Near Irvington is Sunnyside, long the home of the famous and genial
Washington Irving. In the early days this house was built by a cynical
Dutch councillor named Wolfert Acker, who inscribed over the door,
"Lust in Rust,"--meaning "pleasure in quiet,"--whence the English
called it "Wolfert's Roost." As the Spanish Escurial had been modelled
after the famous gridiron of the blessed Saint Lawrence, so this loyal
councillor is said to have modelled his house after the cocked hat of
the doughty Dutch Governor, Peter the Headstrong. The old house with
its quaint Dutch gables became in time the castle of Baltus Van
Tassel, and being held by Jacob Van Tassel, an active American
partisan during the Revolution, the British sacked and burned it. The
eastern front is overrun by ivy given Irving by Sir Walter Scott at
Abbotsford, and originally from Melrose Abbey. The great author lived
here from 1846 until his death in 1859, and his pen has immortalized
the neighborhood. Nearby is the sequestered vale of Slaeperigh Haven,
famed in the "Legend of the Sleepy Hollow." Not far from Tarrytown, he
writes, there is a little valley, or rather a lap of land among high
hills, one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook
glides through it with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and
the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost
the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquility. At
the opening of this hollow, by the side of a winding lane, stands the
ancient Dutch church, which is the oldest religious house in New York
State. It is a curious little building with a diminutive spire
enclosing a bell with the inscription, "Si . Deus . Pro . Nobis .
Contra . Nos . 1685"--If God for us, who against us. It was built of
bricks brought out from Holland, and in the ancient and mossy
graveyard, almost under the shadow of the old church, Irving is
buried. He lies upon a beautiful sunny slope, whence one can look into
the Sleepy Hollow, and also far over the lovely Tappan Zee and its
pleasant surroundings, a spot he selected for his tomb. Longfellow
thus sweetly sings of this modest grave:
"Here lies the gentle humorist, who died
In the bright Indian Summer of his fame
A simple stone, with but a date and name,
Marks his secluded resting place, beside
The river that he loved and glorified.
Here in the autumn of his days he came,
But the dry leaves of his life were all aflame
With tints that brightened and were multiplied.
How sweet a life was his; how sweet a death!
Living, to wing with mirth the weary hours,
Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer;
Dying, to leave a memory like the breath
Of summer, full of sunshine and of showers,
A grief and gladness in the atmosphere."
Only a short distance from the church is the old bridge made famous in
the legend describing the escapade of the schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane,
with his "soft and foolish heart toward the sex." In his love he had a
rival in the stalwart and muscular Brom Bones. The legend tells us
that Ichabod taught the Dutch urchins of these parts, and at the same
time paid court to old farmer Van Tassel's daughter, the fair Katrina.
Brom Bones, otherwise Brom Van Brunt, determined to drive him away.
One dismal night Ichabod left the Van Tassel mansion in very low
spirits. In the hush of midnight he could hear the watchdog bark,
distant and vague, from the far opposite shore of the Hudson. Irving
tells us a belief existed in a spectre--the Headless Horseman of
Sleepy Hollow--supposed to be the spirit of a Hessian trooper whose
head had been carried off by a cannon-ball. Nearing the old church,
this horrid ghost appeared in pursuit of Ichabod, who was bestride an
inflexible old horse called Gunpowder. The terrified schoolmaster made
all haste to reach the bridge, having passed which, he would be beyond
the power of his pursuer. He spurred Gunpowder forward, but looking
back, beheld the spectre close behind him, and in the very act of
hurling its horrid head at him. The crash came; Ichabod rolled to the
ground; the spectre and Gunpowder rushed past him in a whirlwind. Next
day, we are told, a shattered pumpkin was found in the road, and not
long afterwards Brom Bones led Katrina to the altar, but the luckless
Ichabod was never heard of again.
In the hills behind Point-no-Point, on the western verge of the Tappan
Zee, at one hundred and sixty feet elevation, is Rockland Lake, a
crystal sheet of water which gives New York much of its ice supply,
the blocks being sent from the top of the hill on a long slide to the
barges that carry it down the river. As they glide along, they look in
the distance, under the sunlight, like a string of diamonds. Hook
Mountain, separating the lake from the river, is over six hundred feet
high, and out of the lake flows the Hackensack River behind the
Palisades, through the Jersey meadows to Newark Bay. Just above
Tarrytown, on the eastern shore, is Sing-Sing Village, on a pretty
slope, the name coming from the Indian Ossining, meaning "a stony
place." Here, just back from the shore, is the famous Sing-Sing
Prison, the long, low tiers of white stone buildings having the
railway tunnelled through them, and the pleasant village rising on the
hillside behind. The convicts built their own prison many years ago,
with stone hewn out of an adjacent marble ridge, called Mount
Pleasant. Just above, the long forest-covered projection of Teller's
or Croton Point, thrust for two miles, or more than half-way across
the broad river, from the eastern bank, makes the northern boundary of
the Tappan Zee. The West Shore railway, which has come up through the
Hackensack Valley from Jersey City, emerges high on the western hills
and runs gradually down to the river bank, so that the Hudson above
has a railway on either shore. Alongside the Point, the Croton River
flows in, the Reservoir being about six miles up that stream. It was
off Teller's Point the British sloop "Vulture" anchored, when she
brought André up from New York for his interview with Arnold.