University of Virginia Library

KAATSKILL.

Those who are fond of climbing mountains in a hot
day, and looking down till their heads turn, must land
at the village of Kaatskill, whence they can procure a
conveyance to the hotel at Pine Orchard, three thousand
feet above the level of the river, and have the
pleasure of sleeping under blankets in the dog days.
Here the picturesque tourist may enjoy a prospect of
unbounded extent and magnificence, and receive a lesson
of the insignificance of all created things. Standing
near the verge of the cliff, he looks down, and no object
strikes his view, except at a distance of fifteen hundred
feet below. The space between is nothing but vacancy.
Crawling far below, man is but an atom, hardly
visible; the ox is but a mouse; and the sheep are little
white specks in the green fields, which themselves are
no bigger than the glasses of a pair of green spectaeles.
The traveller may judge of the insignificance
even of the most sublime objects, when told that a
fashionable lady's hat and feathers dwindles in the distance
to the size of a moderate mushroom! It is, we
trust, needless to caution the tourist against falling
down this dizzy steep, as in all probability he would
come to some harm.

There are two cascades not far from the Pine Orchard,
which want nothing but a little more water to be
wonderfully sublime. Generally there is no water at

all, but the proper application of half a dollar, will set
it running presently.

Messrs. Wall and Cole, two fine artists, admirable in
their different, we might almost say, opposite styles,
have illustrated the scenery of the Kaatskill, by more
than one picture of singular excellence. We should
like to see such pictures gracing the drawing rooms of
the wealthy, instead of the imported trumpery of British
naval fights, or coloured engravings, and above all, in
the place of that vulgar, tasteless, and inelegant accumulation
of gilded finery, which costs more than a dozen
fine landscapes. These lovers of cut glass lamps,
rose wood sofas, and convex mirrors, have yet to learn
that a single bust or picture of a master adorns and enriches
the parlour of a gentleman, in the eyes of a well
bred person, a thousand times more than the spoils of
half a dozen fashionable warehouses.

But after all there is nothing in this world like a good
appetite and plenty of good things to satisfy or satiate
it; for merely to satisfy the appetite is to treat it as one
would that of a horse. In this respect, and this only
in our estimation, are the tops of high mountains entitled
to consideration. It is amazing what a glorious
propensity to eating is generated by the keen air of
these respectable protuberances. People have been

known to eat up every thing in the house at a meal, and report
says that a fat waiter once disappeared in a very mysterious
manner. The stomach expands with the sublimity
and expansion of the prospect, to a capacity
equally sublime, and the worthy landlord at the Pine
Orchard (between ourselves) has assured us that he has
known a sickly young lady who was travelling for an appetite,
discuss venison for breakfast like an alderman. Certain
half starved critics, will without doubt, sharpen their
wits as sharp as their appetites, and putting grey goose
lance in rest, tilt at us terribly, for thus exalting the
accomplishment of eating above all others, and inciting
people to inordinate feats of the trencher. But we will
shut their mouths at once and forever, by asking the
simple question, whether the sine qua non of rich and
idle peoples' comfort and happiness is not exercise,
without which they cannot enjoy either their wealth
or their leisure. Having answered this question we
will ask them another, to wit, whether there be any
exercise, not to say hard work, equal to that which
the inward and outward man undergoes in the final
disposal of a sumptuous dinner or supper? How he
puffs, and blows, and sighs, and snoozes, and heaven
forgive us! belches!—and twists and turns, neither enjoying
stillness nor motion, until he has quieted this
mighty mass of ingredients. In short it is the hardest
exercise in the world, and of course must be highly
beneficial to health. This is what constitutes the unrivalled
excellence of eating, and its superiority over all
other carnal delights; since we have the pleasures of
taste in the first, and in the second, the benefit of hard
exercise to prepare us for a new meal. Hence it was,
that a famous eating philosopher, hearing a peasant grumbling
that he could not like him, live without work, replied
in the following extempore—

“The town of Kaatskill, and the neighbouring country,”
observes Alderman Janson in his manuscript ana,
“is the seat of many old Dutch families, whose ancestors
settled there in the olden time. Honest, industrious
and sober—what a noble trio of virtues! they
pursue the even tenor of their way, and would continue
to do so for generations to come, were it not for the late
attempts to corrupt them with canals and great state
roads; and above all by locating a fashionable hotel in
the very centre of their strong hold, the Kaatskill Mountain.
Since the introduction of these pestilent novelties,
there has been noticed divers rebellious movements
against the good old customs. It is not long since, that
several old ladies whose descent ought to have forever
saved them from the temptation of such enormities,
have introduced the fashion of drinking tea by candle
light; and a young fellow—a genuine descendant of
Rip Van Winckle—being out shooting, met a Dutch
damsel in a fashionable bonnet, whereat he was so
frightened that he fired his gun at random, and ran home
to tell his mother that he had seen a strange wild beast
that looked for all the world “like he didn't know what.”
It is a sore thing to see the good old customs of antiquity
thus as it were gradually beaten from their last

entrenchments in the mountains. All this comes of
steam boats, manufactories, and other horrible enormities
of this improving age. The deplorable consequences,
are pathetically exemplified in the fate of poor
Squire Van Gaasbeeck, as I heard it related by one of
his neighbours.”

