in trousers, they tumbled, leaped, danced, yelled, sang, grimaced, and
gesticulated until the Manitou disclosed himself, either as a harmless
animal or a beast of prey. If he came in the former shape the augury was
favorable, but if he showed himself as a bear or panther, it was a
warning of evil that they seldom dared to disregard.

The crew of Hudson's ship, the Half Moon, having chanced on one of these
orgies, were so impressed by the fantastic spectacle that they gave the
name Duyvels Dans-Kamer to the spot. Years afterwards, when Stuyvesant
ascended the river, his doughty retainers were horrified, on landing
below the Dans-Kamer, to discover hundreds of painted figures frisking
there in the fire-light. A few surmised that they were but a new
generation of savages holding a powwow, but most of the sailors fancied
that the assemblage was demoniac, and that the figures were spirits of
bad Indians repeating a scalp-dance and revelling in the mysterious
fire-water that they had brought down from the river source in jars and
skins. The spot was at least once profaned with blood, for a young
Dutchman and his wife, of Albany, were captured here by an angry Indian,
and although the young man succeeded in stabbing his captor to death, he
was burned alive on the rock by the friends of the Indian whose wrath he
had provoked. The wife, after being kept in captivity for a time, was
ransomed.




THE CULPRIT FAY

The wood-tick's drum convokes the elves at the noon of night on Cro' Nest
top, and, clambering out of their flower-cup beds and hammocks of cobweb,