We have now come to the high and rocky Bear or Beeren Island, which in New York's early days was the southern boundary on the river of the domain of the great Patroon, Killian Van Rensselaer. It marks the limit of two counties on either bank, Greene and Columbia below, joining Albany and Rensselaer above. Here stood the proud castle of Rensselaerstein, cannoned and fortified, where the Patroon's agent, the bold and doughty Nicolas Kroon, compelled all the Dutch sloops coming up from New Amsterdam to dip their colors in token of his sovereignty, and pay tribute for the privilege of entering the sacred domain. We are told that all passing craft yielded homage excepting two large whales, which in 1647 swam by and went up to the Mohawk, greatly terrifying the honest Albany burghers. Above the island, the Normanskill and other streams come down from the Helderbergs, making the shoals of the "Overslaugh," which the Government has improved by an extensive dyke system to deepen the river channel up to Albany. There are long and narrow alluvial islands on these flats, among which tows of Erie Canal barges thread their careful way; and ahead, the city of Albany comes into view with its bridges in front, and the grand new Capitol building elevated high on the hill above the town, its red-topped pyramidal roofs seen from afar. We are now at the domain of the great Patroon, the region around Albany and Troy. When Hudson anchored his ship below the shoals, he came with five of his sailors up to Albany in a row-boat and examined the location. The result was that from his report Albany was actually settled, five years later, in 1614, by the "United Nieu Nederlandts Company," who built a trading-post, thus making Albany, after Jamestown in Virginia, the oldest European settlement in the original thirteen colonies. The post was located on an island just below the city, near which the Normanskill flowed out through the forest on the western bank--the Indian Tawasentha, or "place of many dead." This island was called the "Kasteel," and in the "castle" a garrison of about a dozen Dutchmen conducted a profitable fur-trade with the Mohicans. Ultimately a freshet drove them to the mainland and they built a fort at the mouth of the Normanskill, and in 1623 a stockade was constructed above, at Albany, named Fort Orange in honor of the Prince of the Netherlands. In 1629 colonists were sent out from Holland, and the patroon system established. The Dutch West India Company made arrangements for extensively colonizing the New Netherlands, and passed a charter of exemptions and privileges to encourage patroons (or patrons) to make settlements. Every patroon establishing a colony was to have there within four years, as permanent residents, at least fifty persons, over fifteen years of age, of whom one-fourth were to arrive the first year. A director of the company, Killian Van Rensselaer, a pearl merchant of Amsterdam,