America Volume III Part 4

"Leagues north, as fly the gull and auk, Point Judith watches with eye of hawk; Leagues south, thy beacon flames, Montauk!

"Lonely and wind-shorn, wood-forsaken, With never a tree for Spring to waken, For tryst of lovers or farewells taken,

"Circled by waters that never freeze, Beaten by billow and swept by breeze, Lieth the island of Manisees,

"Set at the mouth of the Sound to hold The coast lights up on its turret old, Yellow with moss and sea-fog mould.

"Dreary the land when gust and sleet At its doors and windows howl and beat, And Winter laughs at its fires of peat!

"But in summer-time, when pool and pond, Held in the laps of valleys fond, Are blue as the glimpses of sea beyond;

"When the hills are sweet with brier-rose, And, hid in the warm, soft dells, unclose Flowers the mainland rarely knows;

"When boats to their morning fis.h.i.+ng go, And, held to the wind and slanting low, Whitening and darkening, the small sails show,--

"Then is that lonely island fair; And the pale health-seeker findeth there The wine of life in its pleasant air.

"No greener valleys the sun invite, On smoother beaches no sea-birds light, No blue waves shatter to foam more white!"

ASCENDING THE HUDSON RIVER.

X.

ASCENDING THE HUDSON RIVER.

Hudson River Scenery -- Fort Was.h.i.+ngton -- Fort Lee -- The Palisades -- Piermont -- Greenwood Lake -- Tuxedo Lake -- Font Hill -- Yonkers -- Philipse Manor -- Mary Philipse -- Hastings -- Dobbs's Ferry -- Tappan Zee -- The Flying Dutchman -- Tarrytown -- Andre and Arnold -- Tappan -- Irvington -- Sunnyside -- Was.h.i.+ngton Irving -- The Sleepy Hollow -- Ichabod Crane -- Point-no-Point -- Rockland Lake -- Sing-Sing -- Croton Point -- Haverstraw Bay -- Stony Point -- Treason Hill -- Verplanck's Point -- The Highlands -- The Donderberg and its Goblin -- Peekskill -- Anthony's Nose -- Iona Island -- West Point -- Forts Clinton and Montgomery -- Sugar Loaf Mountain -- b.u.t.termilk Falls -- Const.i.tution Island -- Susan Warner -- General Kosciusko -- Beverly House -- Arnold's Treason -- Old Cro' Nest -- Flirtation Walk -- The Storm King -- Mount Taurus -- Joseph Rodman Drake -- The Culprit Fay -- Cornwall -- Fishkill -- Newburg Bay -- Newburg and Was.h.i.+ngton's Headquarters -- Ural Knapp -- The Tower of Victory -- Enoch Crosby, the Spy -- The Devil's Dance Chamber -- The Long Reach -- Poughkeepsie -- Lakes Mohonk and Minnewaska -- Va.s.sar College -- Crom Elbow -- Rondout -- Kingston -- Esopus -- Rhinebeck and Rhinecliff -- Ellerslie -- Rokeby -- Wilderscliff -- Montgomery Place -- Plattekill Clove -- Saugerties -- Livingston Manor -- Clermont -- Chancellor Livingston -- Fulton's First Steamboat -- Catskill Mountains -- Natty b.u.mppo -- Rip Van Winkle -- Slide Mountain -- Kaaterskill Clove -- Kaaterskill Falls -- Haines's Falls -- The Big Indian -- City of Hudson -- The Dutch -- New Lebanon -- The Shakers -- Mother Ann Lee -- Kinderhook -- Stuyvesant Landing -- Martin Van Buren -- Schodack -- The Mohicans -- Beeren Island -- The Overslaugh -- The Patroons -- The Van Rensselaers -- The Anti-Rent War -- Albany -- New York State Capitol -- Albany Medical College -- Calvin Edson -- Albany Academy -- Prof. Joseph Henry -- Dudley Observatory -- Van Rensselaer Mansion -- Vanderheyden Palace -- Lydius House -- Balthazar Lydius -- Anneke Jans Bogardus -- Albany Regency -- Schuyler Mansion -- Erie Ca.n.a.l Basin -- Troy -- The Monitor -- Mohawk River -- Stillwater -- Schuylerville -- Burgoyne's Defeat -- General Fraser's Death -- Round Lake -- b.a.l.l.ston Spa -- Saratoga Lake and Town -- High Rock Spring -- Sir William Johnson -- Saratoga Hotels -- Saratoga Springs -- Congress Spring -- Hathorn Spring -- Mount McGregor -- Fort Edward -- Israel Putnam -- Jenny McCrea -- Baker's Falls -- Sandy Hill -- Quackenboss' Adventure -- Glen's Falls -- Last of the Mohicans -- Hawkeye -- Sources of the Hudson -- The Adirondack Wilderness -- Hendrick Spring -- The Tear of the Clouds -- Indian Pa.s.s -- Tahawas, the Sky-Piercer -- Schroon Lake -- The Battenkill.

