[A COLONIAL HIDING PLACE.]
In sailing up the Hudson River, about one hundred miles above New York, you will discover on the west side a rather broad estuary, named by the old Dutch settlers, the Katterskill Creek.
This creek flows through a cleft in the mountains, known in the quaint language of the Dutch as the Katterskill Clove.
This clove, nature's pass through the mountains, was well known, and used by the tribes of the Six Nations, and especially by the vindictive, and blood thirsty Mohawks, as an easy trail by which they would descend upon the peace-loving and thrifty Dutch settlers; kill all the men who had not fled for refuge to the strong stone houses which were specially built for defence; capture the women and children, and kill all the live stock.
On the peninsula between the river and the creek, the latter being wide and deep enough to float the magnificent steamers which ply between Albany and New York, stood the colonial mansion to which your attention is called.
This mansion, for it was a splendid structure for those days, and the term would not be a misnomer in these, was built in 1763 by a Madam Dies, a Dutch matron, who afterwards married an English army officer. This man was so infatuated with his Dutch "vrow," and her wealth, that he deserted the colors, and would hide from search parties in the place to be hereinafter described.
The house was built of the gray sand stone found in that region, and was two stories high, with a capacious cellar, and an immense garret. The walls were nearly three feet thick, set in cement, which became so hard that when the day of destruction came a few years ago, the workmen were unable to tear the walls apart, but had to blow them down with dynamite. One hundred and fifty years had that cement been setting, and it was as hard as the stone itself.