* * *

  For here amid these hills he once kept court—­
  He who his country’s eagle taught to soar
  And fired those stars which shine o’er every shore.

  Charles Fenno Hoffman.

* * *

To return to Brinkerhoff, “The first purchase of land in the county of Dutchess, was made in the town of Fishkill.  On the 8th day of February, 1682, a license was given by Thomas Dongan, Commander-in-chief of the Province of New York, to Francis Rombout and Gulian Ver Planck, to purchase a tract of land from the Indians.  Under this license, they bought, on the 8th day of August, 1683, of the Wappinger Indians, all their right, title and interest to a certain large tract of land, afterward known as the Rombout precinct.  Gulian Ver Planck died before the English patent was issued by Governor Dongan; Stephanus Van Cortland was then joined in it with Rombout, and Jacobus Kipp substituted as the representative of the children of Gulian Ver Planck.  On the 17th day of October, 1685, letters patent, under the broad seal of the Province of New York, were granted by King James the Second, and the parties to whom these letters patent were granted, became from that time the undisputed proprietors of the soil.  There were 76,000 acres of these lands lying in Fishkill, and other towns taken from the patent, and 9,000 acres lying in the limits of the town of Poughkeepsie.  Besides paying the natives, as a further consideration for the privilege of their license, they were to pay the commander-in-chief, Thomas Dongan, six bushels of good and merchantable winter wheat every year.”  In the Book of Patents, at Albany, vol. 5, page 72, will be found the deed, of special interest to the historian and antiquarian.

* * *

    It was a dainty day, and it grew more dainty towards
    its close as the lights and shadows stretched athwart
    our Highland landscape.

    Susan Warner.

* * *

“After the evacuation of New York, in the fall of 1776, and the immediate loss of the seaboard, with Long Island and part of New Jersey, Fishkill was at once crowded with refugees, as they were then called, who sought, by banishing themselves from their homes on Long Island and New York, to escape imprisonment and find safety here.  The interior army route to Boston passed through this place.  Army stores, workshops, ammunition, etc., were established and deposited here.”  The Marquis De Chastellux, in his travels in North America, says:  “This town, in which there are not more than fifty houses in the space of two miles, has been long the principal depot of the American army.  It is there they have placed their magazines, their hospitals, their workshops, etc., but all of these form a town in themselves, composed of handsome large barracks, built in the woods at the foot of the mountains:  for the American army, like the Romans in many respects, have hardly any other winter quarters than wooden towns,