Emerging from the Highlands, the gentle slopes of the town of Cornwall
are under the shadow of the Storm King, while the mountain range
stretches off to the northeast, with Fishkill village in front, and
the Revolutionary signal station of the Old Beacon standing up
prominently behind. These mountains were the Indian Matteawan, the
"Council of Good Fur." The same name was given the stream draining
their sides until the Dutch called it Vis Kill, or Fish Creek, and
hence its present name and that of the village. The shores of Newburg
Bay seem low, as they are dwarfed by the mountains, and on the western
slope an elevated bench of table-land in terraces stretches back to
the distant hills. The town of Newburg, which has about twenty-five
thousand people, spreads up these terraces, and in front there are
storehouses, mills and railway terminals. When Hendrick Hudson sailed
his ship "Half Moon" through the Highlands, he was attracted by the
site of Newburg, and wrote: "It is as beautiful a land as one can
tread upon; a very pleasant place to build a town on." A tribe of the
Minsis who had a village known as the Quassaic, meaning "the Place of
the Rock," then occupied it, and would not for a half-century permit a
settlement. They were driven away, however, and a colony of Lutherans
from the Palatinate came here and founded the "Palatine Parish of
Quassaic." They did not flourish, and ultimately some Scots arrived
from the Tay, and seeing quite a resemblance to their old home, named
the place Newborough. Its most distinguished citizen has probably been
General John E. Wool, born here in 1788. At the southern end of this
pleasant town, a short distance back from the river, is its chief
celebrity, a low, old-fashioned graystone building, appearing to be
almost all roof, from which tall chimneys rise. There is a broad lawn
and flagstaff in front, and a grove for the background. This is the
historic house, maintained by New York State as a relic, which was
General Washington's headquarters during the closing campaign of the
Revolution. It was built by Jonathan Hasbrouck, a Huguenot, in 1750,
and is also known as the Hasbrouck House. In its centre is a large
hall, having a huge fireplace on one side, and containing seven doors,
but only one window. This was Washington's reception hall, and here he
dined with his guests. At the foot of the flagstaff on the lawn is
buried the last survivor of Washington's Life Guard, Ural Knapp, who
died in 1856 at the age of ninety-seven. This Guard, organized in
Boston in 1776, continued as his bodyguard throughout the war, and was
selected from all the regiments of the army. Knapp was its sergeant,
and at his last public appearance at a banquet in Newburg, the old man
made a brief address, concluding with an invitation to the entire
company to attend his funeral; four months later they did so.
The "Tower of Victory" is a fine monument, built on the grounds by the
Government, and surmounted by a statue of Washington in the act of
sheathing his sword. A bronze tablet with the figure of Peace
announces that it was erected "in commemoration of the disbandment,
under proclamation of the Continental Congress of October 18, 1783, of
the armies by whose patriotic and military virtue our National
independence and sovereignty was established." It was at Newburg that
Washington was offered the title of King by the officers of the army,
but declined it. Over at Fishkill is the old Verplanck House, with its
quaint dormer windows, which was the headquarters of Baron Steuben,
and here, upon the disbandment of the army, was held the meeting of
the officers at which was formed the Society of the Cincinnati,
Washington being its first president. The mountainous region east and
south and the "neutral ground" were the haunts of Enoch Crosby of
Massachusetts, the American spy of the Revolution, whose exploits all
about this locality Fenimore Cooper wove into his novel _The Spy, a
Tale of the Neutral Ground_, which made the novelist's earliest fame.
The ancient Wheaton House, around which much of the tale centred, is
still there. The Murderer's Creek comes down to the Hudson through
Newburg,--an attractive stream which deserved a better name, but did
not get it until N. P. Willis, who lived at Cornwall, and who
converted the Dutch "Butter Hill" into the Storm King, and "Bull Hill"
into Mount Taurus, tried his persuasive powers at Newburg and got this
stream softened into the pleasant Indian name of Moodna. The
neighborhood of Newburg is famous from a scientific standpoint for the
finding of the remains of mastodons. One was unearthed there in 1899,
making the eleventh found in Orange County, New York, during the past
century, some of them being among the finest specimens extant.
At the head of Newburg Bay, on the western shore, is a rocky platform
down by the waterside, known as the "Devil's Dance Chamber." When the
"Half Moon" came up the river and anchored for the night, this broad
flat rock, now almost hidden by cedars, was the scene of a wild
midnight revel of the Indians, with all the accessories of song and
dance, fire and war-paint, at which the Dutch sailors marvelled
exceedingly, calling it the "Duyvel's Dans-Kamer." Here the warlike
Minsis of the Quassaic, before going on hunting expeditions or the
warpath, would paint themselves grotesquely and dance around a fire
with horrible contortions, singing and yelling under direction of the
soothsayers or "medicine men." They believed, if this was kept up long
enough, the evil spirit would appear, either as a wild beast or a
harmless animal; if the former, it foreboded ill-fortune and the
expedition was abandoned, while the latter was a good omen. These
hideous performances afterwards scared old Governor Peter Stuyvesant,
according to the veracious Knickerbocker, when he sailed up the river,
for the historian says, "Even now I have it on the point of my pen to
relate how his crew was most horribly frightened, on going on shore
above the Highlands, by a gang of merry, roystering devils, frisking
and curvetting on a huge flat rock projecting into the river, and
which is called the Duyvel's Dans-Kamer to this very day."