From this point to the Highlands is spread out before the eye of the voyager the beautiful Hudson River front of Westchester County, its slopes dotted with growing villages linked by costly country-seat, and its lands in a state of highest cultivation. Between the Spuyt den Duyvel and the Croton was the famous "Neutral Ground," over which "Cow-boys" and "Skinners" — British and American bands of marauders — roved and plundered with impunity in Revolutionary times, until it became a very purgatory for the peaceful inhabitants. Over this domain marched and countermarched the Continental army. Here rested the French troops under Rochambeau, and here the loyalists carried on a distressing warfare while the British had possession of the city of New York. Here was the scene of the capture of André, which, perhaps saved the American cause from ruin. Almost every acre seen from the river by the voyager from Manhattan Island to Peekskill has been made classic to Americans by events of the old war for independence.

A few miles north of Spuyt den Duyvel is the large village of Yonkers — Jonkheer — "young lord." It is really a child of the Hudson River Railway. Thirty years ago a church, a few indifferent houses, single sloop at small wharf, and the gray walls and roof of a venerable structure, which you may see stretching among the trees parallel with the river, composed the whole borough. That old building is the Philipse Manor-house, now occupied for municipal