ntown Station is now seen on the east bank,
and between this and Germantown Dock, three miles to the north, is
obtained the best view of the "Man in the Mountain," readily traced by
the following outline: The peak to the south is the knee, the next to
the north is the breast, and two or three above this the chin, the
nose and the forehead. How often from the slope of Hillsdale, forty
miles away on the western trend of the Berkshires, when a boy, playing
by the fountain-heads of the Kinderhook and the Roeliffe Jansen's
Creek, have I looked out upon this mountain range aglow in the sunset,
and at even-tide heard my grandfather tell of his far-off journeys to
Towanda, Pennsylvania, when he drove through the great Cloves of the
Catskills, where twice he met "a bear" which retreated at the sound
of his old flint-lock, and then when I went to sleep at night how I
pulled the coverlet closer about my head, all on account of those two
bears that had been dead for more than forty years.

[Illustration: THE MAN IN THE MOUNTAIN.]

* * *

And, sister, now my children come
To find the water just as cool,
To play about our grandsire's home,
To see our pictures in the pool.

_Wallace Bruce._

* * *

Alps of the Hudson, whose bold summits rise
Into the upper ether of the skies,
Cleaving with calm content
The cloudless crystal of the firmament.

_Joel Benton._

* * *

The Catskills were called by the Indians On-ti-o-ras, or mountains of
the sky, as they sometimes seem like clouds along the horizon. This
range of mountains was supposed by the Indians to have been originally
a monster who devoured all the children of the red men, until the
great spirit touched him when he was going down to the salt lake to
bathe, and here he remains. "Two little lakes upon the summit were
regarded the eyes of the monster, and these are open all the summer;
but in the winter they are covered with a thick crust or heavy film;
but whether sleeping or waking tears always trickle down his cheeks.
In these mountains, according to Indian belief, was kept the great
treasury of storm and sunshine, presided over by an old squaw spirit
who dwelt on the highest peak of the mountains. She kept day and
night shut up in her wigwam, letting out only one at a time. She
manufactured new moons every month, cutting up the old ones into
stars," and, like the old AEolus of mythology, shut the winds up in the
caverns o