The battle-field lies on the Toll Farm, three miles west of Schenectady, and is visible from the car-windows to the right of a train on the New York Central Railroad going westward. A company of Schenectady men were at Maalwyck, a place not far from the town, on the north side of the river. Messrs. Dirk Van Voast and Daniel Toll, with Toll’s negro slave, Ryckert, left their comrades to find their horses which had strayed off. A few minutes after they had left, firing was heard in the direction in which they had gone, by the Van Slyck brothers, Adrian and Albert, one of whom was afterward in the fight and wrote the meagre account which is now among the Johnson papers. They at once sent a messenger, their negro slave, to Schenectady to give the alarm, which was doubtless sounded out from the belfry of the strong fortress-church by the Widow Margarita Veeder, the _klok-luider_ or bell-ringer at that time. The summons came first before noon. The negro delivered his message, bidding the men go out to Abraham De Graaf’s house at Beukendal, where Van Slyck would meet them. At this time there was a company of New England militia in the town under the command of Captain Stoddard, who was then absent, his place being filled by Lieut. John Darling. The militiamen were from Connecticut, and were raw levies unused to Indian warfare. They started off accompanied by five or six young men and Daniel Van Slyck, another brother of the writer. The party numbered about seventy men in all. Another company of armed men, whose number is not stated, left for the scene of conflict a few minutes later, to see if they could find or see Daniel Toll. Toll and Van Voast, after leaving the Van Slycks at Maalwyck, had reached a place two miles away, near the house of De Graaf, and called in Dutch, Poopendaal, or later, Beukendal or Beech Dale. Within or beyond the dale, was a well-known place on hard clayey soil, full of deer-licks at which the deer used to come to lick the salt. At this _kleykuil_, or clay-pit, the two men imagined they heard, about ten o’clock, the sound of horses’ hoofs stamping on the hard ground, but with a regularity that seemed very suspicious. Approaching warily nearer, they discovered that the noise came from a party of Indians playing quoits. Almost as soon as the two white men came in sight, they were fired on by the savages, who had seen their coming. Toll was instantly killed, and Van Voast was wounded and made prisoner. The black man, Ryckert, fled toward Schenectady.