was approved, and soon
all were at work at the narrowest spot with trees torn from the hill
sides and such rough tools as they could command, and now a small
stream begins to work through which, washing out the earth and smaller
stones, becomes a flood thundering down the lower valley. In a few
days the region was drained and the enemy exterminated, but their
houses remain even unto the present time. The present Fishkill
Mountain was the "long house" of the watery tribe gradually solidified
through the ages into the hardest of hard trap rock, and the little
conical hills that we see in the Wiccopee Pass were the play houses of
the baby rats. But alas the giants, having no longer any place to
bathe, began to be troubled by a hardening of the skin and joints, and
their great bodies would at last fall to rise no more; but, as if in
very mockery, whenever a giant fell a spring of water would bubble
from the ground and a rivulet would soon be searching out a path for
itself among the rocks and woods.

The traveler knowing nothing of the legend might suppose that sometime
the waters swirled and eddied over this region, and that our
symmetrical little hills are deposits made at that time.

[Sidenote: _REVOLUTIONARY BURIAL GROUND._]

[Sidenote: _WHARTON HOUSE._]

The Post Road now passes through a fearsome piece of woods, coming out
into the open again where the mountain drops quickly to the plain, and
we are in the sunshine once more. Looking back at this time of day,
about 7 o'clock of an early June evening, one sees a curious effect of
sunlight and shadow, against the dark mountain background, the sun
outlines with vivid distinctness every tree and bush or stone wall or
weed with a silvery halo, and seems to intensify the fresh verdure
until all nature swims in green. Soon another of the old mile-stones
appears, as usual on the west side of the road, and opposite is a
small granite monument which commemorates the graveyard of the soldier
dead in the adjoining field, where there are probably more
revolutionary dead buried than in any other spot in the State. This
neighborhood was a headquarters for part of the army between 1776 and
1783. A step further on is the Wharton House, known to both history
and romance. The building was used as army headquarters during the
seven years that war raged up and down the Hudson Valley. The names of
both Washington and Lafayette are closely associated with its history,
and it is also th