WOLFERT'S ROOST.

About five-and-twenty miles from the ancient and renowned city of Manhattan, formerly called New-Amsterdam, and vulgarly called New York, on the eastern bank of that expansion of the Hudson, known among Dutch mariners of yore as the Tappan Zee, being, in fact, the great Mediterranean Sea of the New Netherlands, stands a little oldfashioned stone mansion, all made up of gable-ends, and as full of an. gles and corners as an old cocked hat. Though but of small dimen. sions, yet, like many small people, it is of mighty spirit, and values itself greatly on its antiquity, being one of the oldest edifices for its size, in the whole country. It claims to be an ancient seat of empire, I may rather say an empire in itself, and, like all empires, great and small, has had its grand historical epochs. In speaking of this doughty and valorous little pile, I shall call it by its usual appellation of "The Roost ;" though that is the name given to it in modern days, since it became the abode of the white man.

Its origin, in truth, dates far back in that remote region commonly called the fabulous age, in which vulgar fact becomes mystified, and tinted up with delectable fiction. The eastern shore of the Tappan Sea was inhabited in those days by an unsophisticated race, existing in all the simplicity of nature; that is to say, they lived by hunting and fishing, and recreated themselves occasionally with a little tomahawking and scalping. Each stream that flows down from the hills into the Hudson, had its petty sachem, who ruled over a hand's breadth of forest on either side, and had his seat of government at its mouth. The chieftain who ruled at the Roost, was not merely a great warrior, but a medicine-man, or prophet, or conjurer, for they all mean the same thing in Indian pariance. Of his fighting propensities evidences still remain, in various arrow-heads of flint, and stone battle. axes, occasionally dug up about the Roost; of his wizard powers, we have a token in a spring which wells up at the foot of the bank, on the very margin of the river, which, it is said, was gifted by him with rejuvenating powers, something like the renowned Fountain of Youth in the Floridas, so anxiously, but vainly, sought after by the veteran Ponce de Leon. This story, however, is stoutly contradicted by an old Dutch matter-of-fact tradition, which declares that the spring in question was smuggled over from Holland in a churn, by Femmetie Van Blarcom, wife of Goosen Garret Van Blarcom, one of the first settlers, and that she took it up by night, unknown to her husband, from beside their farm-house near Rotterdam; being sure she should find no water equal to it in the new country-and she was right.

The wizard sachem had a great passion for discussing territorial questions, and settling boundary lines; this kept him in continual feud with the neighbouring sachems, each of whom stood up stoutly for his hand-breadth of territory; so that there is not a petty stream nor ragged hill in the neighbourhood, that has not been the subject of long talks and hard battles. The sachem, however, as has been observed, was a medicine-man as well as warrior, and vindicated his claims by arts as well as arms; so that, by dint of a little hard fighting here, and hocus-pocus there, he managed to extend his boundaryline from field to field, and stream to stream, until he found himself

in legitimate possession of that region of hills and valleys, bright fountains and limpid brooks, locked in by the mazy windings of the Neperan and the Pocantico.

This last-mentioned stream, or rather the valley through which it flows, was the most difficult of all his acquisitions. It lay half way to the stronghold of the redoubtable sachem of Sing-Sing, and was claimed by him as an integral part of his domains. Many were the sharp conflicts between the rival chieftains for the sovereignty of this valley, and many the ambuscades, surprisals, and deadly onslaughts, that took place among its fastnesses, of which it grieves me much that I cannot furnish the details, for the gratification of those gentle, but bloody-minded readers of both sexes, who delight in the romance of the tomahawk and scalping-knife. Suffice it to say, that the wizard chieftain was at length victorious, though his victory is attributed, in Indian tradition, to a great medicine, or charm, by which he laid the sachem of Sing-Sing and his warriors asleep among the rocks and recesses of the valley, where they remain asleep to the present day, with their bows and war-clubs beside them. This was the origin of that potent and drowsy spell which still prevails over the valley of the Pocantico, and which has gained it the well-merited appellation of Sleepy Hollow. Often, in secluded and quiet parts of that valley, where the stream is overhung by dark woods and rocks, the ploughman, on some calm and sunny day, as he shouts to his oxen, is surprised at hearing faint shouts from the hill sides in reply; being, it is said, the spell-bound warriors, who half start from their rocky couches, and grasp their weapons, but sink to sleep again.

