omestead
of Peter Mesier, a New York merchant, who settled here about the close
of the Revolution.

Between here and Poughkeepsie the trolley plies. Its tracks run
through the grass by the roadside, the poles blend with the trees, and
this usually unsightly modern convenience hardly mars the beauty of
the landscape.

Not a mile-stone was to be seen on this piece of road, but down by the
river, at a corner of the Livingstone Mansion, evidently taken from
its original station on the old road nearby, and marked "80 M. from N.
York," reposes one of the lost guardians of the highway. The stones
appear to have all been set along the west side of the road, so that
they were compass on a cloudy day as well as distance markers, and a
man had but to know his right hand from his left to be sure of his
direction.

[Sidenote: _LIVINGSTONE HOUSE._]

The Livingstone house, built about 1714, stood on a point on the
river bank on what is now the southern edge of Poughkeepsie. Facing
the south it overlooks the river for miles, while in front was a
sheltered little harbor for river craft, but this has been filled in
by the manufacturing concern that now owns the property, and nothing
is as it was, except the house. During the Revolution the place was
the home of Henry Livingstone, whose well-known patriotism led the
British, when ascending the river in October, 1777, to bombard the
building, as they did so many others. One of its shingles, pierced by
a shot at that time, has been left in place as a reminder of the
incident. It also draws attention to the difference between the
hand-split shingles of those days and the machine-sawed ones of the
present.

[Sidenote: _POUGHKEEPSIE._]

Poughkeepsie is the Apo-keep-sinck of the Indians, the "pleasant and
safe harbor" where canoes were safe from wind and wave. The name is
said to be spelled some forty-two different ways in the old town
records. The "safe harbor" was made so by rocky bluffs projecting into
the river; that on the south being known to the Dutch as Call Rock,
though it did not sound like that in the vernacular. From this rock
old Baltus Van Kleeck and his neighbors were wont to hail passing
sloops for news or passage.

An Indian legend associated with the little cove here has the same
comfortable and satisfying outcome as the old-fashioned romance, when
it was not so necessary to be realistic as in the present day. A war
party of the Delawares, after a successful raid on