The Hudson Part 19

The South Drive, a part of the Old Post Road, pa.s.ses the gateway of the beautiful rural cemetery, Locust Grove and many delightful homes.

Another interesting drive from Poughkeepsie is to Lake Mohonk and Minnewaska, well-known resorts across the Hudson, in the heart of the Shaw.a.n.gunk (p.r.o.nounced Shongum) Mountains, also reached by railway or stages via New Paltz. There are also many extended drives to the interior of the county recommended to the traveler who makes Poughkeepsie for a time his central point; chief among these, Chestnut Ridge, formerly the home of the historian Benson J. Lossing, lying amid the hill country of eastern Dutchess. Its mean alt.i.tude is about 1,100 feet above tide water, a fragment of the Blue Ridge branch of the Appalachian chain of mountains, cleft by the Hudson at West Point, stretching away to the Berks.h.i.+re Hills. It is also easy of access by the _Harlem Railroad_ from New York to Dover Plains with three miles of carriage drive from that point. The outlook from the ridge is magnificent; a sweep of eighty miles from the Highlands to the Helderbergs, with the entire range of the Shaw.a.n.gunk and the Catskills. Mr. Lossing once said that his family of nine persons had required during sixteen years' residence on Chestnut Ridge, only ten dollars' worth of medical attendance. Previous to 1868 he had resided in Poughkeepsie, and throughout his life his form was a familiar one in her streets.

Thy waves are old companions, I shall see A well-remembered form in each old tree And hear a voice long-loved in thy wild minstrelsy.

_Joseph Rodman Drake._

=The Dover Stone Church=, just west of Dover Plains Village, is also well worth a visit. Here a small stream has worn out a remarkable cavern in the rocks forming a gothic arch for entrance. It lies in a wooded gorge within easy walk from the village. Many years ago the writer of this handbook paid it an afternoon visit, and the picture has remained impressed with wonderful vividness. The archway opens into a solid rock, and a stream of water issues from the threshold. On entering the visitor is confronted by a great boulder, resembling an old-fas.h.i.+oned New England pulpit, reaching half way to the ceiling.

The walls are almost perfectly arched, and garnished here and there with green moss and white lichen. A rift in the rocks extends the whole length of the chapel, over which trees hang their green foliage, which, ever rustling and trembling, form a trellis-work with the blue sky, while the spray rising from behind the rock-worn altar seems like the sprinkling of holy incense. After all these years I still hear the voice of those das.h.i.+ng waters and dream again, as I did that day, of the brook of Cherith where ravens fed the prophet of old. It is said by Lossing, in his booklet on the Dover Stone Church, that Saca.s.sas, the mighty sachem of the Pequoids and emperor over many tribes between the Thames and the Hudson River, was compelled after a disastrous battle which annihilated his warriors, to fly for safety, and, driven from point to point, he at last found refuge in this cave, where undiscovered he subsisted for a few days on berries, until at last he made his way through the territory of his enemies, the Mahicans, to the land of the Mohawks.

Tell me, where'er thy silver bark be steering, Bright Dian floating by fair Persian lands, Tell if thou visited, thou heavenly rover, A lovelier stream than this the wide world over.

_Charles Fenno Hoffman._

=Poughkeepsie to Kingston.=

Leaving the Poughkeepsie dock the steamer approaches the Poughkeepsie Bridge which, from Blue Point and miles below, has seemed to the traveler like a delicate bit of lace-work athwart the landscape, or like an old-fas.h.i.+oned "valance" which used to hang from Dutch bedsteads in the Hudson River farm houses. This great cantilever structure was begun in 1873, but abandoned for several years. The work was resumed in 1886 just in time to save the charter, and was finished by the Union Bridge Company in less than three years. The bridge is 12,608 feet in length (or about two miles and a half), the track being 212 feet above the water with 165 feet clear above the tide in the centre span. The breadth of the river at this point is 3,094 feet. The bridge originally cost over three million dollars and much more has been annually spent in necessary improvements. It not only affords a delightful pa.s.senger route between Philadelphia and Boston, but also brings the coal centres of Pennsylvania to the very threshold of New England. Two railroads from the east centre here, and what was once considered an idle dream, although bringing personal loss to many stockholders, has been of material advantage to the city.