“Squire Van Gaasbeeck, (which means goosebill in
English,) was for fifty good years, snugly settled on his
farm, at New Paltz—happy in himself, happy in his
family, and happy in the possession of three hundred
acres of the best land in the county. His family consisted
of a wife, a son and two daughters, the latter of
a ripe marriageable age—Catharine and Rachel, called
in the familiar Dutch vernacular, Teenie and Lockie.
The name of the boy—as they called him, for he was
but thirty—was Yaup, which signifies Jacob in English.

“The daughters spun and wove the linsey woolsey
and linen; the mother with their help made them up
into garments for the squire and Yaup, who worked
in the fields sometimes a whole day, with Primus the
black boy, without exchanging a single word. Every
year Squire Van Gaasbeeck added a few hundreds to
his store; every year the governor sent him a commission
as Justice of the Peace; and every year, the
daughters added to their reserve of linen and petticoats,
deposited in the great oaken chest, with a spring
lock, for the happy period to which every good honest
girl looks forward, with gentle trepidation, mixed with
inspiring hopes. There seemed to be no end to these
accumulations, insomuch that it is said, at one time,
Teenie and Lockie, could each muster six dozen pair

of sheets, three score towels, a hundred petticoats, besides
other articles which shall be nameless—that Yaup
counted shirts innumerable—and the squire himself actually
mustered seventy-six pair of breeches, good, bad
and indifferent, a number which he declared he never
would exceed, he being an old seventy-sixer to the back
bone.

“Thus the old squire's barque floated swimmingly
towards the dark gulf that finally swallows up man, his
motives, his actions, and his memory, when in an evil
hour, a manufactory of woollen, was established in his
neighbourhood, for the encouragement of `domestic
industry,' and where carding and spinning and weaving
were all carried on by that arch fiend `productive labour.'
Hereupon all the women in twenty miles round, threw
down the distaff, the wool cards, and the shuttle, maintaining
that it was much better to leave these matters to
`domestic industry,' and `productive labour,' than to
be working and slaving from morning till night at home.

“`Hum,' quoth Squire Van Gaasbeeck, `this same
domestic industry, and productive labour, is what I cant
understand; it bids fair to put an end to the domestic
industry and productive labour of my family I think.'

“A great political economist gave him copies of all
the speeches made in Congress on the subject, amounting
to a hundred thousand pages, which he assured him
would explain the manner in which domestic industry and
domestic idleness, could be proved to be twin sisters.
The squire put on his spectacles and began to read
like any d—l incarnate; but before he got half through,
he fell asleep and dreamed of the tower of Babel and

confusion of tongues. He returned the books, and the
economist as good as told him he was a great blockhead.
`It may be,' quoth the squire, `but not all the speeches
in the world will persuade me that the way to encourage
domestic industry is to have all the work done abroad.'

“Some say money is the root of all evil. Of this
I profess myself ignorant, having never yet had enough
to do me much harm. Others, affirm that idleness is
the genuine root, and I believe they are right. From
the moment the squire's wife and daughters began to be
idle at home, they began to hanker after a hundred out-door
amusements which they never thought of before.
They must go down to Kaatskill forsooth to buy ribbons
and calicoes, and cotton stockings, and what not. In
short they never wanted an excuse for gadding, and at
last reached the climax of enormity in actually beginning
to talk seriously of a voyage to New York. The
squire's hair stood on end, for at that happy period, a
voyage to New York was never contemplated except
on occasions of life and death. The city was talked of
as of a place afar off, accessible only to a chosen few,
and the fortunate being who had visited it, acquired an
importance equal to that of a Musselman who has made
the pilgrimage to Mecca. He might lawfully assume
the traveller's privilege of telling as many lies as he
pleased.

“`This comes of domestic industry and productive
labour,' quoth the squire, who was still the better horse
at home, and put a flat negative on the project, for
which he got a good many sour looks. But his misfortunes
were not to end here. About this time, one of

those diabolical inventions which set all the world gadding,
appeared in the shape of a steam boat, smoking
and puffing her way up to Albany. In a little while she
was followed by others, so that at length it came to pass,
that people could go from Kaatskill to New York, and
back again in less than no time, for nothing. Some
threescore and ten of the squire's cousins to the sixth
degree, taking advantage of these facilities, came up
from New York to see him, and some half a dozen,
staid all summer. Now the least they could do, was to
ask the squire's wife and daughters to visit them in the
autumn in return. The squire was assailed so resolutely
for his permission to accept this polite offer, that at
last his obstinacy gave way, like a mill dam, in a great
freshet and carried every thing before it. Madam Van
Gaasbeeck, and Teenie and Lockie packed up all their
petticoats, and getting on board of the steam boat, at
the risk of their necks, under the protection of the
young Squire Yaup, paddled down to New York as
merry as fiddlers.

