 | Wolfert's roost |  |
WOLFERT'S ROOST.
CHRONICLE I.
About five-and-twenty miles from the ancient and renowned city
of Manhattan, formerly called New-Amsterdam, and vulgarly
called New-York, on the eastern bank of that expansion of the
Hudson, known among Dutch mariners of yore, as the 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. It is said, in fact, to have been modelled after the
cocked hat of Peter the Headstrong, as the Escurial was modelled
after the gridiron of the blessed St. Lawrence. Though but of
small dimensions, yet, like many small people, it is of mighty
spirit, and values itself greatly on its antiquity, being one of the
oldest edifices, for its size, in the whole country. It claims to be
an ancient seat of empire, I may rather say an empire in itself,
and like all empires, great and small, has had its grand historical
epochs. In speaking of this doughty and valorous little pile, I
shall call it by its usual appellation of “The Roost;” though
that is a name given to it in modern days, since it became the
abode of the white man.
Its origin, in truth, dates far back in that remote region commonly
called the fabulous age, in which vulgar fact becomes mystified,
and tinted up with delectable fiction. The eastern shore
of the Tappan Sea was inhabited in those days by an unsophisticated
race, existing in all the simplicity of nature; that is to say,
they lived by hunting and fishing, and recreated themselves occasionally
with a little tomahawking and scalping. Each stream
that flows down from the hills into the Hudson, had its petty
sachem, who ruled over a hand's breadth of forest on either side,
and had his seat of government at its mouth. The chieftain who
ruled at the Roost, was not merely a great warrior, but a medicine-man,
or prophet, or conjurer, for they all mean the same
thing in Indian parlance. Of his fighting propensities, evidences
still remain, in various arrow-heads of flint, and stone battle-axes,
occasionally digged up about the Roost: of his wizard powers,
we have a token in a spring which wells up at the foot of the bank,
on the very margin of the river, which, it is said, was gifted by
him with rejuvenating powers, something like the renowned Fountain
of Youth in the Floridas, so anxiously but vainly sought after
by the veteran Ponce de Leon. This story, however, is stoutly
contradicted by an old Dutch matter-of-fact tradition, which declares
that the spring in question was smuggled over from Holland
in a churn, by Femmetie Van Blarcom, wife of Goosen Garret
Van Blarcom, one of the first settlers, and that she took it up by
night, unknown to her husband, from beside their farm-house near
Rotterdam; being sure she should find no water equal to it in
the new country—and she was right.
The wizard sachem had a great passion for discussing territorial
questions, and settling boundary lines, in other words, he had
neighboring sachems, each of whom stood up stoutly for his hand-breadth
of territory; so that there is not a petty stream nor
rugged hill in the neighborhood, that has not been the subject of
long talks and hard battles. The sachem, however, as has been
observed, was a medicine-man, as well as warrior, and vindicated
his claims by arts as well as arms; so that, by dint of a little
hard fighting here, and hocus pocus (or diplomacy) there, he managed
to extend his boundary line from field to field and stream to
stream, until it brought him into collision with the powerful
sachem of Sing Sing.[1] Many were the sharp conflicts between
these rival chieftains for the sovereignty of a winding valley, a
favorite hunting ground watered by a beautiful stream called the
Pocantico. Many were the ambuscades, surprisals, and deadly
onslaughts that took place among its fastnesses, of which it grieves
me much that I cannot pursue the details, for the gratification of
those gentle but bloody-minded readers, of both sexes, who
delight in the romance of the tomahawk and scalping-knife. Suffice
it to say, that the wizard chieftain was at length victorious,
though his victory is attributed, in Indian tradition, to a great
medicine, or charm, by which he laid the sachem of Sing-Sing
and his warriors asleep among the rocks and recesses of the valley,
where they remain asleep to the present day, with their bows
and war-clubs beside them. This was the origin of that potent
and 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 medicines 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 Sea, from Yonkers quite to Sleepy Hollow, and known
in old records and maps by the Indian name of Wicquaes-Keck.
The wizard Sachem was succeeded by a line of chiefs of whom
nothing remarkable remains on record. One of them was the
very individual on whom master Hendrick Hudson and his mate
Robert Juet made that sage experiment gravely recorded by the
latter, in the narrative of the discovery.
“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 vitæ, 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.”[2]
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 vitæ;
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.
