* This title was given to those Dutch purchasers of lands who bought the soil fairly from the natives, and planted a colony There were several patroon estates, but that of Van Rensselaer is the only one not disturbed by political changes. This, how ever, is now on the verge of extinction, and, for several years past, anti-rentism, as the opposition to the patroon privilege is called, has been working a change in the public mind unfavorable to such vast landed monopolies.
Ride to the Hoosick Valley.—Van Schaick's Mills.—Place of the Bennington Battle-ground.—Baume's Dispatch
five miles east of the Hudson. The country is very elevated and hilly, and, when three miles east of Troy, the Green Mountains were seen in the distance. Before the Hoosick Valley is reached, the country becomes extremely broken and picturesque. We descended by a romantic mountain road into the valley, a little past noon, and halted at Richmond's, at Hoosick Four Corners. This is the nearest point, on the turnpike, to the Bennington battle-ground. The road thither skirted the Hoosiek River northward for three miles, to the falls, * where we turned eastward, and passed through North Hoosick, situated at the junction of the Walloomscoick and White Creeks.
Here is still standing the old mill known as Van Schaick's in the Revolution. It was occupied by a party of Americans when Baume and his Hessians approached; and here the memorable battle of Bennington ended. From this mill, along the hills and the valley on the right bank of the Walloomscoick, to the bridge near the house of Mr. Barnet, two miles above, is the scene of the battle; and the hottest of the fight (which occurred when the Hessians retreated from the heights) took place between the little factory village of Starkville and the house of Mr. Taber. These allusions will be better understood after consulting the history.
The conflict called the battle of Bennington was a part of the operations connected with Burgoyne's invasion from Canada, in the summer and autumn of 1777. The delay whieh he had experienced at Skenesborough and on his way to Fort Edward had so reduced his stores and provisions, that a re-
* At the Hoosiek Falls is a manufacturing village containing about one hundred dwellings. The river here falls about forty feet, and affords very extensive water power. Near the factories I observed a handsome octagonal edifice, on the road side, on the front of which, in prominent letters, is the following:
"SACRED TO SCIENCE.
In sea, earth, and sky, what are untold
Of God's handiwork, both modern and old."