DUTCH AND ENGLISH ON THE HUDSON

sheltering trees, to be milked. At one door were
young matrons, at another the elders of the people,
at a third the youths and maidens, gaily chatting or
singing together, while the children played around
the trees, or waited by the cows for the chief in-
gredient of their frugal supper, which they gener-
ally ate sitting on the steps in the open air.5'

The court-house of Albany to which the com-
missioners journeyed by boat up the Hudson, is
described by Peter Kalm, a Swedish traveler and
scientist, as a fine stone building by the riverside,
three stories high with a small steeple containing
a bell, and topped by a gilt ball and weather-vane.
From the engraved print which has come down to
us, it seems a barren barrack of a building with an
entrance quite inadequate for the men of distinc-
tion who thronged its halls on this memorable
occasion.

In this congress at Albany, Benjamin Franklin
from Pennsylvania and William Johnson of New
York were the dominating figures. The famous
plan of union which Franklin presented has some-
times made historians forget the services rendered
by this redoubtable Colonel Johnson at a mo-
ment when the friendship of the Six Nations was
hanging in the balance. Though gifts had been