The worthy government of the New Netherlands was not suffered
to enjoy this grand acquisition unmolested. In the year
1654, the losel 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 roused the ire of that gunpowder old hero. Without
waiting to discuss claims and titles, he 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 the rest of the Yankees
back into Connecticut, or obliged them to acknowledge allegiance
to their High Mightinesses. In revenge, however, they introduced
the plague of witchcraft into the province. This doleful
the country had not the Dutch farmers nailed horse-shoes to
the doors of their houses and barns, sure protections against
witchcraft, many of which remain to the present day.
The seat of empire of the wizard sachem now came into the
possession of Wolfert Acker, one of the privy counsellors of
Peter Stuyvesant. He was a worthy, but ill-starred man, whose
aim through life had been to live in peace and quiet. For this he
had emigrated from Holland, driven abroad by family feuds and
wrangling neighbors. He had warred for quiet through the fidgetting
reign of William the Testy, and the fighting reign of Peter
the Headstrong, sharing in every brawl and rib-roasting, in his
eagerness to keep the peace and promote public tranquillity. It
was his doom, in fact, to meet a head wind at every turn, and be
kept in a constant fume and fret by the perverseness of mankind.
Had he served on a modern jury he would have been sure to have
eleven unreasonable men opposed to him.
At the time when the province of the New Netherlands was
wrested from the domination of their High Mightinesses by the
combined forces of Old and New England, Wolfert retired in
high dudgeon to this fastness in the wilderness, with the bitter determination
to bury himself from the world, and live here for the
rest of his days in peace and quiet. In token of that fixed purpose
he inscribed over his door (his teeth clenched at the time)
his favorite Dutch motto, “Lust in Rust,” (pleasure in quiet). The
mansion was thence called Wolfert's Rust—(Wolfert's Rest), but
by the uneducated, who did not understand Dutch, Wolfert's
Roost; probably from its quaint cock-loft look, and from its having
a weather-cock perched on every gable.
Wolfert's luck followed him into retirement. He had shut
himself up from the world, but he had brought with him a wife,
and it soon passed into a proverb throughout the neighborhood
that the cock of the Roost was the most henpecked bird in the
country. His house too was reputed to be harassed by Yankee
witchcraft. When the weather was quiet every where else, the
wind, it was said, would howl and whistle about the gables; witches
and warlocks would whirl about upon the weather-cocks, and
scream down the chimneys; nay it was even hinted that Wolfert's
wife was in league with the enemy, and used to ride on a
broomstick to a witches' sabbath in Sleepy Hollow. This, however,
was all mere scandal, founded perhaps on her occasionally
flourishing a broomstick in the course of a curtain lecture, or raising
a storm within doors, as termagant wives are apt to do,
and against which sorcery horse shoes are of no avail.
Wolfert Acker died and was buried, but found no quiet even
in the grave: for if popular gossip be true, his ghost has occasionally
been seen walking by moonlight among the old gray moss-grown
trees of his apple orchard.
A corruption of the Old Indian name, O-sin-sing. Some have rendered
it, O-sin-song, or O-sing-song; in token of its being a great market town;
where any thing may be had for a mere song. Its present melodious alteration
to Sing Sing is said to have been made in compliment to a Yankee singing-master,
who taught the inhabitants the art of singing through the nose.
CHRONICLE II.
The next period at which we find this venerable and eventful
pile rising into importance, was during the dark and troublous
time of the revolutionary war. It was the keep or stronghold of
Jacob Van Tassel, a valiant Dutchman of the old stock of Van
Tassels, who abound in Westchester County. The name, as
originally written, was Van Texel, being derived from the Texel
in Holland, which gave birth to that heroic line.
The Roost stood in the very heart of what at that time was
called the debatable ground, lying between the British and American
lines. The British held possession of the city and island of
New York; while the Americans drew up towards the Highlands,
holding their head-quarters at Peekskill. The intervening country
from Croton River to Spiting Devil Creek was the debatable
ground in question, liable to be harried by friend and foe, like
the Scottish borders of yore.
It is a rugged region; full of fastnesses. A line of rocky
hills extends through it like a backbone, sending out ribs on
either side; but these rude hills are for the most part richly
wooded, and inclose little fresh pastoral valleys watered by the
Neperan, the Pocantico,[3]
and other beautiful streams, along which
the Indians built their wigwams in the olden time.
