ry--when the Bowery was the farm of Peter Stuyvesant, and the Old
Dutch Church on Nassau Street (which also long since disappeared),
was considered the country--when communication with the old world was
semi-yearly instead of semi-weekly or daily--say two hundred years
ago--the whole town one evening was put into great commotion by the
fact that a ship was coming up the bay.

* * *

See you beneath yon sky so dark
Fast gliding along a gloomy bark:--
By skeleton shapes her sails are furled,
And the hand that steers is not of this world.

_Legend of the Storm Ship._

* * *

She approached the Battery within hailing distance, and then, sailing
against both wind and tide, turned aside and passed up the Hudson.
Week after week and month after month elapsed, but she never returned;
and whenever a storm came down on Haverstraw Bay or Tappan Zee, it
is said that she could be seen careening over the waste; and, in the
midst of the turmoil, you could hear the captain giving orders, in
_good Low Dutch_; but when the weather was pleasant, her favorite
anchorage was among the shadows of the picturesque hills, on the
eastern bank, a few miles above the Highlands. It was thought by some
to be Hendrick Hudson and his crew of the "Half Moon," who, it was
well known, had once run aground in the upper part of the river,
seeking a northwest passage to China; and people who live in this
vicinity still insist that under the calm harvest moon and the
pleasant nights of September, they see her under the bluff of Blue
Point, all in deep shadow, save her topsails glittering in the
moonlight.

=Poughkeepsie=, 74 miles from New York, is now at hand, Queen City
of the Hudson, with name, derived from the Indian word Apokeepsing,
signifying "safe harbor." Near the landing a bold headland juts out
into the river, known as Kaal Rock, and no doubt this sheltering
rock was a safe harbor in days of birch canoes. It has been recently
claimed that the word signifies "muddy pond," which is neither true,
appropriate or poetic. Poughkeepsie does not propose to give up
her old-time "harbor name," particularly as it has been recently
discovered that the name "Kipsie" was also given by the Indians to a
"safe harbor" near the Battery on Manhattan Island. It is said that
there are over forty different ways of spelling Poughkeepsie, and
every year the postoffice record gives a new one. The first house was
built in 1702 by a Mr. Van