ok through Muitzeskill and Castleton to Greenbush, is
marked with New York and Albany guide posts, but none of the old
mile-stones adorn its path.

Ever since Rhinebeck the Catskills have been marching along the
western horizon, and while generally the river is too far away to be a
part of the picture, the country, the beautiful country, makes one
continually wonder, not that the painters of a past generation grew to
love the region and to revel in its seductive delights, but rather
that they could ever stop its delineation. The effect of the changing
light and shade and varying atmospheric conditions lend the same
enchantment that lies in the ever-changing sea.

[Sidenote: _THE DISTANT HILLS._]

About where that mystery, the county line, crosses the road, one
stands on a gentle ridge that extends the view both east and west.
Toward the latter, on this Indian Summer day were the ghosts of
mountains that in brighter times are the Catskills, while to the east
are the low-lying hills of the Taghkanic range, whose far slopes roll
down to meet the advances of the Berkshires. Beautiful undulating farm
lands lead the eye up to the distant hills on either hand, fields of
every warm tint with sentinel oaks or walnuts, and here and there the
wood-lot of the farmer. The soft browns and greens of the distant corn
stubble, or the winter barley fields with the blaze of the Frost
King's robes mellowed by the golden sun complete a picture common
enough in this wonderful valley of the Hudson, but always a
well-spring of delight for the traveler.

[Sidenote: _MUITZESKILL._]

After crossing into Rensselaer County the first village one comes in
contact with is Muitzeskill, whose burial ground is old enough to be
interesting to the searcher for curious epitaphs. All country places
have their odd characters, and this region is no exception. Among the
elegant extracts quoted as dropping from the lips of its citizens is
the remark of a certain Michael Younghans, hotel keeper, who
declaiming about certain improvements he was thinking of, said that he
was "A-going to get carpenters to impair his house, firiquelly it in
front, open pizarro all round, up-an-dicular posts on a new
destruction." What was to happen after that no man knoweth.

[Sidenote: _FIREPLACE OF THE NATION._]

This rolling country was once the council seat of the Mohicans, this
fact being commemorated in the name of Schodack, a Dutch rendering of
the Indian word Esquata