In the fastnesses of these hills, and along these valleys existed,
in the time of which I am treating, and indeed exist to the
present day, a race of hard-headed, hard-handed, stout-hearted yeomen,
descendants of the primitive Nederlanders. Men obstinately
attached to the soil, and neither to be fought nor bought out of
the war; some, however, were Tories, or adherents to the old
kingly rule; who considered the revolution a mere rebellion, soon
to be put down by his majesty's forces. A number of these took
refuge within the British lines, joined the military bands of refugees,
and became pioneers or leaders to foraging parties sent out
from New York to scour the country and sweep off supplies for
the British army.
In a little while the debatable ground became infested by
roving bands, claiming from either side, and all pretending to
redress wrongs and punish political offences; but all prone in the
exercise of their high functions, to sack hen-roosts, drive off cattle,
and lay farm-houses under contribution: such was the origin of
two great orders of border chivalry, the Skinners and the Cow
Boys, famous in revolutionary story; the former fought, or rather
marauded under the American, the latter under the British
banner. In the zeal of service, both were apt to make blunders,
and confound the property of friend and foe. Neither of them in
the heat and hurry of a foray had time to ascertain the politics
of a horse or cow, which they were driving off into captivity; nor,
when they wrung the neck of a rooster, did they trouble their
heads whether he crowed for Congress or King George.
To check these enormities, a confederacy was formed among
the yeomanry who had suffered from these maraudings. It was
composed for the most part of farmers' sons, bold, hard-riding
lads, well armed, and well mounted, and undertook to clear the
country round of Skinner and Cow Boy, and all other border vermin;
as the Holy Brotherhood in old times cleared Spain of the
banditti which infested her highways.
Wolfert's Roost was one of the rallying places of this confederacy,
and Jacob Van Tassel one of its members. He was eminently
fitted for the service: stout of frame, bold of heart, and like
his predecessor, the warrior sachem of yore, delighting in daring
enterprises. He had an Indian's sagacity in discovering when the
enemy was on the maraud, and in hearing the distant tramp of
cattle. It seemed as if he had a scout on every hill, and an ear
as quick as that of Fine Ear in the fairy tale.
The foraging parties of tories and refugees had now to be secret
and sudden in their forays into Westchester County; to make
a hasty maraud among the farms, sweep the cattle into a drove,
and hurry down to the lines along the river road, or the valley of
the Neperan. Before they were half way down, Jacob Van Tassel,
with the holy brotherhood of Tarrytown, Petticoat Lane, and
Sleepy Hollow, would be clattering at their heels. And now
there would be a general scamper for King's Bridge, the pass
over Spiting Devil Creek into the British lines. Sometimes the
moss-troopers would be overtaken, and eased of part of their
booty. Sometimes the whole cavalgada would urge its headlong
course across the bridge with thundering tramp and dusty whirlwind.
At such times their pursuers would rein up their steeds,
survey that perilous pass with wary eye and, wheeling about, indemnify
themselves by foraging the refugee region of Morrisania.
While the debatable land was liable to be thus harried, the
great Tappan Sea, along which it extends, was likewise domineered
over by the foe. British ships of war were anchored here and
there in the wide expanses of the river, mere floating castles to
hold it in subjection. Stout galleys armed with eighteen pounders,
and navigated with sails and oars, cruised about like hawks;
country along shore.
It was a sore grievance to the yeomanry along the Tappan Sea
to behold that little Mediterranean ploughed by hostile prows,
and the noble river of which they were so proud, reduced to a
state of thraldom. Councils of war were held by captains of
market-boats and other river craft, to devise ways and means of
dislodging the enemy. Here and there on a point of land extending
into the Tappan Sea, a mud work would be thrown up,
and an old field-piece mounted, with which a knot of rustic artillerymen
would fire away for a long summer's day at some frigate
dozing at anchor far out of reach; and reliques of such works
may still be seen overgrown with weeds and brambles, with peradventure
the half-buried fragment of a cannon which may have
burst.
Jacob Van Tassel was a prominent man in these belligerent
operations; but he was prone moroever, to carry on a petty warfare
of his own for his individual recreation and refreshment. On
a row of hooks above the fireplace of the Roost, reposed his great
piece of ordnance; a duck, or rather goose gun of unparalleled
longitude, with which it was said he could kill a wild goose half
way across the Tappan Sea. Indeed there are as many wonders
told of this renowned gun, as of the enchanted weapons of classic
story. When the belligerent feeling was strong upon Jacob,
he would take down his gun, sally forth alone, and prowl along
shore, dodging behind rocks and trees, watching for hours together
any ship or galley at anchor or becalmed; as a valorous mouser
will watch a rat hole. So sure as a boat approached the shore,
bang! went the great goose gun, sending on board a shower of
some woody ravine. As the Roost stood in a lonely situation,
and might be attacked, he guarded against surprise by making
loop-holes in the stone walls, through which to fire upon an assailant.