As the steamer pa.s.ses under the bridge the traveler will see on the left Highland station (_West Sh.o.r.e Railroad_) and above this the old landing of New Paltz. A well traveled road winds from the ferry and the station, up a narrow defile by the side of a das.h.i.+ng stream, broken here and there in waterfalls, to Highland Village, New Paltz and Lake Mohonk. _The Bridge and Trolley Line_ from Poughkeepsie make a most delightful excursion to New Paltz, on the Wallkill, seat of one of the State normal colleges.

My thoughts go back to thee, oh lovely lake, Lake of the Sky Top! as thy beauties break Upon the traveller of thy mountain road, While sunset gilds thee, vision never fairer glowed!

_Alfred B. Street._

Prominent among many pleasant residences above Poughkeepsie are: Mrs. F. J. Allen's of New York, Mrs. John F. Winslow's, Mrs. Thomas Newbold's, J. Roosevelt's and Archie Rogers'. The large red buildings above the Poughkeepsie water works are the Hudson River State Hospital. Pa.s.sing Crum Elbow Point on the left and the Sisters of the White Cross Orphan Asylum, we see

=Hyde Park=, 80 miles from New York, on the east bank, named some say, in honor of Lady Ann Hyde; according to others, after Sir Edward Hyde, one of the early British Governors of the colony. The first prominent place above Hyde Park, is Frederick W. Vanderbilt's, with Corinthian columns; and above this "Placentia," once the home of James K.

Paulding.

Immediately opposite "Placentia," at West Park on the west bank, is the home of John Burroughs, our sweetest essayist, the nineteenth century's "White of Selborne." Judge Barnard of Poughkeepsie, once said to the author of this handbook, "The best writer America has produced after Hawthorne is John Burroughs; I wish I could see him."

It so happened that there had been an important "bank" suit a day or two previous in Poughkeepsie which was tried before the judge in which Mr. Burroughs had appeared as an important witness. The judge was reminded of this fact when he remarked with a few emphatic words, the absence of which seems to materially weaken the sentence: "Was that Burroughs? Well, well, I wish I had known it."

How soothing is this solitude With nature in her wildest mood, Where Hudson deep, majestic, wide, Pours to the sea his monarch tide.

_William Wilson._

=Mount Hymettus=, overlooking West Park, so named by "the author and naturalist," has indeed been to him a successful hunting-ground for bees and wild honey, and will be long remembered for sweeter stores of honey encombed and presented in enduring type. Was.h.i.+ngton Irving says of the early poets of Britain that "a spray could not tremble in the breeze, or a leaf rustle to the ground, that was not seen by these delicate observers and wrought up into some beautiful morality." So John Burroughs has studied the Hudson in all its moods, knowing well that it is not to be wooed and won in a single day. How clear this is seen in his articles on "Our River":

"Rivers are as various in their forms as forest trees. The Mississippi is like an oak with enormous branches. What a branch is the Red River, the Arkansas, the Ohio, the Missouri! The Hudson is like the pine or poplar--mainly trunk. From New York to Albany there is only an inconsiderable limb or two, and but few gnarls and excrescences. Cut off the Rondout, the Esopus, the Catskill and two or three similar tributaries on the east side, and only some twigs remain. There are some crooked places, it is true, but, on the whole, the Hudson presents a fine, symmetrical shaft that would be hard to match in any river in the world. Among our own water-courses it stands preeminent.

