby landscape. It is a small ancient village, founded by some Dutch settlers in the early days of the province, around the beginning of the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant (may he rest in peace!), and where it is held against the ravages of time some houses of the early settlers, built of small yellow bricks imported from Holland, with latticed windows and triangular pediments topped steeple cocks.