=The City of Kingston.=—­Rondout and Kingston gradually grew together until the bans were performed in 1878, and a “bow-knot” tied at the top of the hill in the shape of a city hall, making them one corporation.

The name Rondout had its derivation from a redoubt that was built on the banks of the creek.  The creek took the name of Redoubt Kill, afterward Rundoubt, and at last Rondout.  Kingston was once called Esopus. (The Indian name for the spot where the city now stands was At-kar-karton, the great plot or meadow on which they raised corn or beans.)

Kingston and Rondout were both settled in 1614, and old Kingston, known by the Dutch as Wiltwyck, was thrice destroyed by the Indians before the Revolution.  In 1777 the State legislature met here and formed a constitution.  In the fall of the same year, after the capture of Fort Montgomery and Fort Clinton by the British, Vaughan landed at Rondout, marched to Kingston, and burned the town.  While Kingston was burning, the inhabitants fled to Hurley, where a small force of Americans hung a messenger who was caught carrying dispatches from Clinton to Burgoyne.

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  What ample bays and branching streams,
    What curves abrupt for glad surprise,
  And how supreme the artist is
    Who paints it all for loving eyes.

  Henry Abbey.

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Rondout is the termination of the Delaware and Hudson Canal (whence canal boats of coal find their way from the Pennsylvania Mountains to tidewater), also of the Ulster and Delaware Railroad, by which people find their way from tidewater to the Catskill Mountains, which have greeted the eye of the tourist for many miles down the Hudson.  Originally all of the country-side in this vicinity was known as Esopus, supposed to be derived, according to Ruttenber, from the Indian word “seepus,” a river.  A “sopus Indian” was a Lowlander, and the name is intimately connected with a long reach of territory from Esopus Village, near West Park, to the mouth of the Esopus at Saugerties.  In 1675 the mouth of the Rondout Creek was chosen by the New Netherland Company as one of the three fortified trading ports on the Hudson; a stockade was built under the guidance of General Stuyvesant in 1661 inclosing the site of old Kingston; a charter was granted in 1658 under the name of Wiltwyck, but changed in 1679 to Kingston.  Few cities are so well off for old-time houses that span the century, and there is no congregation probably in the United States that has worshipped so many consecutive years in the same spot as the Dutch Reformed people of Kingston.  Five buildings have succeeded the log church of 240 years ago.  Dr. Van Slyke, in a recent welcome, said:  “This church, which opens her doors to you, claims a distinction which does not belong even to the Collegiate Dutch Churches of Manhattan Island, and, by a peculiar history, stands identified more closely with Holland than any