Over opposite, the grand terminating buttress of the Palisades,
Piermont, compresses the river channel, the rocks then receding, so
that to the northward it broadens into the beautiful lake of the
Tappan Zee. Here is the boundary dividing New Jersey from New York,
and the long ridge, retiring from the river, stretches inland some
miles, encircles the town of Nyack, and comes back to the river some
distance above in an abrupt elevated cliff known as Point-no-Point.
This lake is over four miles wide, and is the scene of the legend of
"The Flying Dutchman of the Tappan Zee." Irving tells us that often in
the still twilight of a summer evening, when the sea would be as
glass, and the opposite hills threw their shadows half across it, a
low sound would be heard, as of the steady vigorous pull of oars,
though no boat could be seen. Some said it was a whale-boat of the
ancient water-guard, sunk by the British ships during the war, but now
permitted to haunt its old cruising-grounds. But the prevalent opinion
connected it with the awful fate of "Rambout Van Dam of graceless
memory." He was a roystering Dutchman of Spuyten Duyvel, who in a time
long past navigated his boat alone one Saturday the whole length of
the Tappan Zee to attend a quilting-party at Kakiat, on the western
shore. Here he danced until midnight, when he started home. He was
warned it was the verge of Sunday morning, but he went off, swearing
he would not land until he reached Spuyten Duyvel, if it took him a
month of Sundays. He was never seen afterwards, but may still be
heard, plying his oars, being "the Flying Dutchman of the Tappan Zee,
doomed to ply between Kakiat and Spuyten Duyvel until the day of
judgment." There is also another legend of a stout, round, Dutch-built
vessel of the olden time, with high bow and stern, sailing up New York
harbor in the teeth of wind and tide. She never returned down the
Hudson, but the Dutch skippers plying the river often saw her,
sometimes along the Palisades, or off Croton Point, or in the
Highlands, but never above them. Sometimes it was by the lightning
flashes of a storm upon a pitchy night, and giving glimpses of her
careering across the Tappan Zee or the wide waste of Haverstraw Bay.
Sometimes on quiet moonlight nights she would lie under a high bluff
in the Highlands, all in deep shadow, excepting her topsails
glittering in the moonbeams. She appeared always just before or after
or during unruly weather, and all the skippers knew her as the "Storm
Ship." Some maintained this phantom was the "Flying Dutchman," come
from the Cape of Good Hope into more tranquil waters. Others held it
to be Hendrick Hudson and the shadowy crew of the "Half Moon" sailing
to their revels in the Catskills. We are told by Irving that "she
still haunts the Highlands and cruises about Point-no-Point. People
living along the river insist they sometimes see her in summer
moonlight, and that in a deep still midnight they have heard the chant
of her crew as if heaving the lead."
Tappan Village, naming the Tappan Zee, is some distance back from
Piermont. Over on the eastern bank, nearly opposite Nyack, is
Tarrytown, the "Torwen-Dorp" or "Wheat-Town" of the ancient Dutch,
which has gradually changed to the present name. The genial Irving,
never at a loss for a reason for the names of places along the river,
tells how the good housewives named it Tarrytown because of their
spouses' propensity to linger in the village tavern on market days. It
is now one of the most elegant places on the Hudson, notable for its
splendid villas. The attractive region about the Tappan Zee is full of
Revolutionary memories, and particularly of the great historic tragedy
made by the treason of Arnold and the capture of André. Major John
André, at the age of twenty-nine, in 1780, was Adjutant General of the
British Army, then commanded by Sir Henry Clinton in New York. On
September 20th André came to Dobbs's Ferry to meet Arnold, with whom
he had been in secret correspondence in reference to the surrender of
West Point, where Arnold commanded. The next night he met Arnold at
Stony Point, just below the Highlands, and started back with Arnold's
passport and documents enabling the British to so direct an attack
upon West Point as to capture it. These papers were in Arnold's
handwriting, and at his suggestion André concealed them between the
soles of his feet and his stockings. André tried to make his way down
the eastern side of the Hudson to New York in disguise, taking the
Tarrytown road, through what was then known as the "neutral ground,"
which was overrun by marauders from both armies. When within a
half-mile of Tarrytown, at a little stream since called André's
Brook, he was captured by Paulding, Williams and Van Wert, three
American scouts, whom he mistook for his own partisans, and they
searched him and found the treasonable papers. Rejecting all bribes,
they took him across the Hudson to Tappan, then the American army
headquarters, where he was condemned and hanged as a spy on October
2d. The old house wherein he was imprisoned still stands in Tappan,
and his remains were interred there until 1821, when they were
conveyed to Westminster Abbey, London.