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Little Cobus Yerks—his name was Jacob, but
being a Dutchman, if not a double Dutchman, it
was rendered in English Cobus—little Cobus, I
say, lived on the banks of Sawmill River, where it
winds close under the brow of the Raven Rock, an
enormous precipice jutting out of the side of the
famous Buttermilk Hill, of which the reader has
doubtless often heard. It was a rude, romantic
spot, distant from the high road, which, however,
could be seen winding up the hill about three
miles off. His nearest neighbours were at the
same distance, and he seldom saw company except
at night, when the fox and the weasel sometimes
beat up his quarters, and caused a horrible cackling
among the poultry.

One Tuesday, in the month of November, 1793,
Cobus had gone in his wagon to the little market
town on the river, from whence the boats plied
weekly to New-York, with the produce of the
neighbouring farmers. It was then a pestilent
little place for running races, pitching quoits, and
wrestling for gin slings; but I must do it the credit
to say, that it is now a very orderly town, sober

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and quiet, save when Parson Mathias, who calls
himself a son of thunder, is praying in secret, so
as to be heard across the river. It so happened,
that of all the days in the year, this was the very
day a rumour had got into town, that I myself—
the veritable writer of this true story—had been
poisoned by a dish of Souchong tea, which was
bought a great bargain of a pedler. There was
not a stroke of work done in the village that day.
The shoemaker abandoned his awl; the tailor his
goose; the hatter his bowstring; and the forge of
the blacksmith was cool from dawn till nightfall.
Silent was the sonorous harmony of the big spinning
wheel; silent the village song, and silent the
fiddle of Master Timothy Canty, who passed his
livelong time in playing tuneful measures, and
catching bugs and butterflies. I must say something
of Tim before I go on with my tale.

Master Timothy was first seen in the village,
one foggy morning, after a drizzling, warm, showery
night, when he was detected in a garret, at the
extremity of the suburbs; and it was the general
supposition that he had rained down in company
with a store of little toads that were seen hopping
about, as is usual after a shower. Around his
garret were disposed a number of unframed pictures,
painted on glass, as in the olden time, representing
the Four Seasons, the old King of Prussia,
and Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, in their sharppointed
cocked hats; the fat, bald-pated Marquis
of Granby, the beautiful Constantia Phillips, and

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divers others, not forgetting the renowned Kitty
Fisher, who, I honestly confess, was my favourite
among them all. The whole village poured into
the garret to gaze at these chef d'œuvres; and it is
my confirmed opinion, which I shall carry to the
grave, that neither the gallery of Florence, Dresden,
nor the Louvre, was ever visited by so many
real amateurs. Besides the pictures, there were a
great many other curiosities, at least curiosities to
the simple villagers, who were always sure of being
welcomed by Master Tim with a jest and a tune.

Master Tim, as they came to call him when
they got to be a little acquainted, was a rare
fellow, such as seldom rains down anywhere,
much less on a country village. He was of
“merry England,” as they call it—lucus a non
lucendo—at least so he said and I believe, although
he belied his nativity, by being the merriest rogue
in the world, even when the fog was at the thickest.
In truth, he was ever in a good humour, unless
it might be when a rare bug or gorgeous butterfly,
that he had followed through thick and thin,
escaped his net at last. Then, to be sure, he was
apt to call the recreant all the “vagabonds” he
could think of. He was a middle-sized man, whose
person decreased regularly, from the crown of his
head to the—I was going to say, sole of his foot—
but it was only to the commencement of the
foot, to speak by the card. The top of his head
was broad and flat, and so was his forehead, which
took up at least two thirds of his face, that tapered

