statistical material is lacking.

The written sources are:

CHAPTER II.

THE LOCALITY.

In the hill country, sixty-two miles north of New York, and twenty-eight miles east of the Hudson River at Fishkill, lies Quaker Hill. It is the eastern margin of the town of Pawling, and its eastern boundary is the state line of Connecticut. On the north and south it is bounded by the towns of Dover and Patterson respectively; on the west by a line which roughly corresponds to the western line of the Oblong, that territory which was for a century in dispute between the States of New York and Connecticut. Its length is the north and south dimension of Pawling.

This area is six and a half miles long, north and south, and irregularly two miles in width, east and west. Quaker Hill can scarcely be called a hamlet, because instead of a cluster of houses, it is a long road running from south to north by N. N. E. and intersected by four roads running from east to west. The households located on this road for one hundred and sixty years constituted a community of Quakers dwelling near their Meeting House; and until the building of the Harlem Railroad in the valley below in 1849, had their own stores and local industries.

Before the railroad came, Quaker Hill was obliged to go to Poughkeepsie for access to the world, over the precipitous sides of West Mountain, and all supplies had to be brought up from the river level to this height. At present Quaker Hill, in its nearest group of houses at the Mizzen-Top Hotel, is three miles and three-quarters from the railroad station at Pawling. Other houses are five and seven miles from Pawling. On the east the nearest station of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, New Milford, is nine miles away. The "Central New England" Branch of the N. Y. N. H. & H., running east and west, is at West Patterson or West Pawling, seven and eight miles.

The natural obstacle which does more than miles to isolate Quaker Hill is its elevation. The "Mizzen-Top Hill," as it is now called, is a straightforward Quaker road, mounting the face of the Hill four hundred feet in a half-mile. The ancient settler on horseback laid it out; and the modern wayfarer in hotel stage, carriage or motor-car has to follow. Quaker Hill is conservative of change.

The mean elevation is about 1,100 feet above the sea. The highest point being Tip-Top, 1,310 feet, and the lowest point 620 feet. The Hill is characterized by its immediate and abrupt rise above surrounding localities, being from 500 to 830 feet above the village of Pawling, in which the waters divide for the Hudson and Housatonic Rivers. On its highest hill rises the brook which becomes the Croton River. From almost the whole length of Quaker Hill road one looks off over intervening hills to the east for twenty-five miles, and to the west for forty miles to Minnewaska and Mohonk; and to the north fifty and sixty miles to the Catskill Mountains.

One's first impressions are of the green of the foliage and herbage. The grass is always fresh, and usually the great heaving fields are mellowed with orange tints and the masses of trees are of a lighter shade of green than elsewhere. The qualities of the soil which have made Quaker Hill "a grass country" for cattle make it a delight to the eye. Well watered always, when other sections may be in drought, its natural advantages take forms of beauty which delight the artist and satisfy the eye of the untrained observer.

The Hill is a conspicuous plateau, very narrow, extending north and south. It is "the place that is all length and no breadth." Six miles long upon the crest of the height runs the road which is its main thoroughfare, and was in its first century the chief avenue of travel. Crossing it at right angles are four roads, that now carry the wagon and carriage traffic to the valleys on either side; which since railroad days are the termini of all journeys. The elevation above the surrounding hills and valleys is such that one must always climb to attain the hill; and one moves upon its lofty ridge in constant sight of the distant conspicuous heights, the Connecticut uplands east of the Housatonic on one side, and on the other, the Shawangunk and Catskill Mountains, west of the Hudson, all of them more than 25 miles away.

Unsheltered as it is, the locality is subject to severe weather. The extreme of heat observed has been 105 degrees; and of cold—24 degrees.

Quaker Hill possesses natural advantages for agriculture only. No minerals of commercial value are there; although iron ore is found in Pawling and nearby towns. On the confines of the Hill, in Deuell Hollow, a shaft was driven into the hillside for forty feet, by some lonely prospector, and then abandoned; to be later on seized upon and made the traditional location of a gold mine. The Quaker Hill imagination is more fertile and varied than Quaker Hill land. No commercial advantages have ever fallen upon the place, except those resultant from cultivation of the fertile soil in the way of stores, now passed away; and the opportunity to keep summer boarders in the heated