The conquest of the Pocantico was the last triumph of the wizard sachem. Notwithstanding all his medicine and charms, he fell in battle, in attempting to extend his boundary line to the east, so as to take in the little wild valley of the Sprain, and his grave is still shown, near the banks of that pastoral stream. He left, however, a great empire to his successors, extending along the Tappan Zee, from Yonkers quite to Sleepy Hollow; all which delectable region, if every one had his right, would still acknowledge allegiance to the lord of the Roost-whoever he might be.t

The wizard sachem was succeeded by a line of chiefs, of whom nothing remarkable remains on record. The last who makes any

As every one may not recognise these boundaries by their original Indian names, it may be well to observe, that the Neperan is that beautiful stream vulgarly called the Saw-Mill River, which, after winding gracefully for many miles through a lovely valley, shrouded by groves, and dotted by Dutch farm-houses, empties itself into the Hudson, at the ancient dorp of Yonkers. The Pocantico is that hitherto nameless brook, that, rising among woody hills, winds in many a wizard maze through the sequestered haunts of Sleepy Hollow. We owe it to the indefatigable researches of Mr. Knickerbocker, that those beautiful streams are rescued from modern common-place, and reinvested with their ancient Indian names. The correctness of the venerable historian may be ascertained, by reference to the records of the original Indian grants to the Herr Frederick Philipsen, preserved in the county clerk's office at White Plains.

+ In recording the contest for the sovereignty of Sleepy Hollow, I have called one sachem by the modern name of his castle or strong-hold, viz, Sing-Sing. This, I would observe, for the sake of historical exactness, is a corruption of the old Indian name O-sin-sing, or rather O-sin-song; that is to say, a place where any thing may be had for a song-a great recommendation for a market town. The modern and melodious alteration of the name to Sing-Sing, is said to have been made in compliment to an eminent Methodist singing master, who first introduced into the neighbourhood the art of singing through the nose.

figure in history, is the one who ruled here at the time of the discovery of the country by the white man. This sachem is said to have been a renowned trencherman, who maintained almost as potent a sway by dint of good feeding, as his warlike predecessor had done by hard fighting. He diligently cultivated the growth of oysters along the aquatic borders of his territories, and founded those great oyster beds which yet exist along the shores of the Tappan Sea. Did any dispute occur between him and a neighbouring sachem, he invited him, and all his principal sages and fighting men, to a solemn banquet, and seldom failed of feeding them into terms. Enormous heaps of oyster-shells, which encumber the lofty banks of the river, remain as monuments of his gastronomical victories; and have been occasionally adduced, through mistake, by amateur geologists from town, as additional proofs of the deluge. Modern investigators, who are making such indefatigable researches into our early history, have even affirmed that this sachem was the very individual on whom Master Hendrick Hudson, and his mate Robert Juet, made that sage and astounding experiment, so gravely recorded by the latter in his narrative of the voyage :-"Our master and his mate determined to try some of the cheefe men of the country, whether they had any treacherie in them. So they took them down into the cabin, and gave them so much wine and aqua vitæ, that they were all very merrie ; one of them had his wife with him, which sate so modestly as any of our countrywomen would do in a strange place. In the end, one

of them was drunke; and that was strange to them, for they could not tell how to take it."

How far Master Hendrick Hudson and his worthy mate carried their experiment with the sachem's wife, is not recorded, neither does the curious Robert Juet make any mention of the after-consequences of this grand moral test; tradition, however, affirms that the sachem, on landing, gave his modest spouse a hearty rib-roasting, according to the connubial discipline of the aboriginals; it farther affirms, that he remained a hard-drinker to the day of his death, trading away all his lands, acre by acre, for aqua vitæ ; by which means the Roost and all its domains, from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow, came, in the regu lar course of trade, and, by right of purchase, into the possession of the Dutchmen.

Never has a territorial right, in these new countries, been more legitimately and tradefully established; yet, I grieve to say, the worthy government of the New Netherlands was not suffered to enjoy this grand acquisition unmolested; for, in the year 1654, the losel Yankees of Connecticut,-those swapping, bargaining, squatting enemies of the Manhattoes, made a daring inroad into this neighbourhood, and founded a colony called Westchester, or, as the ancient Dutch records term it, Vest Dorp, in the right of one Thomas Pell, who pretended to have purchased the whole surrounding country of the Indians; and stood ready to argue their claims before any tribunal of Christendom.

This happened during the chivalrous reign of Peter Stuyvesant, and it roused the ire of that gunpowder old hero; who, without waiting to discuss claims and titles, pounced at once upon the nest of nefarious squatters, and carried off twenty-five of them in chains to the Manhattoes; nor did he stay his hand, nor give rest to his wooden * See Juet's Journal, Purchas Pilgrim,

leg, until he had driven every Yankee back into the bounds of Connecticut, or obliged him to acknowledge allegiance to their High Mightinesses. He then established certain out-posts, far in the Ind.an country, to keep an eye over these debatable lands: one of these border holds was the Roost, being accessible from New Amsterdam by water, and easily kept supplied. The Yankees, however, had too great a hankering after this delectable region to give it up entirely. Some remained, and swore allegiance to the Manhattoes; but, while they kept this open semblance of fealty, they went to work secretly and vig. orously to intermarry and multiply, and, by these nefarious means, artfully propagated themselves into possession of a wide tract of those open arable parts of Westchester county, lying along the Sound, where their descendants may be found at the present day; while the mountainous regions along the Hudson, with the valleys of the Neperan and the Pocantico, are tenaciously held by the lineal descendants of the Copperheads.