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off suddenly to a chin, as sharp as the point of a
triangle. His forehead was indeed a large field,
diversified like the country into which he had
rained down, with singular varieties of hill and
dale, meadow and plough land, hedge and ditch,
ravine and watercourse. It had as many points
as a periwinkle. The brow projected exuberantly,
though not heavily, over a pair of rascally little
cross-firing, twinkling eyes, that, as the country
people said, looked at least nine ways from Sunday.
His teeth were white enough, but no two of
them were fellows. But his head would have
turned the brains of a phrenologist, in exploring
the mysteries of its development; it was shaped
somewhat like Stony Point—which everybody
knows as the scene of a gallant exploit of Pennsylvanian
Wayne—and had quite as many abruptnesses
and quizzical protuberances to brag about.
At the upper extremity of his forehead, as he assured
us, he carried his money, in the shape of a
piece of silver, three inches long and two wide,
inserted there in consequence of a fracture he got
by falling down a precipice in hot chase of a “vagabond
of a beetle,” as he was pleased to call him.
Descending towards terra firma, to wit, his feet,
we find his body gradually diminishing to his legs,
which were so thin, everybody wondered how they
could carry the great head. But, like Captain
Wattle, each had a foot at the end of it, full as
large as the Black Dwarf. It is so long ago that
I almost forget his costume. All I recollect is,

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that he never wore boots or pantaloons, but exhibited
his spindles in all weathers in worsted stockings,
and his feet in shoes, gorgeously caparisoned
in a pair of square silver buckles, the only pieces
of finery he ever displayed.

In the merry months of spring and summer, and
early in autumn, Master Timothy was most of his
time chasing bugs and butterflies about the fields,
to the utter confusion of the people, who wondered
what he could want with such trumpery. Being
a genius and an idler by profession, I used to
accompany him frequently in these excursions, for
he was fond of me, and called me vagabond oftener
than he did anybody else. He had a little net of
green gauze, so constructed as to open and shut as
occasion required, to entrap the small fry, and a
box with a cork bottom, upon which he impaled
his prisoners with true scientific barbarity, by sticking
a pin in them. Thus equipped, this Don
Quixote of butterfly catchers, with myself his
faithful esquire, would sally out of a morning into
the clovered meadows and flower-dotted fields, over
brook, through tangled copse and briery dell, in
chase of these gentlemen commoners of nature.
Ever and anon, as he came upon some little retired
nook, where nature, like a modest virgin, shrouded
her beauties from the common view—a rocky glen,
romantic cottage, rustic bridge, or brawling stream,
he would take out his little portfolio, and pointing
me to some conspicuous station to animate his
little landscape, sketch it and me together, with a

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mingled taste and skill I have never since seen surpassed.
I figure in all his landscapes, although he
often called me a vagabond, because he could not
drill me into picturesque attitudes. But the finest
sport for me, was to watch him creeping slily after
a humming bird, the object of his most intense desires,
half buried in the bliss of the dewy honeysuckle,
and just as he was on the point of covering
it with his net, to see the little vagrant flit away
with a swiftness that made it invisible. It was an
invaluable sight to behold Master Timothy stand
wiping his continent of a forehead, and blessing the
bird for a “little vagabond.” These were happy
times, and at this moment I recall them, I hardly
know why, with a melancholy yet pleasing delight.

During the winter season, Master Timothy was
usually employed in the daytime painting pleasure
sleighs, which, at that period, it was the fashion
among the farmers to have as fine as fiddles. Timothy
was a desperate hand at a true lover's knot, a
cipher, or a wreath of flowers; and as for a blazing
sun! he painted one for the squire, that was seriously
suspected of melting all the snow in ten
leagues round. He would go ten or a dozen miles
to paint a sleigh, and always carried his materials
on a board upon the top of his head—it was before
the invention of high-crowned hats. Destiny had
decreed he should follow this trade, and nature had
provided him a head on purpose. It was as flat
as a pancake. In the long winter evenings it was
his pleasure to sit by the fireside, and tell

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enormous stories to groups of horrorstruck listeners.
I never knew a man that had been so often robbed
on Hounslow Heath, or had seen so many ghosts
in his day, as Master Tim Canty. Peace to his
ashes! he is dead, and, if report is to be credited,
is sometimes seen on moonlight nights in the churchyard,
with his little green gauze net, chasing the
ghosts of moths and beetles, as he was wont in
past times.

