"The most beautiful land" upon which Van Curler looked, was the Mohawk Valley, embracing Schenectady and extending far to the westward.
As he stood upon the crest of the upland southwest of the present city, where the sandy plain abruptly ends and gives place to the rich bottom-lands a hundred and fifty feet below, he looked northwesterly upon a wide expanse of meadow, through which the Mohawk River, gleaming in the sunlight, slowly wended. His eye rested upon the outline of that break in the mountains where the Mohawk has gorged its bed, through which in our day the New York Central Railroad passes from the sea-*board to the Mississippi without climbing a foot-hill. It is the only level pass through the great Appalachian chain between the St. Lawrence Valley and the Gulf of Mexico. Not a tree and scarcely a bush grew upon this plain, but here and there were scattered patches of beans, corn and pumpkins, the fruit of the industry of the Mohawk women; and upon the higher ground where Schenectady now stands, the second great castle of the Mohawks, the Capitol of the Five Nations, stood, surrounded by many wigwams of the tribe. The nearer