The Columbia--called by Major Winthrop the Achilles of rivers--is a more haughty and impetuous stream; the Mississippi is, of course, vastly larger and longer; the St. Lawrence would carry the Hudson as a trophy in his belt and hardly know the difference; yet our river is doubtless the most beautiful of them all. It pleases like a mountain lake. It has all the sweetness and placidity that go with such bodies of water, on the one hand, and all their bold and rugged scenery on the other. In summer, a pa.s.sage up or down its course in one of the day steamers is as near an idyl of travel as can be had, perhaps, anywhere in the world. Then its permanent and uniform volume, its fullness and equipoise at all seasons, and its gently-flowing currents give it further the character of a lake, or of the sea itself. Of the Hudson it may be said that it is a very large river for its size,--that is for the quant.i.ty of water it discharges into the sea.

Its watershed is comparatively small--less, I think, than that of the Connecticut. It is a huge trough with a very slight incline, through which the current moves very slowly, and which would fill from the sea were its supplies from the mountains cut off. Its fall from Albany to the bay is only about five feet. Any object upon it, drifting with the current, progresses southward no more than eight miles in twenty-four hours. The ebb-tide will carry it about twelve miles and the flood set it back from seven to nine. A drop of water at Albany, therefore, will be nearly three weeks in reaching New York, though it will get pretty well pickled some days earlier. Some rivers by their volume and impetuosity penetrate the sea, but here the sea is the aggressor, and sometimes meets the mountain water nearly half way. This fact was ill.u.s.trated a couple of years ago, when the basin of the Hudson was visited by one of the most severe droughts ever known in this part of the State. In the early winter after the river was frozen over above Poughkeepsie, it was discovered that immense numbers of fish were retreating up stream before the slow encroachment of salt water. There was a general exodus of the finny tribes from the whole lower part of the river; it was like the spring and fall migration of the birds, or the fleeing of the population of a district before some approaching danger: vast swarms of cat-fish, white and yellow perch and striped ba.s.s were _en route_ for the fresh water farther north. When the people along sh.o.r.e made the discovery, they turned out as they do in the rural districts when the pigeons appear, and, with small gill-nets let down through holes in the ice, captured them in fabulous numbers.

On the heels of the retreating perch and cat-fish came the denizens of the salt water, and codfish were taken ninety miles above New York.

When the February thaw came and brought up the volume of fresh water again, the sea brine was beaten back, and the fish, what were left of them, resumed their old feeding-grounds.

Still on the Half-Moon glides: before her rise swarms of quick water fowl, and from her prow the sturgeon leaps, and falls with echoing splash.

_Alfred B. Street._

Beneath--the river with its tranquil flood, Around--the breezes of the morning, scented With odors from the wood.

_William Allen Butler._

"It is this character of the Hudson, this encroachment of the sea upon it, on account of the subsidence of the Atlantic coast, that led Professor Newberry to speak of it as a drowned river. We have heard of drowned lands, but here is a river overflowed and submerged in the same manner. It is quite certain, however, that this has not always been the character of the Hudson. Its great trough bears evidence of having been worn to its present dimensions by much swifter and stronger currents than those that course through it now. To this gradual subsidence in connection with the great changes wrought by the huge glacier that crept down from the north during what is called the ice period, is owing the character and aspects of the Hudson as we see and know them. The Mohawk Valley was filled up by the drift, the Great Lakes scooped out, and an opening for their pent-up waters found through what is now the St. Lawrence. The trough of the Hudson was also partially filled and has remained so to the present day. There is, perhaps, no point in the river where the mud and clay are not from two to three times as deep as the water. That ancient and grander Hudson lies back of us several hundred thousand years--perhaps more, for a million years are but as one tick of the time-piece of the Lord; yet even _it_ was a juvenile compared with some of the rocks and mountains which the Hudson of to-day mirrors. The Highlands date from the earliest geological race--the primary; the river--the old river--from the latest, the tertiary; and what that difference means in terrestrial years hath not entered into the mind of man to conceive. Yet how the venerable mountains open their ranks for the stripling to pa.s.s through. Of course, the river did not force its way through this barrier, but has doubtless found an opening there of which it has availed itself, and which it has enlarged. In thinking of these things, one only has to allow time enough, and the most stupendous changes in the topography of the country are as easy and natural as the going out or the coming in of spring or summer.

