I 5 8 WINTER SKE TCHES. 



fancy, turning loose his hobgoblins to disport 

 themselves with a mortal who dared to trust 

 himself in their wild recesses. Familiar as he 

 was with that little strip of New York, which, 

 to look at it on the map, would seem to belong 

 of right to Kew England, and of which he 

 could speak with accuracy, as he did in his 

 '' Legend of Sleepy Hollow," he was obliged to 

 confine himself to imagination in his descrip- 

 tion of the terra incognita that he dared not 

 to cross the river to survey. 



There must have always been something 

 forbidding about that western shore, for when 

 Hendrik Hudson anchored in the river on the 

 nth of September, in the year 1609, he made 

 no attempt to land upon it, but pulled away to 

 an island on the other side, armed with a 

 demijohn of gin, with which he attacked and 

 subdued the natives, who, not having had any 

 name for the spot, called it Manhattan — the 

 place of drunkenness — in honor of the occa- 

 sion ; and the name is still appropriately re- 

 tained. In this first encounter with the abo- 

 rigines, the harder and more accustomed 

 head of the explorer stood him in good 

 stead, although his share of the fire-water 