THE HUDSON RIVER SCENERY.

The n.o.ble Hudson is one of the most admired of American rivers. It does not possess the vine-clad slopes and ruined castles and quaint old towns of the Rhine, but it is a greater river in its breadth and volume and the commerce it carries. It has scenery fully as attractive in the Palisades and Highlands, the Helderbergs and Catskills, and on a scale of far more grandeur, while the infinite variety of its sh.o.r.es and villas and the many flouris.h.i.+ng river towns are to most observers more pleasing. A journey along the Hudson presents ever varying pictures of rural beauty, in mountain, landscape, field and village; at times almost indescribably grand, and again entrancing in the autumn's gorgeous coloring of the forest-clad slopes, and the brilliant picture under our clear American skies. George William Curtis, voicing the opinion of most of our countrymen, is enthusiastic about the Hudson, saying: "The Danube has in part glimpses of such grandeur, the Elbe sometimes has such delicately pencilled effects, but no European river is so lordly in its bearing, none flows in such state to the sea. Of all our rivers that I know, the Hudson with this grandeur has the most exquisite episodes. Its morning and evening reaches are like the lakes of a dream." The Hudson may not have as many weird and elfish legends as so many historic centuries and the mythical preceding era have gathered upon the annals of the Rhine, but its beauties, tragedies and folklore have been a favorite theme, and the romantic and poetic fancies of Irving, Drake and Cooper, with many others, have given it plenty of fascinating literature and picturesque incident. Oliver Wendell Holmes thus sings the praises of the Hudson:

"I wandered afar from the land of my birth, I saw the old rivers renowned upon Earth; But fancy still painted that wide-flowing stream, With the many-hued pencil of infancy's dream.

"I saw the green banks of the castle-crowned Rhine, Where the grapes drink the moonlight and change into wine, I stood by the Avon, whose waves, as they glide, Still whisper his glory who sleeps by their side.

"But my heart would still yearn for the sound of the waves, That sing as they flow by my forefathers' graves; If manhood yet honors my cheek with a tear, I care not who sees it--nor blush for it here.

"In love to the deep-bosomed stream of the West, I fling this loose blossom to float on its breast; Nor let the dear love of its children grow cold, Till the channel is dry where its waters have rolled."

THE PALISADES.

