Roundout, on the right bank of the Hudson, is the terminus of the Delaware and Hudson Canal, which connects it with Port Jervis on the Delaware, a distance of fifty-four miles.This town, the outlet of the coal regions, I passed after meridian.As I left Hudson on the first of the flood-tide, I had to combat it for several hours; but I easily reached Hyde Park Landing (which is on the left bank of the stream and, by local authority, thirty-five miles from Hudson City) at five o'clock P.M.The wharf-house sheltered the canoe, and a hotel in the village, half a mile distant on the high plains, its owner.
I was upon the river by seven o'clock the next morning.The day was varied by strong gusts of wind succeeded by calms.Six miles south of Hyde Park is the beautiful city of Poughkeepsie with its eighteen thousand inhabitants, and the celebrated Vassar Female College.Eight miles down the river, and on the same side, is a small village called New Hamburg.The rocky promontory at the foot of which the town is built is covered with the finest arbor vitae forest probably in existence.Six miles below, on west bank, is the important city of Newburg, one of the termini of the New York and Erie Railroad.Four miles below, the river narrows and presents a grand view of the north entrance of the Highlands, with the Storm King Mountain rising fully one thousand five hundred feet above the tide.The early Dutch navigators gave to this peak the name of Boter-burg (Butter-Hill), but it was rechristened Storm King by the author N.P.Willis, whose late residence, Idlewild, commands a fine view of Newburg Bay.
When past the Storm King, the Crow-Nest and the almost perpendicular front of Kidd's Plug Cliff tower aloft, and mark the spot where Kidd (as usual) was supposed to have buried a portion of that immense sum of money with which popular belief invests hundreds of localities along the watercourses of the continent.Now the Narrows above West Point were entered and the current against a head-wind made the passage unusually exciting.The paper canoe danced over the boiling expanse of water, and neared the west shore about a mile above the United States Military Academy, when a shell, from a gun on the grounds of that institution burst in the water within a few feet of the boat.
I now observed a target set upon a little flat at the foot of a gravelly hill close to the beach.
As a second, and finally a third shell exploded near me, I rowed into the rough water, much disgusted with cadet-practice and military etiquette.
After dark the canoe was landed on the deck of a schooner which was discharging slag or cinder at Fort Montgomery Landing.I scrambled up the hill to the only shelter that could be found, a small country store owned by a Captain Conk who kept entertainment for the traveller.Rough fellows and old crones came in to talk about the spooks that had been seen in the neighboring hills.It was veritable "Sleepy Hollow" talk.
The physician of the place, they said, had been "skert clean off a bridge the other night."Embarking the following morning from this weird and hilly country, that prominent natural feature, Anthony's Nose, which was located on the opposite shore, strongly appealed to my imagination and somewhat excited my mirth.One needs a powerful imagination, I thought, to live in these regions where the native element, the hill-folk, dwell so fondly and earnestly upon the ghostly and mysterious.Three miles down the river, Dunderberg, "the thundering mountain,"on the west bank, with the town of Peekskill on the opposite shore, was passed, and I entered Haverstraw Bay, the widest part of the river.
"Here," says the historian, "the fresh and salt water usually contend, most equally, for the mastery; and here the porpoise is often seen in large numbers sporting in the summer sun.Here in the spring vast numbers of shad are caught while on their way to spawning-beds in freshwater coves." Haverstraw Bay was crossed, and Tarrytown passed, when I came to the picturesque little cottage of a great man now gone from among us.Many pleasant memories of his tales rose in my mind as I looked upon Sunnyside, the home of Washington Irving, nestled in the grove of living green, its white stuccoed walls glistening in the bright sunlight, and its background of grand villas looming up on every side.At Irvington Landing, a little further down the river, I went ashore to pass Sunday with friends; and on the Monday following, in a dense fog, proceeded on my route to New York.
Below Irvington the far-famed "Palisades,"bold-faced precipices of trap-rock, offer their grandest appearance on the west side of the Hudson.These singular bluffs, near Hoboken, present a perpendicular front of three hundred or four hundred feet in height.Piles of broken rock rest against their base: the contribution of the cliffs above from the effects of frost and sun.