But it is high time to return to my story; for I
candidly confess I never think of honest Tim that
I don't grow as garrulous as an old lady, talking
about the revolution and the Yagers. In all country
villages I ever saw or heard of, whenever anything
strange, new, horrible, or delightful happens,
or is supposed to have happened, all the male inhabitants,
not to say female, make for the tavern
as fast as possible, to hear the news, or tell the
news, and get at the bottom of the affair. I don't
deny that truth is sometimes to be found at the
bottom of a well; but in these cases she is generally
found at the bottom of the glass. Be this as
it may—when Cobus Yerks looked into the village
inn, just to say How d'ye do to the landlady, he
beheld a party of some ten or a dozen people, discussing
the affair of my being poisoned with Souchong
tea, which by this time had been extended
to the whole family, not one of whom had been
left alive by the bloody-minded damsel, Rumour.

Cobus could not resist the fascination of these
horrors. He edged himself in among them, and

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after a little while they were joined by Master
Timothy, who, on hearing of the catastrophe of his
old fellow-labourer in butterfly catching, had strode
over a distance of two miles to our house to ascertain
the truth of the story. He of course found it
was a mistake, and had now returned with a nefarious
design of frightening them all out of their
wits by a story of more than modern horrors. By
this times is was the dusk of the evening, and Cobus
had a long way to travel before he could reach
home. He had been so fascinated with the story,
and the additions every moment furnished by
various new comers, that he forgot the time till it
began to grow quite dark; and then he was so
horrorstruck at what he had heard, that he grew
fast to his chair in the chimney corner, where he
had intrenched himself. It was at this moment
Master Timothy came in with the design aforesaid.

The whole party gathered round him to know if
the story of the poisoning was true. Tim shook
his head, and the shaking of such a head was
awful. “What! all the family?” cried they, with
one voice. “Every soul of them,” cried Tim, in
a hollow tone—“every soul of them, poor creatures;
and not only they, but all the cattle, horses,
pigs, ducks, chickens, cats, dogs, and guinea hens,
are poisoned.” “What! with Souchong tea?”
“No—with coloquintida.” Coloquintida! the very
name was enough to poison a whole generation of
Christian people. “But the black bulldog!” cried

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Timothy, in a sepulchral voice, that curdled the
very marrow of their innermost bones. “What
of the black bulldog?” quoth little Cobus. “Why,
they do say that he came to life again after laying
six hours stone dead, and ran away howling like a
d—l incarnate.” “A d—l incarnate!” quoth Cobus,
who knew no more about the meaning of that
fell word than if it had been Greek. He only
knew it was something very terrible. “Yes,” replied
Timothy; “and what's more, I saw where
he jumped over the barnyard gate, and there was
the print of a cloven foot, as plain as the daylight
this blessed minute.” It was as dark as pitch, but
the comparison was considered proof positive. “A
cloven foot!” quoth Cobus, who squeezed himself
almost into the oven, while the thought of going
home all alone in the dark, past the churchyard,
the old grave at the cross roads, and, above all, the
spot where John Ryer was hanged for shooting the
sheriff, smote upon his heart, and beat it into a
jelly—at least it shook like one. What if he
should meet the big black dog, with his cloven
foot, who howled like a d—l incarnate! The
thought was enough to wither the heart of a stone.

Cobus was a little, knock-kneed, broad-faced,
and broad-shouldered Dutchman, who believed all
things, past, present, and to come, concerning
spooks, goblins, and fiends of all sorts and sizes,
from a fairy to a giant. Tim Canty knew him of
old, for he had once painted a sleigh for him, and
frightened Cobus out of six nights' sleep, by the

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story of a man that he once saw murdered by a
highwayman on Hounslow Heath. Tim followed
up the story of the black dog with several others,
each more appalling than the first, till he fairly
lifted Cobus's wits off the hinges, aided as he was
by certain huge draughts upon a pewter mug, with
which the little man reinforced his courage at short
intervals. He was a true disciple of the doctrine
that spirit and courage, that is to say, whiskey and
valour were synonymous.