In ascending the Hudson from New York, there are pa.s.sed on either hand the heights which were covered in early Revolutionary days with the defenses of New York, Fort Was.h.i.+ngton and Fort Lee, but beyond the names no trace of either fort remains. The British captured both in the latter part of 1776, and afterwards held them. Fort Lee is now a favorite picnic ground. Above it rises the great wall of the Palisades, the wonderful formation built up of columned trap rock that extends along the western river bank for twenty miles up to Piermont, this rocky b.u.t.tress making the northern limit of New Jersey on the Hudson River. Occasionally a patch of trees grows upon the tops or sides of the Palisades, while the broken rocks and _debris_ that have fallen down make a sloping surface from about half-way up their height to the water's edge. These columns rise in varying heights from three to five hundred feet. This grand escarpment of the Palisades is a giant wall along the river bank, sometimes cut down by deep and narrow ravines, through which the people behind them get brief peeps at the picturesque stream far below. Their general surface makes a sort of long and narrow table-land, barely a half-mile to a mile wide, dividing the Hudson from the valley of the Hackensack to the westward, the top being usually quite level, and in most cases having a growth of trees. These desolate-looking Palisades are a barrier dividing two sections of country seeming in sharp contrast. To the westward, the inhabitants lead simple pastoral lives in a region of farm land and dairies. To the eastward, the opposite sh.o.r.e of the Hudson is a succession of villas and fas.h.i.+onable summer resorts, whither the New York people come out, seeking a little rest and freshness after the season's dissipation. From the tops of the Palisades are admirable views both east and west, displaying some of the finest sunrises and sunsets seen along the great river. Extensive blasting operations, to get the building-stone and paving material for which they form valuable quarries, are marring the beauty of the Palisades, but legal arrangements are maturing for their preservation. Their highest elevation, the Indian Head, not far above Fort Lee, rising five hundred and ten feet, has been ruined by these blasts, which at times will break off many thousand tons of rock at a single explosion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Palisades of the Hudson_]

The rocky b.u.t.tress of Piermont, the termination of the Palisades on the Hudson, gets its name from a pier, a mile long, which is extended from the sh.o.r.e at the foot of the mountain out to deep water, and a branch of the Erie railway terminates here. This line runs inland northwestward through a fine country. Over there is Greenwood Lake, known as the "miniature Lake George," a beautiful river-like body of water, ten miles long and a mile wide, almost entirely enclosed in the mountains, and presenting extremely picturesque scenery. This lake is at a thousand feet elevation, with clear and deep spring water, and in the neighborhood are the smaller but as charming Lakes Wawayanda, Macopin and Sterling. The long look over mountain and vale causing an expression of surprise in broken English from an Indian gazing upon the attractive prospect, is said to have named the first of these pretty little lakes;--"Away, way, yonder," he said, but it sounded like "Wa-wa-yanda," and the name has since clung to it. Not far away, among these mountains, is Tuxedo Lake, the fas.h.i.+onable resort of the Tuxedo Park a.s.sociation, also reached by the Erie railway. This club of wealthy New Yorkers has made a paradise among the Allegheny foothills, with game-preserves, golf-links, club-house, and many cottages for the members.

Above Spuyten Duyvel Creek the western Hudson River sh.o.r.e presents the monotonous front of these Palisades, stretching for miles apparently without a sign of active life; but the eastern bank is a far different picture of undulating hills, with gentle slopes to the water's edge, and covered in every eligible position with an endless variety of villas, presenting every phase of artistic taste and the development of abundant wealth. These summer homes upon the Hudson are among the crowning glories of the ever-changing river scene. Here is the famous Font Hill, now the Convent of Mount St. Vincent. In 1850 the tragedian Edwin Forrest built it for his home, a mediaeval graystone castle, with moat and drawbridge and six battlemented towers; but he held it only a few years, when he quarrelled with his wife, and sold the estate for $100,000 to the Sisters of Charity of the Order of St. Vincent de Paul for their Mother House, which had to remove from the site of Central Park in New York. The cross now surmounts the tallest castle tower, and it is surrounded by n.o.ble trees which have grown higher than the turrets, while on the hill behind, and almost overshadowing the little castle, is a huge red-brick convent building. Lawns slope down to the sh.o.r.e, and there are superb river views, with the grand wall of the Palisades rising high in front.

