Part 1 (2/2)
A very good land to fall in with and a pleasant land to see!
_Hendrick Hudson_
How like a great volume of history romance and poetry seem her bright illumined pages with the broad river lying as a crystal book-mark between her open leaves! And how real this idea becomes to the Day Line tourist, with the record of Was.h.i.+ngton and Hamilton for its opening sentence, as he leaves the Up-Town landing, and catches messages from Fort Was.h.i.+ngton and Fort Lee. What Indian legends cl.u.s.ter about the brow of Indian Head blending with the love story of Mary Phillipse at the Manor House of Yonkers. How Irving's vision of Katrina and Sleepy Hollow become woven with the courage of Paulding and the capture of Andre at Tarrytown. How the Southern Portal of the Highlands stands sentineled by Stony Point, a humble crag converted by the courage of Anthony Wayne into a mountain peak of Liberty.
How North and South Beacon again summon the Hudson yeomen from harvest fields to the defense of country, while Fort Putnam, still eloquent in her ruins, looks down upon the best drilled boys in the world at West Point. Further on Newburgh, Poughkeepsie and Kingston shake fraternal hands in the abiding trinity of Was.h.i.+ngton, Hamilton and Clinton, while northward rise the Ontioras where Rip Van Winkle slept, and woke to wonder at the happenings of twenty years.
What stories of silent valleys told by murmuring streams from the Berks.h.i.+re Hills and far away fields where Stark and Ethan Allen triumphed. What tales of Cooper, where the Mohawk entwines her fingers with those of the Susquehanna, and poems of Longfellow, Bryant and Holmes, of Dwight, of Halleck and of Drake; ay, and of Yankee Doodle too, written at the Old Van Rensselaer House almost within a pebble-throw of the steamer as it approaches Albany. What a wonderful book of history and beauty, all to be read in one day's journey!
Roll on! Roll on!
Thou river of the North! Tell thou to all The isles, tell thou to all the Continents The grandeur of my land.
_William Wallace._
The Hudson has often been styled ”The Rhine of America.” There is, however, little of similarity and much of contrast. The Rhine from Dusseldorf to Manheim is only twelve hundred to fifteen hundred feet in breadth. The Hudson from New York to Albany averages more than five thousand feet from bank to bank. At Tappan Zee the Hudson is ten times as wide as the Rhine at any point above Cologne. At Bonn the Rhine is barely one-third of a mile, whereas the Hudson at Haverstraw Bay is over four miles in width. The average breadth of the Hudson from New York to Poughkeepsie is almost eight thousand feet.
The mountains of the Rhine also lack the imposing character of the Highlands. The far-famed Drachenfels, the Landskron, and the Stenzleburg are only seven hundred and fifty feet above the river; the Alteberg eight hundred, the Rosenau nine hundred, and the great Oelberg thirteen hundred and sixty-two. According to the latest United States Geological Survey the entire group of mountains at the northern gate of the Highlands is from fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred and twenty-five feet in height, not to speak of the Catskills from three thousand to almost four thousand feet in alt.i.tude.
It is not the fault of the Rhine with its nine hundred miles of rapid flow that it looks tame compared with the Hudson. Even the Mississippi, draining a valley three thousand miles in extent, looks insignificant at St. Louis or New Orleans contrasted with the Hudson at Tarrytown. The Hudson is in fact a vast estuary of the sea; the tide rises two feet at Albany and six inches at Troy. A professor of the Berlin University says: ”You lack our castles but the Hudson is infinitely grander.” Thackeray, in ”The Virginians,” gives the Hudson the verdict of beauty; and George William Curtis, comparing the Hudson with the rivers of the Old World, has gracefully said: ”The Danube has in part glimpses of such grandeur, the Elbe has sometimes such delicately penciled effects, but no European river is so lordly in its bearing, none flows in such state to the sea.”
I have been up and down the Hudson by water. The entire river is pretty, but the glory of the Hudson is at West Point.
_Anthony Trollope._
Baedeker, a high and just authority, in his recent Guide to the United States says: ”The Hudson has sometimes been called the American Rhine, but that t.i.tle perhaps does injustice to both rivers. The Hudson, through a great part of its extent, is three or four times as wide as the Rhine, and its scenery is grander and more inspiring; while, though it lacks the ruined castles and ancient towns of the German river, it is by no means devoid of historical a.s.sociations of a more recent character. The vine-clad slopes of the Rhine have, too, no ineffective subst.i.tute in the brilliant autumn coloring of the timbered hillsides of the Hudson.”
A stately stream around which as around The German Rhine hover mystic shapes
_Richard Burton_
What must have been the sensation of those early voyagers, coasting a new continent, as they halted at the n.o.ble gateway of the river and gazed northward along the green fringed Palisades; or of Hendrick Hudson, who first traversed its waters from Manhattan to the Mohawk, as he looked up from the chubby bow of his ”Half Moon” at the ma.s.sive columnar formation of the Palisades or at the great mountains of the Highlands; what dreams of success, apparently within reach, were his, when night came down in those deep forest solitudes under the shadowy base of Old Cro' Nest and Klinkerberg Mountain, where his little craft seemed a lone cradle of civilization; and then, when at last, with immediate purpose foiled, he turned his boat southward, having discovered, but without knowing it, something infinitely more valuable to future history than his long-sought ”Northwestern Pa.s.sage to China,” how he must have gazed with blended wonder and awe at the distant Catskills as their sharp lines came out, as we have seen them many a September morning, bold and clear along the horizon, and learned in gentle reveries the poetic meaning of the blue _Ontioras_ or ”Mountains of the Sky.” How fondly he must have gazed on the picturesque hills above Apokeepsing and listened to the murmuring music of Winnikee Creek, when the air was clear as crystal and the banks seemed to be brought nearer, perfectly reflected in the gla.s.sy surface, while here and there his eye wandered over gra.s.sy uplands, and rested on hills of maize in shock, looking for all the world like mimic encampments of Indian wigwams! Then as October came with tints which no European eye had ever seen, and sprinkled the hill-tops with gold and russet, he must indeed have felt that he was living an enchanted life, or journeying in a fairy land!
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