sted by his imps, though skipper Ouselsticker, of
Fishkill,--for all he had a parson on board,--was once beset by a heavy
squall, and the goblin came out of the mist and sat astraddle of his
bowsprit, seeming to guide his schooner straight toward the rocks. The
dominie chanted the song of Saint Nicolaus, and the goblin, unable to
endure either its spiritual potency or the worthy parson's singing, shot
upward like a ball and rode off on the gale, carrying with him the
nightcap of the parson's wife, which he hung on the weathercock of Esopus
steeple, forty miles away.
ANTHONY'S NOSE
The Hudson Highlands are suggestively named Bear Mountain, Sugar Loaf,
Cro' Nest, Storm King, called by the Dutch Boterberg, or Butter Hill,
from its likeness to a pat of butter; Beacon Hill, where the fires blazed
to tell the country that the Revolutionary war was over; Dunderberg,
Mount Taurus, so called because a wild bull that had terrorized the
Highlands was chased out of his haunts on this height, and was killed by
falling from a cliff on an eminence to the northward, known, in
consequence, as Breakneck Hill. These, with Anthony's Nose, are the
principal points of interest in the lovely and impressive panorama that
unfolds before the view as the boats fly onward.
Concerning the last-named elevation, the aquiline promontory that abuts
on the Hudson opposite Dunderberg, it takes title from no resemblance to
the human feature, but is so named because Anthony Van Corlaer, the
trumpeter, who afterwards left a reason for calling the upper boundary of
Manhattan Island Spuyten Duyvil Creek, killed the first sturgeon ever
eaten at the foot of this mountain. It happened in this wise: By
assiduous devotion to keg and flagon Anthony had begotten a nose that was
the wonder and admiration of all who knew it, for its size was
prodigious; in color it rivalled the carbuncle, and it shone like
polished copper. As Anthony was lounging over the quarter of Peter
Stuyvesant's galley one summer morning this nose caught a ray from the
sun and reflected it hissing into the water, where it killed a sturgeon
that was rising beside the vessel. The fish was pulled aboard, eaten, and
declared good, though the singed place savored of brimstone, and in
commemoration of the event Stuyvesant dubbed the mountain that rose above
his vessel Anthony's Nose.
MOODUA CREEK
Moodua is an evolution, through Murdy's and Moodna, from Murderer's
Creek, its pres
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