[The chronicle of the venerable Diedrich here goes on to relate how that, shortly after the above-mentioned events, the whole province of the New Netherlands was subjugated by the British; how that Wolfert Acker, one of the wrangling councillors of Peter Stuyvesant, retired in dudgeon to this fastness in the wilderness, determining to enjoy "lust in rust" for the remainder of his days, whence the place first received its name of Wolfert's Roost. As these and sundry other matters have been laid before the public in a preceding article, I shall pass them over, and resume the chronicle where it treats of matters not hitherto recorded.]

Like many men who retire from a worrying world, says Diedrich Knickerbocker, to enjoy quiet in the country, Wolfert Acker soon found himself up to the ears in trouble. He had a termagant wife at home, and there was what is profanely called "the deuce to pay" abroad. The recent irruption of the Yankees into the bounds of the New Netherlands, had left behind it a doleful pestilence, such as is apt to follow the steps of invading armies. This was the deadly plague of witchcraft, which had long been prevalent to the eastward. The malady broke out at Vest Dorp, and threatened to spread throughout the country. The Dutch burghers along the Hudson, from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow, hastened to nail horse-shoes to their doors, which have ever been found of sovereign virtue to repel this awful visitation. This is the origin of the horse-shoes which may still be seen nailed to the doors of barns and farm-houses, in various parts of this sage and soberthoughted region.

The evil, however, bore hard upon the Roost; partly, perhaps, from its having in old times been subject to supernatural influences, during the sway of the wizard sachem; but it has always, in fact, been considered a fated mansion. The unlucky Wolfert had no rest day nor night. When the weather was quiet all over the country, the wind would howl and whistle round his roof; witches would ride and whirl upon his weather-cocks, and scream down his chimneys. His cows gave bloody milk, and his horses broke bounds, and scampered into the woods. There were not wanting evil tongues to whisper that Wolfert's termagant wife had some tampering with the enemy; and that she even attended a witches' Sabbath in Sleepy Hollow; nay, a neighbour, who

lived hard by, declared that he saw her harnessing a rampant broomstick, and about to ride to the meeting; though others presume it was merely flourished in the course of one of her curtain lectures, to give energy and emphasis to a period. Certain it is, that Wolfert Acker nailed a horse-shoe to the front-door, during one of her nocturnal excursions, to prevent her return; but, as she re-entered the house without any difficulty, it is probable she was not so much of a witch as she was represented.

After the time of Wolfert Acker, a long interval elapses, about which but little is known. It is hoped, however, that the antiquarian researches so diligently making in every part of this new country, may yet throw some light upon what may be termed the Dark Ages of the Roost.

The next period at which we find this venerable and eventful pile rising to importance, and resuming its old belligerent character, is during the revolutionary war. It was at that time owned by Jacob Van Tassel, or Van Texel, as the name was originally spelled, after the place in Holland, which gave birth to this heroic line. He was strong-built, long-limbed, and as stout in soul as in body; a fit successor to the warrior sachem of yore, and, like him, delighting in extravagant enterprises, and hardy deeds of arms. Before I enter upon

the exploits of this worthy cock of the Roost, however, it is fitting I should throw some light upon the state of the mansion, and of the surrounding country, at the time. In your succeeding Miscellany this may be done.

HISTORICAL NOTE.-The annexed extracts from the early colonial records, relate to the irruption of witchcraft into Westchester county, as mentioned in the chronicle:

*

“July 7, 1670.—Katharine Harryson accused of witchcraft on complaint of Thomas Hunt and Edward Waters, in behalf of the town, who pray that she may be driven from the town of Westchester. The woman appears before the council. # She was a native of England, and had lived a year in Weathersfield, Connecticut, where she had been tried for witchcraft, found guilty by the jury, acquitted by the bench, and released out of prison, upon condition she would remove. Affair adjourned.

“August 24.-Affair taken up again, when, being heard at large, it was referred to the general court of assize. Woman ordered to give security for good behaviour, &c."

In another place is the following entry :

"Order given for Katharine Harryson, charged with witchcraft, to leave Westchester, as the inhabitants are uneasy at her residing there, and she is ordered to go off."