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V ON THE JERSEY SHORE ACROSS the river from the Battery is
the ancient settlement of Communipaw where Dutch manners and customs are said
to have survived longer than anywhere else in the Hudson Valley. Some persons
even go so far as to declare that the true sons of Communipaw, however modern
their thoughts in the daytime, still continue to dream in Dutch. According to
Irving in his burlesque “History of New York,” when the first ship from Holland
bringing colonists to this country came to anchor at the mouth of the Hudson,
there was on the Jersey shore “a small Indian village pleasantly embowered in a
grove of spreading elms, and the natives all collected on the beach, gazing in
stupid admiration at the vessel. A boat was immediately dispatched to enter
into a treaty with them, and approaching the shore, the skipper hailed them
through a trumpet, in the most friendly terms; but so horribly confounded were
these poor savages at the tremendous and uncouth sound of the Dutch language,
that they one and all took to their heels and scampered way over the Bergen
hills. “Animated by this unlooked-for
victory, our valiant heroes sprang ashore in triumph and carried the village of
Communipaw by storm, notwithstanding that it was vigorously defended by half a
score of old squaws and papooses. On looking about them they were transported
with the excellencies of the place. The softness of the soil was wonderfully
adapted to the driving of piles, the swamps and marshes afforded ample
opportunities for the constructing of dykes and dams; the shallowness of the
shore was peculiarly favorable to the building of docks: — in a word, this spot
abounded with all the requisites for the foundation of a great Dutch city.” There the voyagers settled in great
content, and thence, as Irving’s narrative has it, the founders of New
Amsterdam migrated. “Thus was Communipaw the parent of New York, though on comparing
the lowly village with the great flaunting city which it has engendered, one is
reminded of a squat little hen that has unwittingly hatched out a long-legged
turkey.”
One curious legend that Irving has
chronicled dealing largely with life in Communipaw he calls “Guests from Gibbet
Island.” The story describes the peaceful village tavern known as “The Wild
Goose” and tells how Yan Yost Vanderscamp, the landlord’s nephew, suddenly
disappeared with an old negro servant named Pluto. In process of time the
landlord died, and the tavern remained shut up, waiting for a claimant; for the
next heir was the missing nephew, who had not been heard of for years. “At
length, one day, a boat was seen pulling for shore from a long, black,
rakish-looking schooner that lay at anchor in the bay. The boat’s crew seemed
worthy of the craft from which they debarked. Never had such a set of noisy,
roistering, swaggering varlets landed in peaceful Communipaw. They were
outlandish in garb and demeanor, and were headed by a burly ruffian with a scar
across his face, in whom to their great dismay, the quiet inhabitants were made
to recognize Yan Yost Vander-scamp. The rear of this hopeful gang was brought
up by old Pluto, who had lost an eye and grown grizzled. Vanderscamp renewed
his acquaintance with the old burghers in a manner not at all to their taste.
He slapped them familiarly on the back, gave them an iron grip of the hand, and
was hail-fellow-well-met. According to his own account, he had been all the
world over, had made money by bags full, had ships in every sea, and now meant
to turn the Wild Goose into a country-seat where he and his comrades, all rich
merchants from foreign parts, might enjoy themselves in the intervals of their
voyages. “From being a quiet, peaceful Dutch
public house, the Wild Goose became a most riotous private dwelling, a
rendezvous for boisterous men of the sea, who might be seen at all hours
lounging about the door, or lolling out of the windows, swearing among
themselves, cracking rough jokes on every passer-by, and shooting at any
unhappy dog or cat, or pig that might happen to come within reach.” Now and then they went off on a
mysterious voyage, and it gradually became plain that they were pirates. At
length the British government bestirred itself, “and three of the most riotous
swashbucklers of the Wild Goose were hanged in chains on Gibbet Island in full
sight of their favorite resort. Vanderscamp himself and his man Pluto again
disappeared. The tranquillity of the village was restored; the worthy Dutchmen
once more smoked their pipes in peace, eyeing with peculiar complacency their
old pests and terrors, the pirates, dangling on Gibbet Island.” But in the course of time the black
man and his master came back and the latter “brought with him a wife, who
seemed to have the upper hand of him. The Wild Goose mansion was again opened,
but with diminished splendor and no riot. “Late one night Yan Yost Vanderscamp
was returning across the broad bay in his light skiff, rowed by his man Pluto.
