and in this connection indicates an enclosed or palisaded town. In 1680, _Schaenschentendeel_ appears--a pronunciation of _Schoonehettendal,_ "Beautiful valley," or the equivalent of the German _Schooneseckthal,_ "Beautiful corner or turn of a valley." The German Labadists, Jasper Bankers and Peter Sluyter, made no mistake in their recognition of the name when they wrote _Schoon-echten-deel_ in their Journal in 1679-80, describing the town as a square set off by palisades. [FN-2] Unfortunately for the Dutch name it was conferred and came into use during the period of the transition of the province from the Dutch to the English, with the probability of its conversion to Mohawk-Dutch, as already noted. Certain it is that the name is not met in any form until after its introduction by the Dutch, and is not of record in any connection except at Schenectady, the statement by Brodhead, on the authority of Schoolcraft, that it was applied in one form, by the Mohawks, to a place some two miles above Albany, as "the end of a portage path of the Mohawks coming from the west," being without anterior or subsequent record, though possibly traditional, and it may be added that it was never the name of Albany, nor is there record that there ever was a Mohawk village "on the site of the present city of Albany," nor anywhere near it. The Mohawks did go there to trade and on business with the government and occupied temporary encampments probably. The occupants primarily were Mahicans. The evolution of the name from the original Dutch to its present form may be readily traced in the channels through which it has passed. Even though clouded by traditional and theoretical rendering, the truth of history will ever rest in _Schoonehetstede_ (Schaenechstede) and in the interpretation which it was designed to express by the intelligent men who conferred it. It is not expected that the correction will be adopted, now that the term has passed to the domain of a "proper name." With the aroma of assumed Mohawk origin and the negative "beyond" clinging to it, it will remain at least as a harmless fiction, although the honor due to a Dutch ancestry would seem to warrant a different result. By ancient measurements Schenectady is "about nine miles (English) above the falls called Cahoes" (1792). * * * * * [FN-1] A considerable number of the early settlers had Indian wives. (Dominie Megapolensis wrote: "The Dutch are continually running after the Mohawk women.") The children, growing up with Indian relatives, among the tribes and with men speaking so great a variety of tongues, built up a patois of their own, the "Mohawk-Dutch," many words in it defying the dictionaries of the schools. Many words are untranslatable save by the context. (Hist. Schenectady Patent, 388.) [FN-2] Memoirs Long Island Hist. Soc, i, 315.