His wife was stout-hearted as himself, and could load
as fast as he could fire, and his sister, Nochie Van Wurmer, a redoubtable
widow, was a match, as he said, for the stoutest man in
the country. Thus garrisoned, his little castle was fitted to stand
a siege, and Jacob was the man to defend it to the last charge of
powder.
In the process of time the Roost became one of the secret
stations, or lurking places, of the Water Guard. This was an
aquatic corps in the pay of government, organized to range the
waters of the Hudson, and keep watch upon the movements of the
enemy. It was composed of nautical men of the river and hardy
youngsters of the adjacent country, expert at pulling an oar or
handling a musket. They were provided with whale-boats, long
and sharp, shaped like canoes, and formed to lie lightly on the
water, and be rowed with great rapidity. In these they would
lurk out of sight by day, in nooks and bays, and behind points of
land; keeping a sharp look-out upon the British ships, and giving
intelligence to head quarters of any extraordinary movement. At
night they rowed about in pairs, pulling quietly along with muffled
oars, under shadow of the land, or gliding like spectres
about frigates and guard ships to cut off any boat that might be
sent to shore. In this way they were a source of constant uneasiness
and alarm to the enemy.
The Roost, as has been observed, was one of their lurking
places; having a cove in front where their whale-boats could be
ready to take a part in any “scout or scrummage” by land or
water. At this little warrior nest the hard-riding lads from the
hills would hold consultations with the chivalry of the river, and
here were concerted divers of those daring enterprises which resounded
from Spiting Devil Creek even unto Anthony's Nose.
Here was concocted the midnight invasion of New York Island,
and the conflagration of Delancy's Tory mansion, which makes
such a blaze in revolutionary history. Nay more, if the traditions
of the Roost may be credited, here was meditated by Jacob
Van Tassel and his compeers, a nocturnal foray into New York itself,
to surprise and carry off the British commanders Howe and
Clinton, and put a triumphant close to the war.
There is no knowing whether this notable scheme might not have
been carried into effect, had not one of Jacob Van Tassel's egregious
exploits along shore with his goose-gun, with which he thought
himself a match for any thing, brought vengeance on his house.
It so happened, that in the course of one of his solitary prowls
he descried a British transport aground; the stern swung toward
shore within point-blank shot. The temptation was too great to
be resisted. Bang! went the great goose-gun, from the covert
of the trees, shivering the cabin windows and driving all hands
forward. Bang! bang! the shots were repeated. The reports
brought other of Jacob's fellow bush-fighters 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 the utter
fell into the hands of the enemy in the course of one of his forays,
and was carried away prisoner to New York. The Roost itself,
as a pestilent rebel nest, was marked out for signal punishment.
The cock of the Roost being captive, there was none to garrison
it but his stout-hearted spouse, his redoubtable sister, Nochie
Van Wurmer, and Dinah, a strapping negro wench. An armed
vessel came to anchor in front; 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 desist; 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.
As to the stout Jacob himself, he was detained a prisoner in
New York 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, the resorts of bats and owls. Superstitious notions
alone at night down the rambling lane which led to it, overhung
with trees and crossed here and there by a wild wandering
brook. The story went that one of the victims of Jacob Van Tassel's
great goose-gun had been buried there in unconsecrated
ground.
Even the Tappan Sea in front was said to be haunted. Often
in the still twilight of a summer evening, when the Sea would be
as glass, and the opposite hills would throw their purple shadows
half across it, a low sound would be heard as of the steady vigorous
pull of oars, though not a boat was to be descried. Some
might have supposed that a boat was rowed along unseen under
the deep shadows of the opposite shores; but the ancient traditionists
of the neighborhood knew better. Some said it was one
of the whale-boats of the old water-guard, sunk by the British
ships during the war, but now permitted to haunt its old cruising
grounds; but the prevalent opinion connected it with the awful
fate of Rambout Van Dam of graceless memory. He was a roystering
Dutchman of Spiting Devil, who in times long past had
navigated his boat alone one Saturday the whole length of the
Tappan Sea, to attend a quilting frolic at Kakiat, on the western
shore. Here he had danced, and drunk, until midnight, when he
entered his boat to return home. He was warned that he was on
the verge of Sunday morning; but he pulled off nevertheless,
swearing he would not land until he reached Spiting Devil, if it
took him a month of Sundays. He was never seen afterwards;
but may be heard plying his oars, as above mentioned, being the
Flying Dutchman of the Tappan Sea, doomed to ply between Kakiat
and Spiting Devil until the day of judgment.