It was a still, sultry night; a heavy mass of lurid clouds was rising in the
west, with the low mutterings of distant thunder. The storm burst over the
voyagers while they were yet far from shore. The rain fell in torrents, and the
lightning kept up an incessant blaze. It was midnight before they landed at
Communipaw. Dripping and shivering Vanderscamp crawled homeward. His wife met
him at the threshold. “‘Is this a time,’ said she, ‘to
bring home company to turn the house upside down?’ “‘Company?’ said Vanderscamp meekly;
‘I have brought no company with me.’ “ ‘No, indeed! They have got here
before you, and are in the blue room upstairs, making themselves as much at
home as if the house were their own.’ “Vanderscamp scrambled up to the
room, and threw open the door. There at a table sat three guests from Gibbet
Island, with halters round their necks, and bobbing their cups together, as if
they were hob-or-nobbing, and trolling an old freebooter’s glee. Starting back
with horror, Vanderscamp missed his footing and fell from the top of the stairs
to the bottom. He was taken up speechless, and was buried on the following
Sunday. “From that day forward the Wild
Goose was pronounced a haunted house, and avoided accordingly. No one inhabited
it but Vanderscamp’s shrew of a widow and old Pluto, and they were considered
little better than its hobgoblin visitors. It was affirmed that it still
continued to be the house of entertainment for such guests, and that on stormy
nights the blue chamber was occasionally illuminated, and sounds of diabolical
merriment were overheard, mingling with the howling of the tempest. Some
treated these as idle stories until on one such night there was a horrible
uproar in the Wild Goose that could not be mistaken. It was not so much the
sound of revelry, however, as strife, with two or three piercing shrieks that
pervaded every part of the village. Nevertheless, no one thought of hastening
to the spot. On the contrary, the honest burghers of Communipaw drew their
nightcaps over their ears, and buried their heads under the bedclothes. “The next morning, some of the
bolder and more curious undertook to reconnoitre. They found the door wide open
and everything inside topsy-turvy, but the most woful sight was the widow, a
corpse on the floor of the blue chamber. Old Pluto had disappeared, but later
his skiff was picked up, drifting about the bay, bottom upward, and his body
was found stranded among the rocks of Gibbet Island, near the foot of the
pirates’ gallows.” With Communipaw’s past in mind I
crossed the river hoping that some remnants of the once serene little Dutch
village might still survive; but shipping is omnipresent along the shore, and
the land is almost monopolized by the railways. I followed the one highway back
till I tired of its grim monotony and the lack of promise that it would lead to
anything better. Along either side stalked a great row of telegraph poles bearing
aloft a maze of wires, there were multitudinous railway tracks, and freight and
passenger cars and noisy engines, mountainous heaps of coal, and a scattering
of dubious buildings, while the air was laden with odors of gas and smoke. So I
retraced my steps, regretting not a little the region’s modern aspect as
compared with what it had been. A mile or two north of Communipaw is Hoboken where
in the far past was an Indian village named Hobock. The first event of
importance chronicled in its history was a massacre of the Indians in 1643. A
party of Dutch reinforced by Mohawk Indians, crossed the river at night from
New York and killed a hundred men, women, and children at the promontory called
“Castle Point,” by either shooting them or driving them mercilessly into the
Hudson. A feud between the Indians and whites had long existed, but there seems
to have been no sufficient excuse for this wholesale slaughter. Hoboken has a
more agreeable claim to fame in the fact that here lived Colonel John Stevens
who built the Phoenix, the first vessel that crossed the Atlantic depending
entirely on steam propulsion. The waterfront of the place is now wholly given
up to piers and warehouses where numerous great ocean liners discharge and take
on their cargoes.
A little farther up the river, where
the Weehawken cliffs rise just back from the shore, are the ferry houses of the
West Shore Railroad, and immediately south of them occurred the Burr-Hamilton
duel. Burr had recently been defeated in his candidacy for the governorship of
New York. Party feeling had run high and there had been a good deal of bitter
antipathy and acrimonious speech. Hamilton was reputed to be the author of
certain personal reflections on Burr’s character which led to a correspondence
between the two culminating in a challenge from Burr to settle their
differences by a duel. Their meeting-place was a narrow grassy plateau
completely embowered in foliage and about twenty feet above the river, where a
little ravine opens back into the bluff. The plateau was only six feet wide and
eleven paces long. A great cedar tree stood at one end, and a bowlder at the
other. It was reached by a steep, rocky path leading up from the water. There
was no other path or road near, and the only way to get to the place was by
boat. It had already become a resort for duelists, the first combat of this
nature having occurred there in 1799. Burr and Hamilton arrived at the
spot early in the morning of July 11, 1804. The parties exchanged salutations,
and after the seconds had made the necessary arrangements, Burr took his
station near the cedar and Hamilton near the bowlder. Both fired and Hamilton
fell mortally wounded. When Burr saw that his rival had been seriously hurt he
advanced with a manner and gesture expressive of regret, but being urged to
leave the field by his second he turned and withdrew. He crossed the river to
the city in his barge, and after a short time spent at his own house in New York
he travelled South. This journey was an almost royal progress, for he was
everywhere greeted by crowds of enthusiastic adherents. In the North, however,
where the friends of Hamilton predominated, Burr was execrated as a murderer,
and Hamilton’s death the day after the duel was mourned as a public calamity.
