Part 6 (1/2)

Down at the end of the long, dark street, Years, years ago, I sat with my sweetheart on the pier, Watching the river flow.

_Richard Henry Stoddard._

[Ill.u.s.tration: STATUE OF LIBERTY]

=NEW YORK TO ALBANY.=

=Desbrosses Street Pier to Forty-Second Street.=

Our historic journey fittingly begins at Desbrosses Street, for here, near the old River-front, extending from Desbrosses along Greenwich, stood the Revolutionary line of breastworks reaching south to the Grenadier Battery at Franklin Street. Below this were ”Jersey,”

”McDougall” and ”Oyster” batteries and intervening earthworks to Port George, on the Battery, which stood on the site of old Fort Amsterdam, carrying us back to Knickerbocker memories of Peter Stuyvesant and Wowter Van Twiller. The view from the after-deck, before the steamer leaves the pier, gives scope for the imagination to re-picture the far-away primitive and heroic days of early New York.

=Desbrosses Street Pier.=--On leaving the lower landing a charming view is obtained of New York Harbor, the Narrows, Staten Island, the Bartholdi Statue of Liberty, and, in clear weather, far away to the South, the Highlands of Nevisink, the first land to greet the eye of the ocean voyager. As the steamer swings out into the stream the tourist is at once face to face with a rapidly changing panorama.

Steamers arriving, with happy faces on their decks, from southern ports or distant lands; others with waving handkerchiefs bidding good-bye to friends on crowded docks; swift-shuttled ferry-boats, with hurrying pa.s.sengers, supplying their homespun woof to the great warp of foreign or coastwise commerce; noisy tug-boats, sombre as dray horses, drawing long lines of ca.n.a.l boats, or proud in the convoy of some Atlantic greyhound that has not yet slipped its leash; dignified ”Men of War” at anchor, flying the flags of many nations, happy excursion boats _en route_ to sea-side resorts, scows, picturesque in their very clumsiness and uncouthness--all unite in a living kaleidescope of beauty.

Rise, stately symbol! Holding forth Thy light and hope to all who sit In chains and darkness! Belt the earth With watch-fires from thy torch uplit!

_John Greenleaf Whittier._

Across the river on the Jersey Sh.o.r.e are seen extensive docks of great railways, with elevators and stations that seem like ”knotted ends”

of vast railway lines, lest they might forsooth, untwist and become irrecoverably tangled in approaching the Metropolis. Prominent among these are the _Pennsylvania Railroad_ for the South and West; the _Erie Railway_, the _Delaware, Lackawanna and Western_, and to the North above Hoboken the _West Sh.o.r.e_, serving also as starting point for the _New York, Ontario and Western_. Again the eye returns to the crowded wharves and warehouses of New York, reaching from Castle Garden beyond 30th Street, with forest-like masts and funnels of ocean steams.h.i.+ps, and then to prominent buildings mounting higher and higher year by year along the city horizon, marking the course of Broadway from the Battery, literally fulfilling the humor of Knickerbocker in not leaving s.p.a.ce for a breath of air for the top of old Trinity Church spire.

=Stevens' Castle.=--About midway between Desbrosses Street and 42d Street Pier will be seen on the Jersey Sh.o.r.e a wooded point with sightly building, known as Stevens' Castle, home of the late Commodore Stevens, founder of the Stevens Inst.i.tute of Technology. Above this are the Elysian Fields, near the river bank, known in early days as a quiet resort but now greatly changed in the character of its visitors.

On the left will also be seen the dome and tower of St. Michael's Monastery, and above this Union Hill.

=The Trap Rock Ridge=, which begins to show itself above the Elysian Fields, increases gradually in height to the brow of the Palisades.

West of Bergen Heights and Union Hill flows the Hackensack River parallel to the Hudson, and at this point only about two miles distant.

How still with all her towers and domes The city sleeps on yonder sh.o.r.e,-- How many thousand happy homes Yon starless sky is bending o'er.

_Park Benjamin._

=Forty-Second Street to One Hundred and Twenty-Ninth.=

=The 42d Street Pier= is now at hand, convenient of access to travelers, as the 42d Street car line crosses Manhattan intersecting every ”up and down” surface, subway or elevated road in the City, as does also the Grand, Vestry and Desbrosses Street at the lower landing. While pa.s.sengers are coming aboard we take pleasure in quoting the following from Baedeker's Guide to the United States: ”The Photo-Panorama of the Hudson, published by the Bryant Union Publis.h.i.+ng Co., New York City (price 50 cents), shows both sides of the river from New York to Albany, accurately represented from 800 consecutive photographs. This new and complete object-guide will be of service to the tourist, and can be had at the steamers' news stands, head of grand stairway, or it will be sent by publishers, postpaid, on receipt of price.”