The Neperan, vulgarly called the Saw-Mill River, winds for many
miles through a lovely valley, shrouded by groves, and dotted by Dutch
farm-houses, and empties itself into the Hudson, at the ancient Dorp
of Yonkers. The Pocantico, rising among woody hills, winds in many a
wizard maze, through the sequestered haunts 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.
CHRONICLE III.
The revolutionary war was over. The debatable ground had
once more become a quiet agricultural region; the border chivalry
had turned their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into
pruning hooks, and hung up their guns, only to be taken down
occasionally in a campaign against wild pigeons on the hills, or wild
ducks upon the Hudson. Jacob Van Tassel, whilome carried
captive to New York, a flagitious rebel, had come forth from captivity
a “hero of seventy-six.” In a little while he sought the
scenes of his former triumphs and mishaps, rebuilt the Roost, restored
his goose-gun to the hooks over the fireplace, and reared
once more on high the glittering weathercocks.
Years and years passed over the time-honored little mansion.
The honeysuckle and the sweetbrier crept up its walls; the wren
and the phœbe bird built under the eaves; it gradually became
almost hidden among trees, through which it looked forth, as with
half-shut eyes, upon the Tappan Sea. The Indian spring, famous in
the days of the wizard sachem, still welled up at the bottom of
the green bank; and the wild brook, wild as ever, came babbling
down the ravine, and threw itself into the little cove where of
yore the water-guard harbored their whaleboats.
Such was the state of the Roost many years since, at the
time when Diedrich Knickerbocker came into this neighborhood,
in the course of his researches among the Dutch families for materials
for his immortal history. The exterior of the eventful
little pile seemed to him full of promise. The crow-step gables
were of the primitive architecture of the province. The weather-cocks
which surmounted them had crowed in the glorious days of
glittered of yore on the great Vander Heyden palace at Albany!
The interior of the mansion fulfilled its external promise.
Here were records of old times; documents of the Dutch dynasty,
rescued from the profane hands of the English, by Wolfert
Acker, when he retreated from New Amsterdam. Here he had
treasured them up like buried gold, and here they had been miraculously
preserved by St. Nicholas, at the time of the conflagration
of the Roost.
Here then did old Diedrich Knickerbocker take up his abode
for a time, and set to work with antiquarian zeal to decipher these
precious documents, which, like the lost books of Livy, had baffled
the research of former historians; and it is the facts drawn
from these sources which give his work the preference, in point
of accuracy, over every other history.
It was during his sojourn in this eventful neighborhood, that
the historian is supposed to have picked up many of those legends,
which have since been given by him to the world, or found
among his papers. Such was the legend connected with the old
Dutch church of Sleepy Hollow. The church itself was a monument
of bygone days. It had been built in the early times of
the province. A tablet over the portal bore the names of its
founders: Frederick Filipson, a mighty man of yore, patroon
of Yonkers, and his wife Katrina Van Courtland, of the Van
Courtlands of Croton; a powerful family connexion, with one foot
resting on Spiting Devil Creek, and the other on the Croton River.
Two weathercocks, with the initials of these illustrious personages,
graced each end of the church, one perched over the belfry,
the other over the chancel. As usual with ecclesiastical
contradiction between them on all points of windy doctrine;
emblematic, alas! of the Christian propensity to schism
and controversy.
In the burying-ground adjacent to the church, reposed the
earliest fathers of a wide rural neighborhood. Here families
were garnered together, side by side, in long platoons, in this last
gathering place of kindred. With pious hand would Diedrich
Knickerbocker turn down the weeds and brambles which had
overgrown the tombstones, to decipher inscriptions in Dutch and
English, of the names and virtues of succeeding generations of
Van Tassels, Van Warts, and other historical worthies, with
their portraitures faithfully carved, all bearing the family likeness
to cherubs.
The congregation in those days was of a truly rural character.
City fashions had not as yet stole up to Sleepy Hollow. Dutch
sun-bonnets and honest homespun still prevailed. Every thing
was in primitive style, even to the bucket of water and tin cup
near the door in summer, to assuage the thirst caused by the heat
of the weather or the drouth of the sermon.
