SING-SING is famous for its marble, of which there is an extensive quarry near by; for its State-prison, of which the discipline is of the most salutary character; and for its academy, which has a high reputation. It may be said, altogether, to do the State some service.

The county of West Chester, of which this is the principal town on the Hudson, has been made the scene of perhaps the best historical novel of our country, and more than any other part of the United States suffered from the evils of war during the Revolution. The character and depredations of the “cow-boys” and “skinners,” whose fields of action were on the skirts of this neutral ground, are familiar to all who have read “the Essay” of Mr. Cooper. A distinguished clergyman gives the following very graphic picture of West Chester County in Revolutionary days:—

“In the autumn of 1777 I resided for some time in this county. The lines of the British were then in the neighborhood of Kingsbridge, and those of the Americans at Byram River. The unhappy inhabitants were therefore exposed to the depredations of both. Often they were actually plundered, and always were liable to this calamity. They feared everybody whom they saw, and loved nobody. It was a curious fact to a philosopher, and a melancholy one, to hear their conversation. To every question they gave such an answer as would please the inquirer; or if they despaired of pleasing, such a one as would not provoke him. Fear was apparently the only passion by which they were animated. The power of volition seemed to have deserted them. They were not civil, but obsequious; not obliging, but subservient. They yielded with a kind of apathy, and very quietly, what you asked, and what they supposed it impossible for them to retain. If you treated them kindly they received it coldly; not as a kindness, but as a compensation for injuries done them by others. When you spoke to them, they answered you without either good or ill nature, and without any appearance of reluctance or hesitation; but they subjoined neither questions nor remarks of their own,—proving to your full conviction that they felt no interest either in the conversation or yourself. Both their countenances and their motions had lost every trace of animation and of feeling. Their features were smoothed, not into serenity, but apathy; and instead of being settled in the attitude of quiet thinking, strongly indicated that all thought beyond what was merely instinctive had fled their minds forever.

“Their houses, meantime, were in a great measure scenes of desolation. Their furniture was extensively plundered or broken to pieces. The walls, floors, and windows were injured both by violence and decay, and were not repaired because they had not the means to repair them, and because they were exposed to the repetition of the same injuries. Their cattle were gone; their enclosures were burned where they were capable of becoming fuel, and in many cases thrown down where they were not. Their fields were covered with a rank growth of weeds and wild grass.

“Amid all this appearance of desolation, nothing struck my eye more forcibly than the sight of the high road. Where I had heretofore seen a continual succession of horses and carriages, life and bustle lending a sprightliness to all the environing objects, not a single solitary traveller was seen, from week to week or from month to month. The world was motionless and silent, except when one of these unhappy people ventured upon a rare and lonely excursion to the house of a neighbor no less unhappy, or a scouting party, traversing the country in quest of enemies, alarmed the inhabitants with expectations of new injuries and sufferings. The very tracks of the carriages were grown over and obliterated; and where they were discernible resembled the faint impressions of chariot wheels, said to be left on the pavements of Herculaneum. The grass was of full height for the scythe, and strongly realized to my own mind, for the first time, the proper import of that picturesque declaration in the Song of Deborah: ‘In the days of Shamgar, the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through by-paths. The inhabitants of the villages ceased: they ceased in Israel.’”

West Chester is a rough county in natural surface; but since the days when the above description was true, its vicinity to New York, and the ready market for produce have changed its character to a thriving agricultural district. It is better watered with springs, brooks, and mill-streams, than many other parts of New York, and among other advantages enjoys along the Hudson a succession of brilliant and noble scenery.