are met with to this day.  Jansen de Rapelje, as he was called, was a man of gigantic strength and stature, and reputed to be a Moor by birth.  This report, probably, arose from his adjunct of De Salee, the name under which his patent was granted; but it was a mistake; he was a native Walloon, and this suffix to his name, we doubt not, was derived from the river Saale, in France, and not Salee, or Fez, the old piratical town of Morocco.  For many years after the Dutch dynasty, his farm at Gravesend continued to be known as Anthony Jansen’s Bowery.  The third brother of this family, William Jansen de Rapelje, was among the earliest settlers of Long Island and founders of Brooklyn.  Singularly, the descendants of Antonie have dropped the Rapelje, and retained the name of Jansen, or Johnson, as they are more commonly called.  On the contrary, George’s family have left off Jansen, and are now known as Rapelje or Rapelyea.

Most of the Huguenots who went to Ulster, N.Y., at first sought deliverance from persecutions among the Germans, and thence sailed for America.  Ascending the Hudson, these emigrants landed at Wiltonyck, now Kingston, and were welcomed by the Hollanders, who had prepared the way in this wilderness for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty.  Here was a Reformed Dutch church, and Hermanus Blomm, its pastor, commissioned by the Classis of Amsterdam to preach ’both on water and on the land, and in all the neighborhood, but principally in Esopus.’  This region, selected by the French Protestants for their future land, was like their own delightful native France for great natural beauties.  Towards the east and west flowed the waters of the noble ever-rolling Hudson, while on the north the Shamangunk Mountains, the loftiest of our Fishkill monarchs, looked like pillars upon which the arch of heaven there rested.  No streams can charm the eye more than those which enrich this region,—­the Rosendale, far from the interior, the Walkill, with its rapid little falls, ‘the foaming, rushing, warsteed-like’ Esopus Creek, with the dashing, romantic Saugerties, fresh from the mountain-side.  Both the Dutch and the French emigrants followed these beautiful rivers towards the south, and made their earliest settlements there.  On these quiet and retired banks their ashes repose.  Hallowed be their memories, virtues, and piety!  In those regions thousands of their descendants now enjoy the rich and glorious patrimony which have followed their industry and frugality.

In the year 1663, the savages attacked Kingston and massacred a part of its inhabitants, slaying twenty-four, and took forty-five prisoners.  The dominie, Blomin, escaped, and has left a description of the tragical event.[J] ‘There lay,’ he writes, ’the burnt and slaughtered bodies, together with those wounded by bullets and axes.  The last agonies and the moans and lamentations were dreadful to hear....  The houses were converted into heaps of stones, so