Burr was indicted by the grand jury, but the case never was brought to trial;
and when Congress met, Burr, who was nearing the end of his term as
Vice-President of the United States, took his accustomed place in the Senate as
its presiding officer. A monument long marked the spot
where Hamilton fell. It was almost destroyed by the gradual chipping of the
relic-hunters, and at last was removed to the bluff above. The plateau
continued to be the resort of duelists for many years. Captain Deas, whose home
was on the bluff was strongly opposed to this method of settling differences,
and when he saw a party approaching the place often interposed and sometimes
affected a reconciliation. The last duel occurred in 1845, and was a farce, for
the pistols were loaded with cork. When the West Shore Railroad was opened in
1883 the duel terrace was torn away to make room for the tracks. But there is
still left between the railroad and the bluff a ragged strip of woods with a
weedy undergrowth and strewing of rocks, and the outlook from amid the trees
affords a rather charming view of the mighty city off across the broad river. At Shadyside, two miles farther
north, was fought a very lively minor engagement in the Revolutionary War. Here
was a ferry, and near by a blockhouse had been erected which was garrisoned by
a detachment of British troops. This garrison protected the loyalists of the
neighborhood who had a disagreeable habit of picking up any of the rebels’ cattle
and horses that strayed into the vicinity. The Continentals attacked the
blockhouse intending to drive away the garrison and get possession of such
stolen property as they could for its rightful owners. But they were repulsed
with the loss of sixty men, and retired after destroying some boats and
securing a number of cattle. Two miles above Weehawken, the
Bergen Ridge which hitherto has fronted the river, trends inland, and in its
place a new and much higher wall of trap-rock, extends northward with scarcely
a break for many miles. According to the Mohicans this great rampart along the
west bank of the river, rising almost from the water’s edge, was erected by the
Great Spirit to protect his favorite abodes from the unhallowed eyes of
mortals. The early settlers called it The Palisades, a name naturally suggested
to pioneers who were so familiar with stockades made of logs set on end. The
Palisades are of the same formation as the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland and
Fingal’s Cave on the Scotch Island of Staffa; and consist of a lava rock that
in some ancient time, while molten, filled a rift in the earth’s surface. It
cooled in columnar form, and the softer rock on either side gradually wore away
leaving this tremendous line of cliff with its peculiar formation. From a distance the cliff seems
singularly regular, but in a near view it is found to have many minor
undulations and breaks and jutting crags that make the great mass of
weather-beaten rock quite delightful in its variety of outline. Only its upper
portion is wholly exposed and perpendicular in its rise; for below this final
uplift is a long slope of shattered fragments where numerous trees have found a
footing and adorn the declivity with their foliage. At the southern end the
Palisades start with a height of about three hundred feet, and gradually rise
till, twenty miles to the north where they end at the Tappan Sea, they reach an
altitude of five hundred and fifty feet. The broad river dwarfs their height,
and it is only when you observe the comparative size of a house or a boat at
their base that you get an adequate idea of their magnitude. Breaks sufficient
to enable wagon roads to descend to the river occur in only three places, and
scarcely more places exist where a foot climber can make the descent. For some two miles at the southern
extremity a road runs along the top of this lofty, breezy ridge and affords a
charming outlook. The opposite low, verdant shore is in view for a long
distance to the north, while in the other direction the eye reaches to the
far-off metropolis, and on a clear day even to its crowded bay. The crest of the promontory where
the Palisades begin was fortified with a strong redoubt, known as Fort Lee,
early in the Revolutionary War, but after the capture of Fort Washington across
the river it was plain that this companion stronghold was doomed. Every effort
was made to remove the ammunition and stores. Within a few days, however, a
large British force landed five miles above and marched rapidly in its
direction to effect its capture. The Americans retreated in great haste
abandoning all their cannon, blankets and eatables. Tents were left standing
and camp kettles on the fires. The site of the old fort is at
present a neglected tract overgrown with trees and bushes; and amid the thin
woods and rocky hollows the wild flowers flourish in spite of wanderers from
New York who pluck them unmercifully. One of the highest and most striking
points of the Palisades is Indian Head near their northern termination. The
rugged beauty of this outjutting shoulder of rock has always been admired and
it was a favorite outlook for the Indians long centuries before any white man
ever saw it. But unfortunately the kind of rock and its convenient situation
made it the prey of a contractor in search of road material. Blasting
operations were begun and the wild grandeur of the craggy point was much
injured before the public was sufficiently aroused to demand that the
mutilation be stopped. Lest the rest of the Palisades should share the same
fate, and this wonderful example of nature’s sculpture be lost to future
generations, the entire strip was purchased jointly by the states of New York
and New Jersey, and now it is a park. Many campers resort to the Palisades in
summer, and for their benefit the park authorities have made a path that creeps
along in a piquantly irregular way near the verge of the river, over the knolls
and in and out of the hollows.
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