It now began to wax late in the evening, and the
company departed, not one by one, but in pairs, to
their respective homes. The landlady, a bitter
root of a woman, and more than a match for half
the men in the village, began to grow sleepy, as it
was now no longer worth her while to keep awake.
Gradually all became quiet within and without the
house, except now and then the howling of a wandering
cur, and the still more doleful moaning of
the winds, accompanied by the hollow thumpings
of the waves, as they dashed on the rocky shores
of the river that ran hard by. Once, and once
only, the cat mewed in the garret, and almost
caused Cobus to jump out of his skin. The landlady
began to complain that it grew late, and she
was very sleepy; but Cobus would take no hints,
manfully keeping his post in the chimney corner,
till at last the good woman threatened to call up
her two negroes, and have him turned neck and
heels out of doors. For a moment the fear of the
big black dog with the cloven foot was mastered

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by the fear of the two stout black men, and the
spirit moved Cobus towards the door, lovingly
hugging the stone jug, which he had taken care to
have plentifully replenished with the creature. He
sallied forth in those graceful curves, which are
affirmed to constitute the true lines of beauty; and
report says that he made a copious libation of the
contents of the stone jug outside the door, ere the
landlady, after assisting to untie his patient team,
had tumbled him into his wagon. This was the
last that was seen of Cobus Yerks.

That night his faithful, though not very obedient
little wife, whom he had wedded at Tappan, on the
famous sea of that name, and who wore a cap
trimmed with pink ribands when she went to
church on Sundays, fell asleep in her chair, as she
sat anxiously watching his return. About midnight
she waked, but she saw not her beloved Cobus,
nor heard his voice calling her to open the
door. But she heard the raven, or something very
like it, screaming from the Raven Rock, the foxes
barking about the house, the wind whistling and
moaning among the rocks and trees of the mountain
side, and a terrible commotion among the poultry,
Cobus having taken the great house dog with
him that day. Again she fell asleep, and waked
not until the day was dawning. She opened the
window, and looked forth upon as beautiful an autumnal
morning as ever blessed this blessed country.
The yellow sun threw a golden lustre over
the many-tinted woods, painted by the cunning

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hand of Nature with a thousand varied dies; the
smoke of the neighbouring farmhouses rose straight
upward to heaven in the pure atmosphere, and the
breath of the cattle mingled its warm vapour with
the invisible clearness of the morning air. But
what were all these beauties of delicious nature to
the eye and the heart of the anxious wife, who saw
that Cobus was not there?

She went forth to the neighbours to know if they
had seen him, and they good-naturedly sallied out
to seek him on the road that led from the village to
his home. But no traces of him could be found,
and they were returning with bad news for his anxious
wife, when they bethought themselves of turning
into a byroad that led to a tavern, that used
whilome to attract the affections of honest Cobus,
and where he was sometimes wont to stop and wet
his whistle.

They had not gone far, when they began to perceive
traces of the lost traveller. First his broad-brimmed
hat, which he had inherited through divers
generations, and which he always wore when
he went to the village, lay grovelling in the dirt,
crushed out of all goodly shape by the wheel of his
wagon, which had passed over it. Next, they encountered
the backboard of the wagon, ornamented
with C. Y. in a true lover's knot, painted by Tim
Canty, in his best style—and anon a little farther,
a shoe, that was identified as having belonged to
our hero, by having upward of three hundred hobnails
in the sole, for he was a saving little fellow,

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though he would wet his whistle sometimes, in
spite of all his wife and the minister could say.
Proceeding about a hundred rods farther, to a sudden
turn of the road, they encountered the wagon,
or rather the fragments of it, scattered about and
along in the highway, and the horses standing quietly
against a fence, into which they had run the
pole of the wagon.

But what was become of the unfortunate driver,
no one could discover. At length, after searching
some time, they found him lying in a tuft of blackberry
briars, amid the fragments of the stone jug,
lifeless and motionless. His face was turned upward,
and streaked with seams of blood; his clothes
torn, bloody, and disfigured with dirt; and his pipe,
that he carried in the buttonholes of his waistcoat,
shivered all to naught. They made their way to
the body, full of sad forebodings, and shook it, to see
if any life remained. But it was all in vain—there
seemed neither sense nor motion there. “Maybe,
after all,” said one, “he is only in a swound—
here is a little drop of the spirits left in the bottom
of the jug—let us hold it to his nose, it may bring
him to life.”

