Peace as stable as our hills,
Plenty like yon river flowing
To the sea from thousand rills.
Mary E. Monell.
"Upon one of these hills, rising out of this mountain pass-way, very distinct lines of earthworks are yet apparent. Near the residence of Mr. Sidney E. Van Wyck, by the large black-walnut trees, and east of the road near the base of the mountain, was the soldiers' burial ground. Many a poor patriot soldier's bones lie mouldering there; and if we did but know how many, we would be startled at the number, for this almost unknown and unnoticed burial ground holds not a few, but hundreds of those who gave their lives for the cause of American independence. Some fifteen years ago, an old lady who had lived near the village until after she had grown to womanhood, told the writer that after the battle of White Plains she went with her father through the streets of Fishkill, and in places between the Dutch and Episcopal churches, the dead were piled up like cord-wood. Those who died from wounds in battle or from sickness in hospital were buried there. Many of these were State militiamen, and it seems no more than just that the State should make an appropriation to erect a suitable monument over this spot. Rather than thus remain for another century, if a rough granite boulder were rolled down from the mountain side and inscribed: 'To the unknown and unnumbered dead of the American Revolution,' that rough unhewn stone would tell to the stranger and the passer-by, more to the praise and fame of our native town than any of us shall be able to add to it by works of our own; for it is doubtful whether any spot in the State has as many of the buried dead of the Revolution as this quiet burial yard in our old town!" Here also on June 2, 1883, was observed "The Fishkill Centennial," and few of our centennials have been celebrated amid objects of greater revolutionary interest. Near at hand, to quote[page 117] from the official report of the proceedings, is "Denning's Point where Washington frequently, while waiting, tied his horses under those magnificent 'Washington oaks,' as he passed backward and forward from New Windsor and Newburgh to Fishkill. Near by is the Verplanck House, Baron Steuben's old headquarters. On Spy Hill and Continental Hill troops were quartered. At Matteawan Sackett lived, and there is the Teller House built by Madame Brett, where officers frequently resorted, and there Yates dwelt when he presided over the legislative body while it held its sessions in Fishkill, that had much to do with forming our first State Constitution. Baron Steuben was for a while in the old Scofield House at Glenham. In Fishkill are those renowned old churches where legislative sittings were held, which were also used as hospitals for the sick, and one of which is otherwise known as being the place where Enoch Crosby, the spy, was imprisoned, and from which he escaped. Near at hand the Wharton House (Van Wyck House), forever associated with him, and made famous by Cooper's 'Spy.' In the Brinckerhoff House above, Lafayette was dangerously ill with a fever, and there, at Swartwoutville, Washington was often a visitor. Whenever Washington was at Fishkill he made Colonel Brinckerhoff's his headquarters. He occupied the bedroom back of the parlor, which remains the same 'excepting a door that opens into the hall, which has been cut through.' It is an old-fashioned house built of stone, with the date 1738 on one of its gables." With the story of Fishkill we close the largest page relating to our revolutionary heroes, and leave behind us the Old Beacon Mountains which forever sentinel and proclaim their glory.
No prouder sentinel of glory than the old Beacon
Mountain whose watch-fire guarded the valley and spoke
its rallying message to the Catskills and Berkshires and