Yonkers is seventeen miles above New York, a galaxy of castellated and ornamental mansions fringing the town about, upon the amphitheatre of hills surrounding the flat depression on which it is mainly built. The little Neperhan or Sawmill River pours down a series of rapids through it before reaching the Hudson, with factories bordering the banks, while the great Vanderbilt railway, the New York Central, with a half-dozen sets of rails, runs along the front of the town. Here are now forty thousand people, in sharp contrast with the time when Hendrick Hudson, exploring the river, anch.o.r.ed in front of the little Indian village of Napperhamok, or the "Rapid Water." Curiosity brought them out in canoes to examine his s.h.i.+p, the "Half Moon," and he bought oysters and beans, saying he found them "a loving people who attained great age." The Dutch early bought land from these Indians for a settlement, and it became the domain of Patroon Vanderdonck, who set the town going under the name of Yonk-heer, or the "young master,"

meaning the heir of the family. Then the English came along and it became the "Philipse Manor," the old stone manor house built in 1682 being the antiquarian attraction, and used now as a sort of City Hall, a Soldiers' Monument standing in front. This was a manor of twenty-four thousand acres stretching along the river from Spuyten Duyvel up to the Croton. The third of the English lords of the manor was Fredericke Philipse, who was a shrewd aristocrat, and during the Revolution tried the difficult political game of a neutral, desirous of keeping on the winning side. But neither party trusted him, and although Was.h.i.+ngton had been his guest in the famous old manor house, yet he was attainted of treason by the State of New York, his great manor confiscated, cut up into small tracts and sold. The romance of Yonkers is the love story of his daughter, Mary Philipse, the "belle of the Hudson Valley." Tradition tells of her as the first love of Was.h.i.+ngton, but he wooed in vain, and she married another. Cooper made her the heroine of his novel _The Spy_.

The lands of this manor are among the most prized locations on the Hudson. Magnificent estates cover the sloping eastern bank, with hundreds of villas of all kinds and styles, fortunes being expended upon their elaborate decoration. Highly ornamental grounds upon the hillsides and terraces surround costly houses, built to reproduce palaces, churches, castles, baronial halls and old manors, with some sombre buildings not unlike tombs. There is every conceivable structure the florid imagination of an architect can fas.h.i.+on into a dwelling, some being of great size. They show up prettily among the trees, and some are thrust out upon crags almost overhanging the river, others nestle far back in clefts, and still others are set high upon the slopes. Amid the grand display is the villa-environed and exclusive town of Hastings-on-the-Hudson; and a mile above, and still in the gilded colony, is the village of Dobbs's Ferry. It got its name from the venerable John Dobbs, a Swede, who came over from the Delaware River to run the ferry during the Revolution. Not long ago some of the modern aristocrats of the place got ashamed of their old Dobbs heritage and sought to change the name to Paulding. Then came a sharp controversy, fanned into fever heat by the sensational warriors of the New York newspapers. Soon, however, the Pauldingites surrendered, old Dobbs was vindicated, and Dobbs's Ferry the place remains. It was here in the Livingston Mansion, in 1783, that Generals Was.h.i.+ngton, Carleton and Clinton met to finally settle the terms of English recognition of American independence. Two miles above is Irvington, with more elaborate villas. This favored region of the Hudson is the choicest abiding-place of the New York multi-millionaires, and a newspaper scribe on one occasion counted in the s.p.a.ce of six miles above Hastings the rural homes of sixty-three men whose aggregate wealth was estimated at more than $500,000,000. The single million fellow no longer cuts a figure in such a galaxy. On an eminence near Irvington stood the country house of the wealthiest of them, loftily situated, a white stone building with a tall tower, having very attractive surroundings. This was the Paulding Manor of Lyndehurst, the home of Jay Gould.

THE TAPPEN ZEE.

Over opposite, the grand terminating b.u.t.tress of the Palisades, Piermont, compresses the river channel, the rocks then receding, so that to the northward it broadens into the beautiful lake of the Tappan Zee. Here is the boundary dividing New Jersey from New York, and the long ridge, retiring from the river, stretches inland some miles, encircles the town of Nyack, and comes back to the river some distance above in an abrupt elevated cliff known as Point-no-Point.

