dians
before the Revolution. In 1777 the State legislature met here and
formed a constitution. In the fall of the same year, after the capture
of Fort Montgomery and Fort Clinton by the British, Vaughan landed at
Rondout, marched to Kingston, and burned the town. While Kingston
was burning, the inhabitants fled to Hurley, where a small force of
Americans hung a messenger who was caught carrying dispatches from
Clinton to Burgoyne.

* * *

What ample bays and branching streams,
What curves abrupt for glad surprise,
And how supreme the artist is
Who paints it all for loving eyes.

_Henry Abbey._

* * *

Rondout is the termination of the Delaware and Hudson Canal (whence
canal boats of coal find their way from the Pennsylvania Mountains
to tidewater), also of the _Ulster and Delaware Railroad_, by which
people find their way from tidewater to the Catskill Mountains, which
have greeted the eye of the tourist for many miles down the Hudson.
Originally all of the country-side in this vicinity was known as
Esopus, supposed to be derived, according to Ruttenber, from the
Indian word "seepus," a river. A "sopus Indian" was a Lowlander, and
the name is intimately connected with a long reach of territory
from Esopus Village, near West Park, to the mouth of the Esopus at
Saugerties. In 1675 the mouth of the Rondout Creek was chosen by the
New Netherland Company as one of the three fortified trading ports
on the Hudson; a stockade was built under the guidance of General
Stuyvesant in 1661 inclosing the site of old Kingston; a charter was
granted in 1658 under the name of Wiltwyck, but changed in 1679 to
Kingston. Few cities are so well off for old-time houses that span the
century, and there is no congregation probably in the United States
that has worshipped so many consecutive years in the same spot as the
Dutch Reformed people of Kingston. Five buildings have succeeded the
log church of 240 years ago. Dr. Van Slyke, in a recent welcome, said:
"This church, which opens her doors to you, claims a distinction which
does not belong even to the Collegiate Dutch Churches of Manhattan
Island, and, by a peculiar history, stands identified more closely
with Holland than any other of the early churches of this country.
When every other church of our communion had for a long time been
associated with an American Synod, this church retained its relations
to the Classis of Amsterdam, and, after a period of