According to the authority above referred to, that part of our coast that flanks the mouth of the Hudson is still sinking at the rate of a few inches per century, so that in the twinkling of a hundred thousand years or so, the sea will completely submerge the city of New York, the top of Trinity Church steeple alone standing above the flood. We who live so far inland, and sigh for the salt water, need only to have a little patience, and we shall wake up some fine morning and find the surf beating upon our door-steps."

A sloop, loitering in the distance, dropped slowly with the tide, her sail hanging loosely against the mast; and as the reflection of the sky gleamed along the still water, it seemed as if the vessel was suspended in the air.

_Was.h.i.+ngton Irving._

How strange it seems in these brief years since 1880 to read of "Trinity Church steeple standing alone above the flood" as the rising tide of New York skysc.r.a.pers has long since overtopped the old landmark and is sweeping higher and higher day by day.

The Frothingham residence and Frothingham dock are south of the Burroughs cottage. The late General b.u.t.terfield's house immediately to the north. The old Astor place (once known as Waldorf), is also near at hand. In our a.n.a.lysis of the Hudson we refer to the hills above and below Poughkeepsie as "The Picturesque." Any one walking or driving from Highland Village to West Park will feel that this is a proper distinction. The Palisades are distinguished for "grandeur" which might be defined as "horizontal sublimity." The Highlands for "sublimity" which might be termed "perpendicular grandeur;" the Catskills for "beauty," with their rounded form and ever changing hues, but the river scenery about Poughkeepsie abides in our memories as a series of bright and charming "pictures." North of Waldorf is Pelham, consisting of 1,200 acres, one of the largest fruit farms in the world. Pa.s.sing Esopus Island, which seems like a great stranded and petrified whale, along whose sides often cl.u.s.ter Lilliputian-like canoeists, we see Brown's Dock on the west bank at the mouth of Black Creek, which rises eight miles from Newburgh on the eastern slope of the Plaaterkill Mountains. Flowing through Black Pond, known by the Dutch settlers as the "Grote Binnewater," it cascades its way along the southern slope of the Shaupeneak Mountains to Esopus Village, a cross-road hamlet, and thence carries to the Hudson its waters dark-stained by companions.h.i.+p with trees of hemlock and cedar growth.

The Pell property extends on the west bank to Pell's Dock, almost opposite the Staatsburgh ice houses. Mrs. Livingston's residence will now be seen on the east bank, and just above this the home of the late William B. Dinsmore on Dinsmore Point. Pa.s.sing Vanderberg Cove, cut off from the river by the tracks of the _New York Central Railroad_, we see the residence of Jacob Ruppert, and above this the Frinck mansion known as "Windercliffe," formerly the property of E. R. Jones, and next beyond the house of Robert Suckly. Pa.s.sing Ellerslie Dock we see "Ellerslie," the palatial summer home of ex-Vice-President Levi P. Morton, an estate of six hundred acres, formerly owned by the Hon.

William Kelly. Along the western bank extend the Esopus meadows, a low flat, covered by water, the southern end of which is marked by the Esopus light-house. To the west rises Hussey's Mountain, about one thousand feet in height, from under whose eastern slope two little ponds, known as Binnewaters, send another stream to join Black Creek before it flows into the Hudson. Port Ewen on the west bank, with ice houses and brick yards, will be seen by steamer pa.s.sengers below the mouth of Rondout Creek.

At dawn the river seems a shade, A liquid shadow deep as s.p.a.ce, But when the sun the mist has laid A diamond shower smites its face.

_John Burroughs._