This lake is over four miles wide, and is the scene of the legend of "The Flying Dutchman of the Tappan Zee." Irving tells us that often in the still twilight of a summer evening, when the sea would be as gla.s.s, and the opposite hills threw their shadows half across it, a low sound would be heard, as of the steady vigorous pull of oars, though no boat could be seen. Some said it was a whale-boat of the ancient water-guard, sunk by the British s.h.i.+ps during the war, but now permitted to haunt its old cruising-grounds. But the prevalent opinion connected it with the awful fate of "Rambout Van Dam of graceless memory." He was a roystering Dutchman of Spuyten Duyvel, who in a time long past navigated his boat alone one Sat.u.r.day the whole length of the Tappan Zee to attend a quilting-party at Kakiat, on the western sh.o.r.e. Here he danced until midnight, when he started home. He was warned it was the verge of Sunday morning, but he went off, swearing he would not land until he reached Spuyten Duyvel, if it took him a month of Sundays. He was never seen afterwards, but may still be heard, plying his oars, being "the Flying Dutchman of the Tappan Zee, doomed to ply between Kakiat and Spuyten Duyvel until the day of judgment." There is also another legend of a stout, round, Dutch-built vessel of the olden time, with high bow and stern, sailing up New York harbor in the teeth of wind and tide. She never returned down the Hudson, but the Dutch skippers plying the river often saw her, sometimes along the Palisades, or off Croton Point, or in the Highlands, but never above them. Sometimes it was by the lightning flashes of a storm upon a pitchy night, and giving glimpses of her careering across the Tappan Zee or the wide waste of Haverstraw Bay.

Sometimes on quiet moonlight nights she would lie under a high bluff in the Highlands, all in deep shadow, excepting her topsails glittering in the moonbeams. She appeared always just before or after or during unruly weather, and all the skippers knew her as the "Storm s.h.i.+p." Some maintained this phantom was the "Flying Dutchman," come from the Cape of Good Hope into more tranquil waters. Others held it to be Hendrick Hudson and the shadowy crew of the "Half Moon" sailing to their revels in the Catskills. We are told by Irving that "she still haunts the Highlands and cruises about Point-no-Point. People living along the river insist they sometimes see her in summer moonlight, and that in a deep still midnight they have heard the chant of her crew as if heaving the lead."

Tappan Village, naming the Tappan Zee, is some distance back from Piermont. Over on the eastern bank, nearly opposite Nyack, is Tarrytown, the "Torwen-Dorp" or "Wheat-Town" of the ancient Dutch, which has gradually changed to the present name. The genial Irving, never at a loss for a reason for the names of places along the river, tells how the good housewives named it Tarrytown because of their spouses' propensity to linger in the village tavern on market days. It is now one of the most elegant places on the Hudson, notable for its splendid villas. The attractive region about the Tappan Zee is full of Revolutionary memories, and particularly of the great historic tragedy made by the treason of Arnold and the capture of Andre. Major John Andre, at the age of twenty-nine, in 1780, was Adjutant General of the British Army, then commanded by Sir Henry Clinton in New York. On September 20th Andre came to Dobbs's Ferry to meet Arnold, with whom he had been in secret correspondence in reference to the surrender of West Point, where Arnold commanded. The next night he met Arnold at Stony Point, just below the Highlands, and started back with Arnold's pa.s.sport and doc.u.ments enabling the British to so direct an attack upon West Point as to capture it. These papers were in Arnold's handwriting, and at his suggestion Andre concealed them between the soles of his feet and his stockings. Andre tried to make his way down the eastern side of the Hudson to New York in disguise, taking the Tarrytown road, through what was then known as the "neutral ground,"

which was overrun by marauders from both armies. When within a half-mile of Tarrytown, at a little stream since called Andre's Brook, he was captured by Paulding, Williams and Van Wert, three American scouts, whom he mistook for his own partisans, and they searched him and found the treasonable papers. Rejecting all bribes, they took him across the Hudson to Tappan, then the American army headquarters, where he was condemned and hanged as a spy on October 2d. The old house wherein he was imprisoned still stands in Tappan, and his remains were interred there until 1821, when they were conveyed to Westminster Abbey, London.