The pulpit, with its wide-spreading sounding board, and the
communion table, curiously carved, had each come from Holland
in the olden time, before the arts had sufficiently advanced in the
colony for such achievements. Around these on Sundays would
be gathered the elders of the church, gray-headed men who led
the psalmody, and in whom it would be difficult to recognize the
hard-riding lads of yore, who scoured the debatable land in the
time of the revolution.
The drowsy influence of Sleepy Hollow was apt to breathe
seen with his handkerchief over his face to keep off the flies, and
apparently listening to the dominie; but really sunk into a summer
slumber, lulled by the sultry notes of the locust from the
neighboring trees.
And now a word or two about Sleepy Hollow, which many
have rashly deemed a fanciful creation, like the Lubberland of
mariners. It was probably the mystic and dreamy sound of the
name which first tempted the historian of the Manhattoes into its
spellbound mazes. As he entered, all nature seemed for the
moment to awake from its slumbers and break forth in gratulations.
The quail whistled a welcome from the corn field; the
loquacious cat-bird flew from bush to bush with restless wing proclaiming
his approach, or perked inquisitively into his face, as if
to get a knowledge of his physiognomy. The woodpecker tapped
a tattoo on the hollow apple tree, and then peered round the
trunk, as if asking how he relished the salutation; while the
squirrel scampered along the fence, whisking his tail over his head
by way of a huzza.
Here reigned the golden mean extolled by poets, in which no
gold was to be found and very little silver. The inhabitants of
the Hollow were of the primitive stock, and had intermarried and
bred in and in, from the earliest time of the province, never
swarming far from the parent hive, but dividing and subdividing
their paternal acres as they swarmed.
Here were small farms, each having its little portion of meadow
and corn field; its orchard of gnarled and sprawling apple
trees; its garden in which the rose, the marigold and hollyhock,
grew sociably with the cabbage, the pea, and the pumpkin: each
with an old hat nailed against the wall for the housekeeping wren;
the coop on the grass-plot, where the motherly hen clucked round
with her vagrant brood: each had its stone well, with a moss-covered
bucket suspended to the long balancing pole, according to
antediluvian hydraulics; while within doors resounded the eternal
hum of the spinning wheel.
Many were the great historical facts which the worthy Diedrich
collected in these lowly mansions, and patiently would he sit
by the old Dutch housewives with a child on his knee, or a purring
grimalkin on his lap, listing to endless ghost stories spun
forth to the humming accompaniment of the wheel.
The delighted historian pursued his explorations far into the
foldings of the hills where the Pocantico winds its wizard stream
among the mazes of its old Indian haunts; sometimes running
darkly in pieces of woodland beneath balancing sprays of beech
and chestnut: sometimes sparkling between grassy borders in
fresh green intervals; here and there receiving the tributes of
silver rills which came whimpering down the hill sides from their
parent springs.
In a remote part of the Hollow, where the Pocantico forced
its way down rugged rocks, stood Carl's mill, the haunted house
of the neighborhood. It was indeed a goblin-looking pile; shattered
and time-worn; dismal with clanking wheels and rushing
streams, and all kinds of uncouth noises. A horse shoe
nailed to the door to keep off witches, seemed to have lost its
power; for as Diedrich approached, 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 appeared to be the very hobgoblin
of the Hollow, abounding in that valuable information never to
be acquired from books. Diedrich Knickerbocker soon discovered
his merit. They had long talks together seated on a broken
millstone, heedless of the water and the clatter of the mill; and
to his conference with that African sage, many attribute the surprising,
though true story of Ichabod Crane, and the Headless
Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. We refrain, however, from giving
farther researches of the historian of the Manhattoes, during his
sojourn at the Roost; but may return to them in future pages.
Reader, the Roost still exists. Time, which changes all
things, is slow in its operations on a Dutchman's dwelling. The
stout Jacob Van Tassel, it is true, sleeps with his fathers; and
his great goose-gun with him: yet his strong-hold still bears the
impress of its Dutch origin. Odd rumors have gathered about
it, as they are apt to do about old mansions, like moss and weather
stains. The shade of Wolfert Acker still walks his unquiet
rounds at night in the orchard; and a white figure has now and
then been seen seated at a window and gazing at the moon,
from a room in which a young lady is said to have died of love
and green apples.
Mementoes of the sojourn of Diedrich Knickerbocker are
still cherished at the Roost. His elbow chair and antique writing-desk
maintain their place in the room he occupied, and his
old cocked hat still hangs on a peg against the wall.
| Wolfert's roost | |