After cordial well—­wishes from the brethren, we left the hospice, bringing away remembrances of it as one of the most interesting places it has been our privilege to visit.  It has, of course, changed character within half a century, and there is now less necessity for it than formerly.  Many travelers complain of it as now wearing too much the appearance of a hotel; but we were there too late in the season to find it so; and even if true at other times, the associations with the Monastery and the Pass are so interesting, the scenery so bold, and the welcome one meets with so cordial, that he who regrets having made the ascent must have had a very different experience from ourselves.

A few hours’ ride brought us to the valley, where we met peasants driving carts and bearing baskets piled up with luscious grapes.  A trifle that the poorest traveler could have spared, procured us an ample supply.

THE HUGUENOTS OF STATEN ISLAND.

Staten Island, that enchanting sea-girt spot in the beautiful Bay of New-York, early became a favorite resort with the French Protestants.  It should be called the Huguenot Island; and for fine scenery, inland and water, natural beauties, hill, dale, and streams, with a bracing, healthful climate, it strongly reminds the traveler of some regions in France.  No wonder that Frenchmen should select such a spot in a new land, for their quiet homes.  The very earliest settlers on its shores were men of religious principles.  Hudson, the great navigator, discovered the Island, in 1609, when he first entered the noble river which bears his undying name.  It was called by its Indian owners, Aquehioneja, Manackong, or Eghquaous, which, translated, means the place of Bad Woods, referring, probably, to the character of its original savage inhabitants.  Among the very earliest patents granted for lands in New-Netherland, we find one of June 19th, 1642, to Cornelius Melyn, a Dutch burgomaster.  He thus became a Patroon of Staten Island, and subsequently a few others obtained the same honor and privileges.  They were all connected with the Dutch Reformed Church, in Holland; and when they emigrated to New-Netherland, always brought with them their Bibles and the ‘Kranek-besoecker,’ or ‘Comforter of the Sick,’ who supplied the place of a regular clergyman.  Twice were the earliest settlers dispersed by the Raritan Indians, but they rallied again, until their progress became uninterrupted and permanent.

Between the Hollanders and the French Refugees, there existed an old and intimate friendship.  Holland, from the beginning of the Middle Ages, had been the asylum for all the religious out-laws from all parts of Europe.  But especially the persecuting wars and troubles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, brought hither crowds of exiles.  Not less than thirty thousand English, who had embraced the Reformed faith, found here a shelter during the reign of Mary