At the foot of these fair mountains, the voyager may have descried
the light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle-roofs gleam
among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away
into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little
village, of great antiquity, having been founded by some of the
Dutch colonists, in the early times of the province, just about the
beginning of the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant, (may he rest
in peace!) and there were some of the houses of the original
settlers standing within a few years, built of small yellow bricks
brought from Holland, having latticed windows and gable fronts,
surmounted with weather-cocks.
In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to
tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten), there
lived many years since, while the country was yet a province of
Great Britain, a simple good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip Van
Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so
gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and
accompanied him to the siege of Fort Christina.
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