the road keeps inland along the high ground that
slopes down to Verplanck's Point, named after the son-in-law of
Stephanus Van Cortlandt, to whose wife this part of the estate fell.
It is worth while to walk out to the brow of the hill for the sake of
the view and the historic memories it brings up. The "Kings Ferry" so
often mentioned in the annals of the Revolution connected this with a
sandy cove on the north shore of Stony Point opposite--Stony Point, "a
lasting monument of the daring courage of Mad Anthony." The ferry made
Verplanck's Point an important spot, and naturally it was fortified as
well as was Stony Point. Here Colonel Livingston was in command in
September, 1780, and it was he who, building better than he knew,
hurried the small cannon down to Teller's Point which, at break of
day, drove the Vulture down the river, the first link in the chain of
events leading to the capture of Andre, for Smith, his guide, becoming
frightened, refused to put the Englishman on board the waiting sloop
of war, as agreed, and instead brought him across the King's Ferry to
start him on his way to New York on foot.

On October 5, 1777, Sir Henry Clinton landed three thousand men on
Verplanck's Point, apparently for the purpose of attacking Peekskill,
but really with intent to deceive General Putnam, who was in command
of the town, and for once this Connecticut Yankee was fooled into
doing just what the enemy wished, for he drew his troops back to the
hills and did not know until too late that the English forces, under
cover of a friendly fog, had been ferried across to the west shore for
the purpose of attacking Fort Montgomery. Clinton was on his way north
with all the troops that could be spared to help Burgoyne, and Putnam,
who had the general command of the Highlands, with only fifteen
hundred men, could not hope to cope with the superior forces advancing
from the south, so he retired along the Post Road through
Cortlandtville to Continental Village, the main entrance by land to
the Highlands, where the public stores and workshops were located, and
from which he was compelled to again fall back as Sir Henry Clinton,
having captured the river forts and burned Peekskill, advanced.

[Sidenote: _PEEKSKILL._]

Peekskill on the one side of the river and Dunderberg on the other
guard the lower end of the Highlands. The town is named after the
first settler, one Jan Peek, whose earliest mention in history is as
the builder of