On reaching the
railway, one of the New York expresses swept by, and as he caught the
motion of the bell cord he turned and said: "Do they drive it with
that little string?" Lower Schodack Island, Mills Plaat (also an
island) and Upper Schodack Island reach almost to--
=Castleton=, a pleasant village on the eastern bank, with main street
lying close to the river. The cliffs, a few miles to the north, were
known to the Indians as Scoti-ack, or place of the ever-burning
council-fire, which gave the name of Schodack to the township, where
King Aepgin, on the 8th of April, 1680, sold to Van Rensselaer "all
that tract of country on the west side of the Hudson, extending from
Beeren Island up to Smack's Island, and in breadth two days' journey."
* * *
No spot in all the world where poetry and romance
are so closely blended with the heroic in history as
along the banks of our Hudson.
_Wallace Bruce._
* * *
THE MAHICAN TRIBE originally occupied all the east bank of the Hudson
north of Roeliffe Jansen's Kill, near Germantown, to the head waters
of the Hudson; and on the west bank, from Cohoes to Catskill.
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