After crossing into Rensselaer County the first village one comes in contact with is Muitzeskill, whose burial ground is old enough to be interesting to the searcher for curious epitaphs. All country places have their odd characters, and this region is no exception. Among the elegant extracts quoted as dropping from the lips of its citizens is the remark of a certain Michael Younghans, hotel keeper, who declaiming about certain improvements he was thinking of, said that he was "A-going to get carpenters to impair his house, firiquelly it in front, open pizarro all round, up-an-dicular posts on a new destruction." What was to happen after that no man knoweth. [Sidenote: _FIREPLACE OF THE NATION._] This rolling country was once the council seat of the Mohicans, this fact being commemorated in the name of Schodack, a Dutch rendering of the Indian word Esquatak, "the fireplace of the nation." The Mohicans had been pretty thoroughly "pacified" by the Mohawks about the time that Hudson ascended the river, and this region is full of legends of fights and ambuscades. It seems that Burgoyne's captured army was marched south over this road, and some three miles out of Castleton, so the story goes, one Jacob Jahn, a Hessian prisoner, escaped to the woods and later, building a log house on the exact spot where he effected his escape, he settled down, after taking unto himself a wife, and became a good citizen. The road follows the level table land almost to the Hudson, when it dips down a steep incline, crosses the Muitzes Kill and joins the river road. Once upon a time, as history records, as an excitable Dutch vrouw was wending her way along the banks of this brook, a sudden gust of wind caught up her cap, the pride of her heart, and whisked it into the water beyond reach, whereupon she set up an outcry, "Die muts is in die kill! Die muts is in die kill!" and so it is even unto this day. What kind of a name the stream might now be murmuring under, had this adventure befallen her good man is fearful to think on. [Sidenote: _CASTLETON._] It is Castleton because the Indians once had a castle on the crest of the hill back of the village. The town is comparatively new, having been incorporated as late as 1827, and appears to have taken no important or interesting part in the days when history was making; but there was a ship yard here, and home-built sloops competed for the New York trade before the railroad changed things. It is told of a certain foolish citizen, a passenger on one of the village sloops anchored for the night somewhere in the Highlands, that, being requested by the wag of the party to steer the stationary boat while the others took needed rest, he faithfully performed his task until relieved the next morning. When asked by his shipmates how they had got on during the night he replied that they had got along a good ways by the water, but not far by the land.