This trip starts with King's Bridge, built by Frederick Philipse in 1693. That bridge--which, like Mark Twain's jackknife, that had had two new handles and six new blades, but was still the same old jackknife--still connects Manhattan Island with the main land, being supported on stone piers that are said to be the original ones used. There is but one other bridge in the entire trip to Albany that can rival its antique and aged appearance, and that crosses the Roeloff Jansen Kill in Columbia County. Just East of the King's Bridge was the "wading place" of the Indians, and later of the Dutch, where the valiant Anthony Van Corlear met his fate, and, according to Irving, gave the stream its present name. To one who likes to speculate as to what might have been, had things been different, King's Bridge affords large opportunity for thought. It seems always to have been a favorite haunt of the human race, its encircling hills and accessibility by water no doubt being responsible for this popularity. Extensive beds of oyster shells testify to former Indian occupancy, and the Dutch appear to have shown the same preference for this quiet nook, though they finally pitched their tents at the lower end of the island which furnished larger opportunity for trade. If the city had been established here, would we to-day be taking our pleasure jaunts into the country where now is the Battery, and would our antiquarians still be discovering Indian remains in that region? Bolton's History of Westchester County says that the site of the present village of King's Bridge was that originally selected by the Dutch for their city of New Amsterdam, it being a spot protected from the blasts of Winter by the encircling hills, and it may have been that the swamps of Mosholu Creek gave them pleasurable anticipations of dykes and ditches--a touch of home. They had but to re-name the creek and make it a real Amster Dam. Spuyten Duyvil Hill toward the west was known to the Indians as Nipnichsen. Here they had a castle or stockade to protect them against the Sauk-hi-can-ni, the "fire workers", who dwelt on the western shore of the great river Mohican-i-tuck, and from which later came that delectable fire-water known as "Jersey lightning," against which no red man is ever known to have raised a hand. In later days three small American redoubts, known as forts Nos. 1, 2 and 3, crowned this same hill. One of these is now doing duty as the cellar walls of a dwelling. On the rise of ground to the east known as Tetard's Height, was Fort Independence, or No. 4. This series of eight small forts, which covered the upper end of Manhattan Island from the heights of the adjoining mainland, seem to have been more ornamental than useful, as they fell into British hands with little or no fighting. No. 8 overlooked Laurel Hill, on which stood Fort George.