Goosen Garret Van Slocum, one of the first settlers, and that she took
it up by night, unknown to her husband, from beside their farm-house
near Rotterdam; being sure she should find no water equal to it in the
new country--and she was right.

The wizard sachem had a great passion for discussing territorial
questions, and settling boundary lines; this kept him in continual feud
with the neighboring sachems, each of whom stood up stoutly for his
hand-breadth of territory; so that there is not a petty stream nor
ragged hill in the neighborhood, that has not been the subject of long
talks and hard battles. The sachem, however, as has been observed, was a
medicine-man, as well as warrior, and vindicated his claims by arts
as well as arms; so that, by dint of a little hard fighting here, and
hocus-pocus there, he managed to extend his boundary-line from field
to field and stream to stream, until he found himself in legitimate
possession of that region of hills and valleys, bright fountains and
limpid brooks, locked in by the mazy windings of the Neperan and the
Pocantico. [Footnote: As every one may not recognize these boundaries
by their original Indian names, it may be well to observe, that the
Neperan is that beautiful stream, vulgarly called the Saw-Mill River,
which, after winding gracefully for many miles through a lovely valley,
shrouded by groves, and dotted by Dutch farm-houses, empties itself
into the Hudson, at the ancient drop of Yonkers. The Pocantico is that
hitherto nameless brook, that, rising among woody hills, winds in many a
wizard maze through the sequestered banks of Sleepy Hollow. We owe it to
the indefatigable researches of Mr. KNICKERBOCKER, that those beautiful
streams are rescued from modern common-place, and reinvested with their
ancient Indian names. The correctness of the venerable historian may be
ascertained, by reference to the records of the original Indian grants
to the Herr Frederick Philipsen, preserved in the county clerk's office,