Part 24 (2/2)
_Bayard Taylor._
Two miles from the summit landing are the Kaaterskill Falls. The upper fall 175 feet, lower fall 85 feet. The amphitheatre behind the cascade is the scene of one of Bryant's finest poems:
”From greens and shades where the Kaaterskill leaps From cliffs where the wood flowers cling;”
and we recall the lines which express so beautifully the well-nigh fatal dream
”Of that dreaming one By the base of that icy steep, When over his stiffening limbs begun The deadly slumber of frost to creep.”
About half-way up the old mountain carriage road, is the place said to be the dreamland of Rip Van Winkle--the greatest character of American mythology, more real than the heroes of Homer or the ma.s.sive G.o.ds of Olympus. The railway, however, has rather dispensed with Rip Van Winkle's resting-place. The old stage drivers had so long pointed out the identical spot where he slept that they had come to believe in it, but his spirit still haunts the entire locality, and we can get along without his ”open air bed chamber.” It will not be necessary to quote from a recent guide-book that ”no intelligent person probably believes that such a character ever really existed or had such an experience.”
The explanation is almost as humorous as the legend.
=The Hotel Kaaterskill=, whose name and fame went over a continent even before it was fairly completed, is located on the summit of the Kaaterskill Mountain, three miles by carriage or one by path from the Catskill Mountain House. It is the largest mountain hotel at this time in the world, accommodating 1,200 guests, and the Catskills have reason to feel proud of this distinction. They have for many years had the best-known legend--the wonderful and immortal Rip Van Winkle. They have always enjoyed the finest valley views of any mountain outlook, and they have a right to the best hotels.
There is a fall in the hills, where the water of two little ponds runs over the rocks into the valley. The first pitch is nigh two hundred feet and the water looks like flakes of driven snow before it touches the bottom.
_James Fenimore Cooper._
It may seem antiquated and old-fas.h.i.+oned in the midst of elevated railroads to speak of mountain driveways, but that to Palenville, as we last saw it, was a beautiful piece of engineering--as smooth as a floor and securely built. It looks as if it were intended to last for a century, the stone work is so thoroughly finished. The views from this road are superior to anything we have seen in the Catskills, and the great sweep of the mountain clove recalls a Sierra Nevada trip on the way to the Yosemite.
The writer will never forget another Catskill drive fully twenty years ago. Starting one morning with a pair of mustang ponies from Phoenicia, we called at the Kaaterskill, the Catskill Mountain House, and the Laurel House, took supper at Catskill Village, and reached New York that evening at eleven o'clock. It is unnecessary to say that we were on business--our book was on the press--and we went as if one of the printers' best-known companions was on our trail.
Irving's description of his first voyage up the river brings us more delicately and gracefully down from these mountains to the Hudson--the level highway to the sea. ”Of all the scenery of the Hudson, the Kaatskill Mountains had the most witching effect on my boyish imagination. Never shall I forget the effect upon me of my first view of them, predominating over a wide extent of country--part wild, woody and rugged; part softened away into all the graces of cultivation. As we slowly floated along, I lay on the deck and watched them through a long summer's day, undergoing a thousand mutations under the magical effects of atmosphere; sometimes seeming to approach; at other times to recede; now almost melting into hazy distance, now burnished by the setting sun, until in the evening they printed themselves against the glowing sky in the deep purple of an Italian landscape.”
Limned upon the fair horizon, West from central Hudson's tide, The fair form of Ontiora Throughout ages shall abide.
_Jared Barhete._
=Catskill to Hudson.=
Leaving Catskill dock, the Prospect Park Hotel looks down upon us from a commanding point on the west bank, while north of this can be seen Cole's Grove, where Thomas Cole, the artist, lived, who painted the well-known series, the Voyage of Life. On the east side is Rodger's Island, where it is said the last battle was fought between the Mahicans and Mohawks; and it is narrated that ”as the old king of the Mahicans was dying, after the conflict, he commanded his regalia to be taken off and his successor put into the kings.h.i.+p while his eyes were yet clear to behold him. Over forty years had he worn it, from the time he received it in London from Queen Anne. He asked him to kneel at his couch, and, putting his withered hand across his brow, placed the feathery crown upon his head, and gave him the silver-mounted tomahawk--symbols of power to rule and power to execute. Then, looking up to the heavens, he said, as if in despair for his race, 'The hills are our pillows, and the broad plains to the west our hunting-grounds; our brothers are called into the bright wigwam of the Everlasting, and our bones lie upon the fields of many battles; but the wisdom of the dead is given to the living.'”
On the east bank of the Hudson, above this historic island, is the residence of Frederick E. Church, whose glowing canvas has linked the Niagara with the Hudson. It commands a wide view of the Berks.h.i.+re Hills to the eastward, and westward to the Catskills. The hill above Rodgers' Island, on the east bank, is known as Mount Merino, one of the first places to which Merino sheep were brought in this country.
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