Here we part from the old Post Road, which continues on through Valatie, Niverville and South Schodack to Schodack Centre, where it joins company with the Boston Road, and together they travel through East Greenbush to Greenbush where once was the ferry at Crawlier.
The way I took through Muitzeskill and Castleton to Greenbush, is marked with New York and Albany guide posts, but none of the old mile-stones adorn its path.
Ever since Rhinebeck the Catskills have been marching along the western horizon, and while generally the river is too far away to be a part of the picture, the country, the beautiful country, makes one continually wonder, not that the painters of a past generation grew to love the region and to revel in its seductive delights, but rather that they could ever stop its delineation. The effect of the changing light and shade and varying atmospheric conditions lend the same enchantment that lies in the ever-changing sea.
THE DISTANT HILLS.
About where that mystery, the county line, crosses the road, one stands on a gentle ridge that extends the view both east and west. Toward the latter, on this Indian Summer day were the ghosts of mountains that in brighter times are the Catskills, while to the east are the low-lying hills of the Taghkanic range, whose far slopes roll down to meet the advances of the Berkshires. Beautiful undulating farm lands lead the eye up to the distant hills on either hand, fields of every warm tint with sentinel oaks or walnuts, and here and there the wood-lot of the farmer. The soft browns and greens of the distant corn stubble, or the winter barley fields with the blaze of the Frost King's robes mellowed by the golden sun complete a picture common enough in this wonderful valley of the Hudson, but always a well-spring of delight for the traveler.
MUITZESKILL.
After crossing into Rensselaer County the first village one comes in contact with is Muitzeskill, whose burial ground is old enough to be interesting to the searcher for curious epitaphs. All country places have their odd characters, and this region is no exception. Among the elegant extracts quoted as dropping from the lips of its citizens is the remark of a certain Michael Younghans, hotel keeper, who declaiming about certain improvements he was thinking of, said that he was "A-going to get carpenters to impair his house, firiquelly it in front, open pizarro all round, up-an-dicular posts on a new destruction." What was to happen after that no man knoweth.
FIREPLACE OF THE NATION.
This rolling country was once the council seat of the Mohicans, this fact being commemorated in the name of Schodack, a Dutch rendering of the Indian word Esquatak, "the fireplace of the nation." The Mohicans had been pretty thoroughly "pacified" by the Mohawks about the time that Hudson ascended the river, and this region is full of legends of fights and ambuscades.
It seems that Burgoyne's captured army was marched south over this road, and some three miles out of Castleton, so the story goes, one Jacob Jahn, a Hessian prisoner, escaped to the woods and later, building a log house on the exact spot where he effected his escape, he settled down, after taking unto himself a wife, and became a good citizen.