This estimable character had for the space of forty years (which included very important and critical conjunctures) been chief magistrate of Albany, and its district. A situation calculated to demand the utmost integrity and impartiality, and to exercise all the powers of a mind acute, vigilant, and comprehensive. The less he was amenable to the control and direction of his superiors, the more liable was he to the animadversions of his fellow citizens, had he in the least departed from that rectitude which made him the object of their confidence and veneration. He administered justice, not so much in conformity to written laws, as to that rule of equity within his own breast, the application of which was directed by sound sense, improved by experience. I do by no means insinuate, that he either neglected or disobeyed those laws, by which in all doubtful cases, he was certainly guided; but that the uncorrupted state of public morals, and the entire confidence which his fellow citizens reposed in his probity, rendered appeals to the law for the most part superfluous. I have heard that the family of the Cuylers was originally a German one of high rank. Whether this can or cannot be ascertained, is of little consequence. The sterling worth of their immediate ancestor, and his long and faithful services to the public, reflect more honour on his descendants than any length of pedigree. The winter at the Flats was sufficiently melancholy, and rendered less agreeable by some unpleasant neighbours we had. These were a family from New-England, who had been preparing to occupy lands near those occupied by my father. They had been the summer before recommended to aunt’s generous humanity, as honest people, who merely wanted a shelter in a room in her empty house, till they should build a temporary hut on those new lands which they were about to inhabit. When we came, the time permitted to them had long elapsed, but my father, who was exceedingly humane, indulged them with a fortnight more after our arrival, on the pretence of the sickness of a child; and there they sat, and would not remove for the winter, unless coercion had been used for that purpose. We lived on the road side. There was at that time a perpetual emigration going on from the provinces of New England to our back settlements. Our acquaintance with the family who kept possession beside us, and with many of even the better sort, who came to bargain with my father about his lands, gave us more insight than we wished into the prevalent character of those people, whom we found conceited, litigious, and selfish beyond measure. My father was told that the only safe way to avoid being overreached by them in a bargain, was to give them a kind of tacit permission to sit down on his lands, and take his chance of settling with them when they were brought into some degree of cultivation; for if one did bargain with them, the custom was to have it