The road follows the level table land almost to the Hudson, when it dips down a steep incline, crosses the Muitzes Kill and joins the river road. Once upon a time, as history records, as an excitable Dutch vrouw was wending her way along the banks of this brook, a sudden gust of wind caught up her cap, the pride of her heart, and whisked it into the water beyond reach, whereupon she set up an outcry, "Die muts is in die kill! Die muts is in die kill!" and so it is even unto this day. What kind of a name the stream might now be murmuring under, had this adventure befallen her good man is fearful to think on.
CASTLETON.
It is Castleton because the Indians once had a castle on the crest of the hill back of the village. The town is comparatively new, having been incorporated as late as 1827, and appears to have taken no important or interesting part in the days when history was making; but there was a ship yard here, and home-built sloops competed for the New York trade before the railroad changed things.
It is told of a certain foolish citizen, a passenger on one of the village sloops anchored for the night somewhere in the Highlands, that, being requested by the wag of the party to steer the stationary boat while the others took needed rest, he faithfully performed his task until relieved the next morning. When asked by his shipmates how they had got on during the night he replied that they had got along a good ways by the water, but not far by the land.
Castleton is one long street which wanders out into the open country at either end, and lonely country it is if one proceeds north as the early twilight of a cool November evening is closing around. The wayfarer, if he be of a fearful temperament and has read the story of the Murder Place, is apt to quicken his steps as he passes into the shadows of the trees that gloom the crossing of the stream marking the northern boundary of the village, and known as the Hell Hole. On the right are abrupt little hills, wooded and awesome, while off toward the west stretch the flats left by the river, with now and then a silent pool to reflect the dying embers of the burned-out day. No light gleams from a friendly window, only the shadowy form of a hay rake left out by some farmer suggests human companionship. With eight miles of such traveling ahead, it is small wonder if the wayfarer hastens.
"CITIZEN" GENET.
About half-way, where one passes a schoolhouse overlooking the flats and the guide board says 3½ miles to Castleton, once lived "Citizen" Genet, and his house still stands a quarter of a mile back on Prospect Hill, facing the cross road to East Greenbush. Edmond Charles Genet was sent out to this country in the Spring of 1793 by the new French Republic. Things moved rapidly in France in those days, and Genet's friends were soon removed and he, fearing the guillotine, became an American citizen, "a scientific farmer and an ornament to New York society." In 1810 he moved to Greenbush, where he died in 1834. His tombstone in the burial ground of the Dutch Church in East Greenbush tells us that "His heart was love and friendship's sun." His house was once the home of Gen. Hendrick K. Van Rensselaer, whose bravery at Fort Ann saved the American army in 1777.
Part of the flat lands we have been skirting go to make up the long island of Paps Knee, which was early selected as a place of refuge. Here a fort was built and farms were laid out, but in 1666 a flood swept away houses and cattle, and since then the farmers have lived on the higher main land; only one brick house, the fort, escaped and that still stands, bearing its two hundred and seventy-five years with the grace of long practice.
Where the road works down to meet the river comes Douw's Point, once the head of steamboat navigation; passengers for Albany and beyond going forward in stages after crossing the river in a horse ferryboat. It is whispered that a few rods below the point Captain Kidd buried treasures. Old Volkert P. Douw was so staunch a patriot that he refused to hold office under the English, and gave his money and his time to the American cause.
FORT CRALO.