Much of the land adjacent to the river was granted in large tracts under the Dutch system to patroons, so called, who were virtually feudal lords. Upon some of these tracts there still survive various peculiarities of the feudal system of land tenure. To know something of what feudalism meant as respects the control of the land, the student might find a worse method than to trace back the history of one of these Hudson River estates to the period of the Dutch grant, in order to get so much nearer to the survivals of the mediæval system in Europe. At the spot where I live on the Hudson, and where I am now writing, the environment is suggestive of almost three centuries of American history. I look out upon the great stream which Hudson navigated in the _Half Moon_ in 1609, and upon which sailing craft have been plying almost continually ever since. I see great steamers passing where Fulton first experimented with steam navigation. The highway near by is the old Albany post-road, this immediate part of which was known as Edgar’s Lane and was opened in 1644. This morning I heard the pleasant notes of a coaching-horn, and looked out to see a stately four-in-hand on its way to the city, a forcible reminder of at least a century and a half of regular mail coaching on that same road. My home is a part of what was the old Philipse manor; and at Yonkers, a few miles below, one finds the manor-house, now in constant use as a municipal building. It was partly built in 1682, and assumed its present dimensions in about 1745. On this very ground, and on the hills lying to the eastward, Washington’s army was encamped for a number of weeks in 1777, and near by is the well-preserved colonial house where Washington and Rochambeau sojourned for some time, and where the Yorktown campaign was planned. In the river at this point, on several occasions, the British frigates made appearance, the last of these being the final meeting between General Washington and General Sir Guy Carleton, in May, 1783, on the suspension of hostilities. A few miles farther up the road one comes to the lane that leads to Washington Irving’s “Sunnyside,” with its tablet stating that the house was first built in the year 1650. With these older historical souvenirs in mind, I turn to the southward, and there, as a reminder that the current of American history flows on, and that our past is in no manner detached from the present and the future, I see, standing out in bold relief on the horizon, the tomb of General Grant, while anchored in the river lies the _Olympia_, the flag-ship of Admiral Dewey, just now returned from adventures as fraught with history-making results as was the presence of Hudson’s _Half Moon_ in this same river two hundred and ninety years ago.