THE HOME OF WAs.h.i.+NGTON IRVING.

Near Irvington is Sunnyside, long the home of the famous and genial Was.h.i.+ngton Irving. In the early days this house was built by a cynical Dutch councillor named Wolfert Acker, who inscribed over the door, "l.u.s.t in Rust,"--meaning "pleasure in quiet,"--whence the English called it "Wolfert's Roost." As the Spanish Escurial had been modelled after the famous gridiron of the blessed Saint Lawrence, so this loyal councillor is said to have modelled his house after the c.o.c.ked hat of the doughty Dutch Governor, Peter the Headstrong. The old house with its quaint Dutch gables became in time the castle of Baltus Van Ta.s.sel, and being held by Jacob Van Ta.s.sel, an active American partisan during the Revolution, the British sacked and burned it. The eastern front is overrun by ivy given Irving by Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, and originally from Melrose Abbey. The great author lived here from 1846 until his death in 1859, and his pen has immortalized the neighborhood. Nearby is the sequestered vale of Slaeperigh Haven, famed in the "Legend of the Sleepy Hollow." Not far from Tarrytown, he writes, there is a little valley, or rather a lap of land among high hills, one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquility. At the opening of this hollow, by the side of a winding lane, stands the ancient Dutch church, which is the oldest religious house in New York State. It is a curious little building with a diminutive spire enclosing a bell with the inscription, "Si . Deus . Pro . n.o.bis .

Contra . Nos . 1685"--If G.o.d for us, who against us. It was built of bricks brought out from Holland, and in the ancient and mossy graveyard, almost under the shadow of the old church, Irving is buried. He lies upon a beautiful sunny slope, whence one can look into the Sleepy Hollow, and also far over the lovely Tappan Zee and its pleasant surroundings, a spot he selected for his tomb. Longfellow thus sweetly sings of this modest grave:

"Here lies the gentle humorist, who died In the bright Indian Summer of his fame A simple stone, with but a date and name, Marks his secluded resting place, beside The river that he loved and glorified.

Here in the autumn of his days he came, But the dry leaves of his life were all aflame With tints that brightened and were multiplied.

How sweet a life was his; how sweet a death!

Living, to wing with mirth the weary hours, Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer; Dying, to leave a memory like the breath Of summer, full of suns.h.i.+ne and of showers, A grief and gladness in the atmosphere."

Only a short distance from the church is the old bridge made famous in the legend describing the escapade of the schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, with his "soft and foolish heart toward the s.e.x." In his love he had a rival in the stalwart and muscular Brom Bones. The legend tells us that Ichabod taught the Dutch urchins of these parts, and at the same time paid court to old farmer Van Ta.s.sel's daughter, the fair Katrina.

Brom Bones, otherwise Brom Van Brunt, determined to drive him away.

One dismal night Ichabod left the Van Ta.s.sel mansion in very low spirits. In the hush of midnight he could hear the watchdog bark, distant and vague, from the far opposite sh.o.r.e of the Hudson. Irving tells us a belief existed in a spectre--the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow--supposed to be the spirit of a Hessian trooper whose head had been carried off by a cannon-ball. Nearing the old church, this horrid ghost appeared in pursuit of Ichabod, who was bestride an inflexible old horse called Gunpowder. The terrified schoolmaster made all haste to reach the bridge, having pa.s.sed which, he would be beyond the power of his pursuer. He spurred Gunpowder forward, but looking back, beheld the spectre close behind him, and in the very act of hurling its horrid head at him. The crash came; Ichabod rolled to the ground; the spectre and Gunpowder rushed past him in a whirlwind. Next day, we are told, a shattered pumpkin was found in the road, and not long afterwards Brom Bones led Katrina to the altar, but the luckless Ichabod was never heard of again.