The experiment was tried, and wonderful to tell,
in a moment or two, Cobus, opening his eyes, and
smacking his lips, with peculiar satisfaction, exclaimed,
“Some o' that, boys!” A little shaking
brought him to himself, when being asked to give
an account of the disaster of his wagon and his
stone jug, he at first shook his head mysteriously, and

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demurred. Being, however taken to the neighbouring
tavern, and comforted a little with divers refreshments,
he was again pressed for his story,
when, assuming a face of awful mystification, he
began as follows:—

“You must know,” said Cobus, “I started
rather late from town, for I had been kept there by—
by business; and because, you see, I was waiting
for the moon to rise, that I might find my way
home in the dark night. But it grew darker and
darker, until you could not see your hand before
your face, and at last I concluded to set out, considering
I was as sober as a deacon, and my horses
could see their way blindfold. I had not gone quite
round the corner, where John Ryer was hung for
shooting Sheriff Smith, when I heard somebody
coming, pat, pat, pat, close behind my wagon. I
looked back, but I could see nothing, it was so
dark. By-and-by, I heard it again, louder and
louder, and then I confess I began to be a little
afeard. So I whipped up my horses a quarter of a
mile or so, and then let them walk on. I listened,
and pat, pat, pat, went the noise again. I began to
be a good deal frightened, but considering it could
be nothing at all, I thought I might as well take a
small dram, as the night was rather chilly, and I
began to tremble a little with the cold. I took but
a drop, as I am a living sinner, and then went on
quite gayly; but pat, pat, pat, went the footsteps
ten times louder and faster than ever. And then!
then I looked back, and saw a pair of saucer eyes

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just at the tail of my wagon, as big and as bright as
the mouths of a fiery furnace, dancing up and down
in the air like two stage lamps in a rough road.

“By gosh, boys, but you may depend I was
scared now! I took another little dram, and then
made the whip fly about the ears of old Pepper and
Billy, who cantered away at a wonderful rate,
considering. Presently, bang! something heavy
jumped into the wagon, as if heaven and earth were
coming together. I looked over my shoulder, and
the great burning eyes were within half a yard of
my back. The creature was so close that I felt its
breath blowing upon me, and it smelled for all one
exactly like brimstone. I should have jumped out
of the wagon, but, somehow or other, I could not
stir, for I was bewitched as sure as you live. All
I could do was to bang away upon Pepper and
Billy, who rattled along at a great rate up hill and
down, over the rough roads, so that if I had not
been bewitched, I must have tumbled out to a certainty.
When I came to the bridge, at old Mangham's,
the black dog, for I could see something
black and shaggy under the goggle eyes, all at once
jumped up, and seated himself close by me on the
bench, snatched the whip and reins out of my hands
like lightning. Then looking me in the face, and
nodding, he whispered something in my ear, and
lashed away upon Pepper and Billy, till they
seemed to fly through the air. From that time I
began to lose my wits by degrees, till at last the
smell of brimstone overpowered me, and I

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remember nothing till you found me this morning in the
briars.”

Here little Cobus concluded his story, which he
repeated with several variations and additions to
his wife, when he got home. That good woman,
who, on most occasions, took the liberty of lecturing
her good man, whenever he used to be belated
in his excursions to the village, was so struck with
this adventure, that she omitted her usual exhortation,
and ever afterwards viewed him as one ennobled
by supernatural communication, submitting to
him as her veritable lord and master. Some
people, who pretend to be so wise that they
won't believe the evidence of their senses when it
contradicts their reason, affected to be incredulous,
and hinted that the goggle eyes, and the brimstone
breath, appertained to Cobus Yerks's great housedog,
which had certainly followed him that day to
the village, and was found quietly reposing by his
master, in the tuft of briars. But Cobus was ever
exceedingly wroth at this suggestion, and being a
sturdy little brusier, had knocked down one or two
of these unbelieving sinners, for venturing to assert
that the contents of the stone jug were at the bottom
of the whole business. After that, everybody
believed it, and it is now for ever incorporated with
the marvellous legends of the renowned Buttermilk
Hill.