water. The town is surrounded by
palisades, and has several gates corresponding with the streets. It
has a Dutch Reformed and a Lutheran church. The Lutheran minister
lives up here in the winter, and down in New York in the summer.[351]
There is no English church or place of meeting, to my knowledge. As
this is the principal trading-post with the Indians, and as also they
alone have the privilege of trading, which is only granted to certain
merchants there, as a special benefit, who know what each one must pay
therefor, there are houses or lodges erected on both sides of the
town, where the Indians, who come from the far interior to trade, live
during the time they are there. This time of trading with the Indians
is at its height in the months of June and July, and also in August,
when it falls off; because it is then the best time for them to make
their journeys there and back, as well as because the Hollanders then
have more time outside their farm duties.

[Footnote 350: See p. 198, note 3.]

[Footnote 351: Rev. Bernhardus Arensius had since 1674 ministered to
these two Lutheran congregations, and continued till his death in
1691.]

We came to anchor at Kinderhook, in order to take in some grain, which
the female trader before mentioned[352] had there to be carried down
the river.

[Footnote 352: Illetje's mistress.]

MAY _1st, Wednesday._ We began early to load, but as it had to come
from some distance in the country, and we had to wait, we stepped
ashore to amuse ourselves. We came to a creek where, near the river,
lives the man whom they usually call the Child of Luxury,[353] because
he formerly had been such an one, but who now was not far from being
the Child of Poverty, for he was situated poorly enough. He had a
saw-mill on the creek, on a water-fall, which is a singular one, for
it is true that all falls have something special, and so had this one,
which was not less rare and pleasant than others. The water fell quite
steep, in one body, but it came down in steps, with a broad rest
sometimes between them. These steps were sixty feet or more high, and
were formed out of a single rock, which is unusual. I reached this
spot alone through the woods, and while I was sitting on the mill, my
comrade came up with the Child of Luxury, who, after he had shown us
the mill and falls, took us down a little to the right of the mill,
under a rock, on the margin of the creek, where we could behold how
wonderful God is