In the hills behind Point-no-Point, on the western verge of the Tappan Zee, at one hundred and sixty feet elevation, is Rockland Lake, a crystal sheet of water which gives New York much of its ice supply, the blocks being sent from the top of the hill on a long slide to the barges that carry it down the river. As they glide along, they look in the distance, under the sunlight, like a string of diamonds. Hook Mountain, separating the lake from the river, is over six hundred feet high, and out of the lake flows the Hackensack River behind the Palisades, through the Jersey meadows to Newark Bay. Just above Tarrytown, on the eastern sh.o.r.e, is Sing-Sing Village, on a pretty slope, the name coming from the Indian Ossining, meaning "a stony place." Here, just back from the sh.o.r.e, is the famous Sing-Sing Prison, the long, low tiers of white stone buildings having the railway tunnelled through them, and the pleasant village rising on the hillside behind. The convicts built their own prison many years ago, with stone hewn out of an adjacent marble ridge, called Mount Pleasant. Just above, the long forest-covered projection of Teller's or Croton Point, thrust for two miles, or more than half-way across the broad river, from the eastern bank, makes the northern boundary of the Tappan Zee. The West Sh.o.r.e railway, which has come up through the Hackensack Valley from Jersey City, emerges high on the western hills and runs gradually down to the river bank, so that the Hudson above has a railway on either sh.o.r.e. Alongside the Point, the Croton River flows in, the Reservoir being about six miles up that stream. It was off Teller's Point the British sloop "Vulture" anch.o.r.ed, when she brought Andre up from New York for his interview with Arnold.

ENTERING THE HIGHLANDS.

Beyond Teller's Point is another broadened expanse of the Hudson, Haverstraw Bay, spreading in parts five miles wide, its western sh.o.r.e lined with brickmaking establishments, lime-kilns and the factories which break up the stone quarried in the neighboring hills into Belgian blocks for New York street paving. Far in front, over the s.p.a.cious bay, looms up the distant range of Hudson River Highlands, an outcrop of the great Kittatinny ridge, stretching broadly across the country, a part of the same deep blue-gray mountain wall we have already penetrated farther south. Its changing hues and appearance, as approached, remind of Campbell's couplet in the _Pleasures of Hope_:

"'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, And robes the mountain in its azure hue."

High Torn, just behind the bank below Haverstraw, rises over eight hundred feet, while above is Stony Point, the outcrop of a long line of limestone hills stretching into the river. Between it and the town, standing on a little eminence not far from the sh.o.r.e, was the frame house of Smith the Tory, known as the "Treason House," where Andre and Arnold had their clandestine meeting to arrange the surrender of West Point, this eminence now being known as "Treason Hill." Across the ferry to Verplanck's Point, on the opposite sh.o.r.e, Andre went when the meeting was over, and started on his fateful journey down to Tarrytown. The two Points suddenly narrow the Hudson, above Treason Hill, to a half-mile width, and they make the northern boundary of Haverstraw Bay. This is a region filled with Revolutionary memories.

These Points commanded the southern river entrance to the Highlands, and behind them, back of the western sh.o.r.e, rises the b.u.t.tress of the Kittatinny and the outpost of the pa.s.s, the ma.s.sive Donderberg Mountain, eleven hundred feet high. The eastern Point was part of the Van Cortlandt manor, whose heiress, Gertrude, married Philip Verplanck, for whom it was named. Forts were built on both Points to control the river, and the British surprised and captured both of them in June, 1779, giving Was.h.i.+ngton much annoyance; but General Wayne, in July, by one of the most brilliant movements of the war, surprised and recaptured Stony Point. On the site of the old fort, and built of some of its materials, is now a little lighthouse guiding the river navigation. Over on the opposite sh.o.r.e, behind Verplanck's Point, Baron Steuben drilled the Revolutionary soldiers. This region now is chiefly devoted to the peaceful occupations of burning lime and making bricks.