30 - Peekskill Landing

Summary

Like most of the landings on the Hudson, Peekskill is a sort of outstretched hand from the interior of the country. It is about eighty miles from New York, and the produce from the country behind is here handed over to the trading sloops, who return, into the waiting palm, the equivalent in goods from the city. A sort of town naturally springs up at such a spot, and, as a river-side is a great provocative of idleness, all the Dolph Heyligers of the country about seem to be collected at the landing.

The neighbourhood of this spot is interesting from its association with the history of the Revolution. The head-quarters of General Washington were just below, at Verplank's Point; and the town of Peekskill, half a mile back from the river, was the depôt of military stores, which were burnt by General Home in 1777. “On my return southward in 1782,” says the translator of Chastellux, who has not given his name, “I spent a day or two at the American camp at Verplank's Point, where I had the honour of dining with General Washington. I had suffered severely from an ague, which I could not get quit of, though I had taken the exercise of a hard-trotting horse, and got thus far to the north in the month of October.[…]