Rip Van Winkle

Postscript

The following are travel notes from a notebooktravelling notes from a memorandum-book of Mr. Knickerbocker:

The Kaatsberg or Catskill Mountains have always been a region full of legends.mountains have always been a region full of fable. Native AmericansThe Indians considered them the homeabode of spirits, who influenced the weather, spreading sunshine or clouds over the landscape, and sending good or bad hunting seasons. They were ruled by the spirit of an old woman,an old squaw spirit,Explanation: The source uses an offensive term for an Indigenous woman. It is softened for children while retaining the spirit’s age, gender and role in this account. These beliefs are reported by the fictional Knickerbocker, without identifying a particular people. said to be their mother. She liveddwelt on the highest peak of the Catskills, and had charge of the doors of day and night to open and shut them at the proper hour. She hung up the new moons in the skies, and cut up the old ones into stars. In times of drought, if properly pleased, she spun propitiated, she would spin light summer clouds from out of cobwebs and morning dew. She sent them from the mountain crest, dew, and send them off from the crest of the mountain, flake after flake, like flakes of combed cotton floating in the air. Dissolved by the sun’s heat, they fell carded cotton, to float in the air; until, dissolved by the heat of the sun, they would fall in gentle showers, making the grass spring up, the fruits ripen and the maize causing the grass to spring, the fruits to ripen, and the corn to grow an inch an hour. If displeased, however, she brewed would brew up clouds black as ink. She sat among ink, sitting in the midst of them like a spider with a bottle-shaped belly in the middle of its web. When bottle-bellied spider in the midst of its web; and when these clouds broke, woe tobetide the valleys!

In old times, say the Indigenous Indian traditions, there was a kind of Manitou, or spirit, who stayed in the wildest hidden corners Manitou or Spirit, who kept about the wildest recesses of the Catskill Mountains. He took mountains, and took a mischievous pleasure in bringing wreaking all kinds of harm and annoyanceevils and vexations upon the Indigenous people.red men.Explanation: Exception for children: the dated racial label “red men” is replaced by Indigenous people. The people and the spirit’s harmful actions remain in this legendary account. Sometimes he took would assume the form of a bear, a panther or a deer. He led panther, or a deer, lead the bewildered hunter on an exhausting a weary chase through tangled forests and among jagged rocks. Then he sprang away ragged rocks, and then spring off with a loud “Ho! Ho!”, leaving the hunter horrified at the edge of an overhanging cliff ho! ho! leaving him aghast on the brink of a beetling precipice or raging torrent.

The favourite homeabode of this Manitou is still shown. It is a great rock or cliff on the loneliest part of the mountains, and, from the flowering vines which clamber about it, and the wild flowers that grow abundantly nearbywhich abound in its neighbourhood, is known by the name of the Garden Rock. Near the foot of it is a small lake, the haunt of the solitary bittern, a marsh birdbittern, with water-snakes basking in the sun on the leaves of the water liliespond-lilies which lie on the surface. Native Americans held this place in such awe that even the boldest hunter would not pursue the animals he hunted within its bounds.This place was held in great awe by the Indians, insomuch that the boldest hunter would not pursue his game within its precincts. Once upon a time, however, a hunter who had lost his way reachedpenetrated to the Garden Rock, where he sawbeheld a number of gourds, hollow fruits used as containers, placed in the forksgourds placed in the crotchesExplanation: A gourd is a fruit whose hard shell can be used as a container. “Crotches” here means the forks where tree branches divide; the passage is describing the hunter’s surroundings. of trees. He seized one One of these he seized and made off with it. In his hurried retreat, he dropped it among the rocks. A it, but in the hurry of his retreat he let it fall among the rocks, when a great stream gushed out, forth, which washed him away and swept him down the cliffs, precipices, where he was killeddashed to piecesExplanation: Exception for children: the graphic description of the hunter’s body is softened. He is still swept down the cliffs and killed; the fatal outcome and the stream’s legendary origin remain.. The , and the stream made its way to the Hudson Hudson, and continues to flow to this day: it is the very stream known asthe present day, being the identical stream known by the name of the Kaaters-kill.