“At the same time the squire, in imitation of Mare
Antony, or somebody else that he never heard of, I believe,
almost loaded one of the Kaatskill sloops, with
pigs, potatoes, and other market stuffs, the whole product
of which was to be turned over to the ladies for
pin money. To the young squire he entrusted a more
important business. He had just closed a bargain with
a merchant in New York, who had once lived next door
to him in New Paltz, for a fine farm, on which he intended
to settle Yaup when he got married, and now
entrusted him with three thousand dollars, to pay for it,

agreeably to contract. Squire Van Gaasbeeck was not
a man to owe a shilling longer than he could help it.

“The party arrived in New York without any accident,
the steam boat not blowing up that trip, and were
received by the cousins and second cousins as if they
were quite welcome. But terrible was the work the
city cousins made with the costume of Madam Van
Gaasbeeck and the young ladies. It was all condemned,
like a parcel of slops eaten up by cockroaches, and
the produce of the pigs, potatoes, and pumpkins melted
irretrievably in one single excursion into Cheapside. For
the town cousins would by no means be seen in Broadway
with the country cousins, and accordingly took them up to
Cheapside, in the dusk of the evening, where the shopkeeper,
taking advantage of the obscurity, cheated them
finely. Being equipt in grand costume, they were taken
to the play—it was Peter Wilkins—where the old
lady declared, that “it was all one as a puppet show,”
and came very near fainting under the infliction of a
pair of corsetts, with which the city cousins had invested
her. The young squire, feeling the importance of
having money in his pocket, had delayed to pay over
the three thousand dollars, and carried it with him to
the play, in a leather pocket book. Impressed with
the weight of his charge, he was continually putting
his hand behind him to feel that all was safe, insomuch
that he caught the attention of a worthy gentleman,
who was prowling about, seeking whom he might
devour. He attached himself to Master Yaup for the
rest of the evening, and in the crowd of the lobby
going out, took occasion to ease him of the black leather

pocket book, without his being the wiser for it, till
he got home. It was never recovered, notwithstanding
all the exertions of that terror of evil doers, High Constable
Hays. This is one of the great conveniences of
paper money—a man may put a fortune in his pocket.
Had the three thousand dollars been in specie, Yaup
could not have carried them to the play.

“Here was a farm gone at one blow. But this was
not the worst. The good wife and daughters came
home with loads of finery, and loads of wants they
never knew before. There was the deuce to pay at
the church in New Paltz, the first time they appeared.
The church would hardly hold their bonnets,
and the parson was struck dumb, insomuch that he
gave out the wrong psalm, which the clerk set to a
wrong tune. Mercy upon us what heart burnings were
here! Not one of the congregation could tell where
the text was when they got home.

“Squire Van Gaasbeeck had now a farm to pay for,
and wanted every penny he could scrape together to
make both ends meet. But the shopping to Kaatskill
went on worse than ever, and besides this, almost every
week the sloop brought up some article of finery from
New York, which the city cousins assured them had
just come into fashion. In short, the squire now, for
the first time, felt his spirit bowed down to the earth
under the consciousness that he owed money which he
could not pay.

“In the progress of the spirit of the age, and the
march of mind, it came to pass that certain public spirited
people, procured a charter, and set up a bank at

Kaatskill, for the good of mankind. The squire in
good time was set upon by one of the directors, who
smelt out that he wanted money, and persuaded him to
take up a couple of thousands of the bank, with the aid
of which he could make such improvements on his new
purchase, as would enable him to sell it for twice as
much as it cost. The squire was not the man he once
was. His sturdy independent spirit, that scorned the
idea of a debt, was broken down. He borrowed the
money, improved the farm, and finally sold it to this
very honest director, at a great profit. The director
paid him in notes of the new bank, and the very next
day conveyed the farm to somebody else. Squire Van
Gaasbeeck was now rich again. He determined to go
the next day and pay all his debts, and be a man once
more.

“But unluckily, that same night the bank, and all
things therein, evaporated. The house was found shut
up next morning, and all the books, papers, notes, and
directors gone no one knew whither, although it was
the general opinion, the d—l had possession of the
directors. This blow half ruined Squire Van Gaasbeeck,
and Yaup gave the finishing blow by striking
work, and swearing he would no longer battle with the
“spirit of the age, and the march of public improvement,”
which decreed he should be a gentleman. Finally
to make an end of my story, the squire was turned
out of his farm by his creditors—his wife died of her
corsetts—the young ladies were fain to tend the spinning
jenny at the neighbouring manufactory—Master

Yaup became a gentleman commoner, left the home of
his ancestors, and was never heard of more.

“An old acquaintance one day came to see the squire,
now living on the charity of his brother in law, and inquired
how he came to be in such a state. `Ah!'
replied he with a sigh, `I was half ruined by domestic
industry and productive labour; but the spirit of the
age in conjunction with the march of public improvement
finished me at last.”'