Part 19 (1/2)
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”: