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AMERICA
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AMERICA
BY
JOEL COOK
Solttmea
Volume III.
MERRILL AND BAKER
New York London
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Copyright, Henry T. Coates & Co., 1900
CONTENTS
VOLUME II
PA61
VIII. ABOUND THE HARBOR OP NEW YORK, . . 3
IX. THE ENVIRONMENT OF LONG ISLAND SOUND, . 89
X. ASCENDING THE HUDSON EIVER, . , . 129
XL A GLIMPSE OF THE BERKSHIRE HILLS, . . 241
XH. THE ADIRONDACKS AND THEIR ATTENDANT LAKES, 271
XIH. CROSSING THE EMPIRE STATE, . . . . . 329
XTV. DESCENDING THE KIVER ST. LAWRENCE, . . 399
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME III
GRANT'S TOMB, NEW YORK . . . .58
WIUJAM CUU.EN BRYANT AT "CEDARHURST,"
ROSLYN ...... 94
PALISADES OF THE HUDSON . . . .132
UP THE HUDSON FROM THE WATER BATTERY,
WEST POINT . . . . .162
STATE CAPITOI,, ALBANY, N. Y. . . 204
A.
AROUND THE HARBOR OF NEW YORK.
VOL. II. 33
AMERICA,
PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
VIII.
ABOUND THE HAKBOK OF NEW YOKK.
Hendrick Hudson The Ship "Half Moon" Manhattan Island
New Amsterdam Hudson River Fire Island Navesink
Highlands Sandy Hook Liberty Statue Governor's Island
Jersey City Hoboken Weehawken The Kills Perth
Amboy Staten Island New Dorp Commodore Vanderbilt
Hackensack Eiver Passaic Eiver Paterson Newark
Elizabeth Eahway Earitan Eiver New Brunswick Bat
tle of Monmouth Molly Pitcher Greater New York Bat
tery Park Bowling Green Broadway Trinity Church
Famous and Sky-Scraping Buildings Wall Street National
City Bank St. Paul's Church City Hall Park Chemical
Bank Dry Goods District Cooper Institute Peter Stuy-
vesant Union Square Tammany Hall Madison Square
Fifth Avenue Washington Square Little Church Around
the Corner Murray Hill John Jacob Astor Alexander T.
Stewart Fifth Avenue Architecture The Vanderbilts New
York Public Library Famous Churches Jay Gould Met
ropolitan Museum Central Park Museum of Natural His
tory Morningside Park Eiverside Park Spuyten Duyvel
Creek Battle of Harlem Heights Fort Washington Mor-
risania Croton Aqueducts High Bridge The Bronx Van
Cortlandt Park Bronx Park Pelham Bay Park Hunter's
Island East Eiver and its Islands Hell Gate Brooklyn
Bridge City of Churches Brooklyn Development Fulton
(3)
4 AMEKICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
Street Brooklyn Heights Plymouth Church The Beecher
Family Church of the Pilgrims Pratt Institute Green
wood Cemetery Its Famous Tombs Ocean Parkway Pros
pect Park Coney Island Its Constant Festival Brighton
and Manhattan Beaches View from the Observatory.
HENDRICK HUDSON.
THE redoubtable navigator for the Dutch East
India Company, Hendrick Hudson, after exploring
Delaware Bay, sailed along the New Jersey coast
and entered Sandy Hook, discovering, on September
11, 1609, the Hudson River. There is a vague tra
dition that the first European who saw the magnifi
cent harbor of New York was the Florentine, Ver-
razani, who came as early as 1524. Hudson was
searching for the " Northwest Passage," and when he
steered his little ship, the " Half Moon," into the
great river, with its swelling tide of salt water, was
sure he had found the long-sought route to the In
dies. He explored it as far up as the present site
of Albany, creating a sensation among the Indians,
who flocked to the shores to see the " great white
bird," as they called the " Half Moon," because of its
wide-spreading sails. He traded with them for to
bacco and furs, finding the Lenni Lenapes on the
western bank and the Mohicans on the eastern side,
and to impress them with his prowess, put them in a
great fright by shooting off his cannon. Upon re
turning from Albany, the Indians gave him a feast
on an island, breaking their arrows in token that they
HENDKICK HUDSON. 5
meant no treachery. Hudson had a goodly store of
seductive " schnapps," and offered them some in re
turn for their hospitality. They examined it closely,
smelt it, but passed it along without tasting. Finally
one, somewhat bolder, partook, and drinking a good
deal, fell in a drunken stupor for several hours.
When finally aroused he said the Dutchmen had the
strongest water he had ever tasted, and the other In
dians then became eager to try the fire-water too,
and soon they were all under its influence, and thus
became firm friends of the Dutch.
The scene of this great carousal is said to have
been the island where is now the city of New York.
The Indian word Man-a-tey means " the island," and
from this they named the place Man-a-hat-ta-nink,
the "island of general intoxication." Ticknor, in
his guide-book, gravely tells us that " from the scene
of wassail and merriment which followed the meeting
of the sailors and the Indians, the latter called the
island Manhattan, "the place where they all got
drunk." Thus, at the beginning, this noted locality
acquired a reputation which many attest as existing
with undiminished lustre in maturer years. By way
of variety in this connection, it may be related that
Washington Irving, in Knickerbocker's veritable his
tory of New York, has this to say : " The name most
current at the present day, and which is likewise
countenanced by the great historian Vander-Donck,
is Manhattan, which is said to have originated in a
6 AMERICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
custom among the squaws, in the early settlement,
of wearing men's hats, as is still done among many
tribes. i Hence/ as we are told by an old Governor,
who was somewhat of a wag, and flourished almost a
century since, and had paid a visit to the wits of
Philadelphia, i hence arose the appellation of man-
hat-on, first given to the Indians, and afterwards to
the island J a stupid joke, but well enough for a
Governor." Irving continues : " There is another,
founded on still more ancient and indisputable au
thority, which I particularly delight in, seeing it is
at once poetical, melodious and significant, and this
is recorded in the before-mentioned voyage of the
great Hudson, written by Master Juet, who clearly
and correctly calls it Manna-hatta, that is to say, the
island of Manna, or, in other words, ( a land flowing
with milk and honey. 7 r>
NEW AMSTERDAM AND ITS HARBOR.
About five years elapsed after Hudson's discovery
before a colony was firmly fixed on Manhattan Island,
which, when fairly started in 1614, was a little pali
sade fort and four small log houses. The Dutch
called their possessions the Niew Netherlands, named
the colony Nieu Amsterdam, and the land across the
East River was known as Nassau, the earliest name
of Long Island. Hudson was so impressed with the
Highlands and the Catskills, which he passed in ex
ploring the river, that he named it the " River of the
NEW AMSTERDAM AND ITS HAKBOK. 7
Mountains/ 7 but this was changed by the Dutch to
Mauritius, in honor of Prince Maurice of Nassau.
The Indians along the banks called the river Shate-
muc and Cahohatatea. The English, shortly after
the discovery, began calling it the Hudson River, but
later, it was generally styled the North River to dis
tinguish it from the Delaware or South River ; and
North River is the name now generally used in New
York. The Manhattan colony was of slow growth,
and the first Dutch Governor sent out was a West-
phalian, Peter Minuit, a thrifty old fellow, who, by
again making good use of " schnapps," bought the
whole of Manhattan Island in 1626 from the Indians
for beads and trinkets valued at sixty guilders, about
$25. There were a thousand people there in 1644,
making the original Dutch aristocracy of the " Knick
erbockers," this name being adapted later from Irv
ing, and they impressed their peculiarities upon the
early city ; but their descendants have largely given
place to a newer aristocracy of wealth and an army
of immigrants from all races. The last Dutch Gov
ernor, Peter Stuyvesant, arrived in 1647, and for
protection the colonists had then built a fence across
the island along what is now the line of Wall Street.
An Indian scare a few years later caused this to be
replaced with a wall of cedar palisades, and it ulti
mately developed into the city wall. Thus enclosed,
the Mayor of New Amsterdam was required to walk
around the walls every morning at sunrise, unlock
8 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
the gates and give the keys to the commander of the
fort down at the Battery. When the Duke of York's
English expedition came over in 1664 and over
turned the government of old Stuyvesant, surnamed
" Peter the Headstrong," and his Knickerbockers,
at the same time changing the city's name to New
York, it had three hundred and eighty-four houses,
and in 1700 the population had increased to about
six thousand. The first English Governor was Sir
Edmund Andros.
The remote sources of the Hudson River are in
Hamilton and Essex Counties, in the Adirondacks, in
northeastern New York State, the highest at four
thousand feet elevation above the sea, the head
streams being outlets for a large number of highland
lakes. The river flows over three hundred miles to
the sea, and has few tributaries, the largest being the
Hoosac and the Mohawk. Its lower course is a long
tidal estuary, the tidal head being at Troy, from
whence the fall in level to the ocean is only about
five feet. The estuary below Manhattan Island ex
pands into the noble New York harbor, enclosed be
tween Long Island on the east and Staten Island on
the west, the latter being the Indian Aquehonga,
meaning the " high sandy banks." The harbor en
trance from the sea, at Sandy Hook, is eighteen
miles below the city. Inside Sandy Hook is the
lower bay, of triangular form, extending nine to
twelve miles on each side, the Narrows, a deep chan-
ENTERING NEW YORK HARBOR. 9
nel about a mile wide at the northeastern angle,
opening into the upper bay, which is an irregular
oval, about eight by five miles. This extends north
ward into the Hudson River, westward into Newark
Bay, and has the tidal strait of East River leading
north to Long Island Sound, on the eastern side of
Manhattan. Within the bays and rivers around
New York there are over a hundred miles of avail
able anchorage ground, and the Government is now
making a channel to the sea through Sandy Hook
bar, forty feet deep at low water.
ENTERING NEW YORK HARBOR.
The approach from the sea to Sandy Hook is first
guided for the modern navigator by the flashing
white light on Fire Island, a low sand-strip on the
Long Island Coast ; and then there rise in front the
Highlands of the Navesink, on the Jersey Coast
south of Sandy Hook, with a pair of twin lighthouses
perched upon their green slopes. The Hook, a long
strip of yellow sand enclosing the harbor, also has
another lighthouse on its northern end. Here are
the expanding works of a formidable fort defending
the harbor entrance, and an artillery trial and prov
ing ground. Behind the Navesink Highlands and
the Hook, the Jersey shore of the lower bay stretches
far back westward into Raritan Bay, thrust up into
the land between New Jersey and Staten Island.
The green hills of this island, crowned with villas,
10 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
make the northwestern boundary of the bay. To the
right hand of the Hook, and north of the entrance, is
the sand strip of Coney Island, with its stretch of
hotels and buildings, the popular seashore resort of
New York. Within the Hook is the lower Quaran
tine on the west bank of Romer Shoal, and over
opposite is Gravesend Bay, behind Coney Island.
The Narrows, where the Hudson has forced an out
let through a broken-down mountain range, is partly
obstructed by an island reef of rocks. The hill-
slopes, together with the island, are fortified, Forts
Hamilton and Tompkins being on either hand, named
after Alexander Hamilton and Daniel D. Tompkins,
the latter having been a Governor of New York and
Vice-President of the United States. On the island
is the little red sandstone Fort Lafayette, where
many famous political prisoners were confined during
the Civil War. Within the Narrows the upper bay
spreads out, the high Staten Island hills, covered with
noble mansions, rising on the left hand, while on the
right are the hamlets on the lower shores of Long
Island, with the distant tombs of Greenwood Ceme
tery behind. The villages of Clifton and Stapleton
and the Quarantine Station are on Staten Island,
Stapleton being the yachting headquarters. Bedloe's
and Ellis's Islands are passed, the latter being the
landing-place of arriving emigrants, while on the
former, now called Liberty Island, is the colossal
Liberty Statue presented to the United States by
ENTERING NEW YORK HARBOR. 11
France in commemoration of the Centenary of the
Declaration of Independence in 1876. This statue,
designed by Bartholdi and erected ten years later, is
a female figure holding aloft a torch " Liberty en
lightening the world." It is made of copper and iron,
and weighs two hundred and twenty-five tons. The
statue is one hundred and fifty-one feet high, and
stands on a granite pedestal one hundred and fifty-
five feet high.
Over on the western side, behind these small
islands, the Jersey shore recedes, and the strait mak
ing the boundary of Staten Island, which the Dutch
named the Kill von Kull, stretches around behind
that island to Arthur Kill and sundry railway coal-
shipping ports on its banks, where the great coal
roads come out from the Pennsylvania mines. Just
in the entrance to East River is Governor's Island,
with an old-fashioned circular stone fort, called Castle
William, and the more modern defensive work, Fort
Columbus. On Governor's Island is the United
States Army headquarters. This old Castle William,
with another very similar circular fort, then called
Castle Clinton, on the Battery at the lower end of
Manhattan Island, were the defensive works of New
York in the eighteenth century. Castle Clinton is
now an aquarium. Red Hook, the jutting point of
Brooklyn, is opposite Governor's Island, and above
it the East River opens, the strait flowing between
New York and Brooklyn, and connecting the harbor
12 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
with Long Island Sound, twenty miles distant, be
yond the famous " Hell Gate," once the terror of the
mariner, but since improved by costly rock excava
tions which have made a deep and safe channel.
Through the East River and Hell Gate flows the
greater part of the Hudson River tidal current.
Both the East and North Rivers are lined on either
side for miles by piers crowded with shipping, and
the tall towers and ponderous cables of the Brooklyn
Bridge rise high above the East River, while behind
the foliage-covered Battery Park stretches the me
tropolis, with its many huge buildings.
JERSEY CITY AND STATEN ISLAND.
Communipaw, the lower end of Jersey City, is
opposite the Battery, and above it the Jersey City
front on the Hudson River is occupied for miles by
railway terminals, making a succession of piers, ferry-
houses and grain elevators. Originally Jersey City
was the sandy peninsula of Paulus Hook, a tongue
of flat farming land stretching down between the
Hudson River and Newark Bay. The termination
of this peninsula is Communipaw, long a sleepy vil
lage, originally granted to a Dutch West India Com
pany Director Michael Pauw. He was proud of
this domain, of which he was the patroon, so he called
it Pavonia or Communipauw, the " Commune of
Pauw." His Dutch garrison massacred the Indians
in the neighborhood, and soon afterwards, in retalia-
JEKSEY CITY AND STATEN ISLAND. 13
tion, they exterminated all the Dutch but one family.
At Jersey City there come out to the Hudson River
all the great Trunk Line railways from the West, with
the single exception of the New York Central Rail
road. In the Revolution, the site of the present
Pennsylvania Railroad Terminal Station was a Brit
ish fortification, which was partly stormed and cap
tured, with a number of prisoners, in 1779, by Major
Henry Lee. Jersey City is entirely a growth of the
nineteenth century, at the beginning of which it had
a population of only thirteen persons, living in a sin
gle house. It now has two hundred and fifty thou
sand, and is replete with important manufacturing
establishments, its expansion having come from the
overflow of New York and the wonderful develop
ment of its railway system. While spreading over
much surface, yet it presents little attraction beyond
the enormous railway terminals and factories. The
traveller rarely stops there, but rushes through to
get into or out of New York. To the northward is
Hoboken, with sixty thousand people, including many
Germans, and it has large silk factories. Here, in
strange contrast with the commercial aspect of every
thing around, the river front rises in a bluff shore,
crowned by a grove of trees and running up into a
low mound, whereon is the " Stevens Castle." This
was the home of Edwin A. Stevens one of the pro
jectors of the Camden and Amboy Railroad. He
endowed the Stevens Institute of Technology at Ho-
14 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
boken, and spent his declining years and much of his
railway fortune in building the " Stevens Battery/ 7 a
noted warship, for New York harbor defense, which
he bequeathed his native State of New Jersey, and
that Commonwealth shortly afterwards sold it to be
broken up for old iron. Beyond is the village of
Weehawken, with the Elysian Fields, where Aaron
Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in the duel of 1804,
then a pleasant rural resort, but now largely ab
sorbed by railway terminals. This duel arose from
political quarrels, and at the first fire Hamilton re
ceived a wound from which he died the next day.
Behind Jersey City rises the long rocky ridge of
Bergen Hill, through which all but one of the rail
ways cut their routes by tunnels or deep fissures, and
its outcroppings above Weehavvken come forward to
the Hudson River bank in the grand escarpment of
the Palisades. These remarkable columnar forma
tions of trap rock extend for twenty miles along the
western shore of the river, and in part appear to be
built up of basalt. To connect the various railways
terminating at Jersey City with New York, a tunnel
is being constructed under the Hudson River ; and
two others, and also a gigantic bridge, are projected.
I have already referred to Staten Island, which is
the western border of New York harbor, where its
pleasant hill-slopes add so much to the scenic beauty.
The narrow "Kills," stretching for nearly twenty
miles down to Perth Amboy, make its western boun-
JEKSEY CITY AND STATEN ISLAND. 15
dary, separating the island, which is the Borough of
Richmond in Greater New York, from New Jersey,
to which by right it is said to belong. It covers
about sixty square miles, with its diversified hill-
slopes rising in some places to an elevation of over
four hundred feet, and has probably seventy thousand
population. It is shaped something like a leaf, hung,
as it were, upon the long projecting peninsula between
Newark Bay and New York harbor, the Kill von
Kull stretching westward to divide it from this penin
sula, which at that part is the town and port of Bay-
onne, running off into Bergen Point at the lower end
of Bergen Hill. It was from Bergen Point that Gen
eral Washington in 1787 was rowed in a barge to
New York, to be inaugurated the first President of
the United States. From Elizabethport, on the
western side of Newark Bay, the Arthur Kill
stretches, a narrow strait, far southward, broadening
somewhat into Staten Island Sound, and debouching
at Perth Amboy into the western end of Raritan Bay.
Perth Amboy was the terminus of the original line of
the Camden and Amboy Railroad. It was the capital
of the Colonial Province of New Jersey two centuries
ago, and its eligible position at the confluence of
Staten Island Sound and the Raritan River and Bay,
the point of union of the various interior water ways,
made it at that early period very ambitious. In fact,
" Perthtown, or Ompoge on Ambo " (the Indian name
for the point, which meant "round and hollow"),
16 AMEKICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCKIPTIVE.
then rivalled New York in commercial importance.
Its name came from the Earl of Perth, one of the
grantees of lands in East Jersey. Early travellers
nocked thither, praising its merits; and even Wil
liam Penn was persuaded to go over and look at
it, oracularly declaring, "I have never seen such
before in my life," whatever that might have
meant. But New York, with its great harbor,
ultimately overshadowed Amboy, and it has since
dropped out, even as a way-station on the route
between the two leading cities. It has about fif
teen thousand inhabitants, and its trade chiefly con
sists in shipping coal and fire-clay, brought out by
the railroads.
The loyal Jerseyman will never forgive New York
for having captured Staten Island. After the Eng
lish came to New York in 1664, under the grant of
King Charles II. to the Duke of York of all the
country from Canada down to Virginia, the Duke
granted to Berkeley and Carteret the portion lying
between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers. This
grant grieved the New Yorkers, for they said it gave
away the best lands around their harbor, so they tried
to get it all back, and managed to capture Staten
Island. Some sharp fellow invented the fiction, on
which they resolutely insisted, that the Arthur Kill
was really the Hudson River ; and, taking possession,
they never gave it up. A legal contest was fought
for over one hundred and fifty years, and it was not
JEKSEY CITY AND STATEN ISLAND. 17
until 1833 that a treaty between the two States de
clared the Kills to be their boundary. Staten Island
is about sixteen miles long, and from its eastern slopes
has a noble outlook over the Lower New York Bay
towards the ocean. Fine beaches line these coasts,
which rise sharply into hills inland, and most of the
eligible sites are crowned with villas. It was at
Stapleton, on Staten Island, that Commodore Corne
lius Vanderbilt, the head of the great family, was
born in 1794, and he laid the foundation of his great
fortune, at the age of sixteen years, by sailing a
ferryboat to New York, six miles away. Upon a
plateau in the centre of the island is the village of
New Dorp, the original settlement of the Vander-
bilts, a farm of about four hundred acres. Here the
Commodore came in his youth, and here his son,
William H. Vanderbilt, was born and lived for many
years, an agricultural laborer for his father. Here
also is a little Moravian church they attended,
and upon a terraced hill behind it, the highest part
of the island, is the spacious gray granite mauso
leum, within which rest the two great millionaires,
father and son, with some of their children. In the
old churchyard are the graves of many other Van-
derbilts and their collaterals. At Port Richmond,
over on the Kill, the most considerable town on
the island, and formerly the county-seat, is the
house, now a hotel, in which Aaron Burr died in
1836.
VOL. II. 34
18 AMEKICA, PICTUKESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
SOME NEW JERSEY TOWNS.
Westward from Bergen Hill and the Palisades are
the meadows which stretch down to Newark Bay,
and meandering through them to form it are the
Hackensack and Passaic Rivers. The name of Hack-
ensack means, in the original Indian dialect, the
" lowlands," and it was given by them also to the
channel around Bergen Point, by which the waters
of Newark Bay reach New York harbor. This river
drains the western slopes of the Palisades. Passaic
means " the valley,' 7 and the name seems to have re
ferred to the country through which that stream flows.
The Passaic River, which is ninety miles long, comes
from the mountains of Northern New Jersey and flows
a tortuous course to Paterson, fifteen miles northwest
of Jersey City, where there is an admirable water
power which has created a manufacturing town of over
one hundred thousand people, having extensive silk
and cotton mills and locomotive factories. The river
describes a curve, forming the boundary of the city
for more than nine miles, on all sides excepting the
south, and its rapids and falls descend seventy-two feet,
the falls being a most picturesque cataract with fifty
feet perpendicular descent. The town was named
after Governor William Paterson of New Jersey, who
signed its incorporation act July 4, 1792, the manu
facturing corporation projecting it having been formed
under the auspices of Alexander Hamilton.
SOME NEW JEKSEY TOWNS. 19
The Passaic flows onward past Newark nine miles
west of Jersey City, another extensive and prosper
ous manufacturing city of two hundred and fifty
thousand inhabitants, turning out goods of all kinds
with an annual value of over $100,000,000. This
city spreads far across the flat surface above Newark
Bay and adjoining the Passaic, and to the northward
its suburbs run up into the attractive hills of Orange.
Market Street is a fine highway through the business
section, while a large area is covered by comfortable
and handsome residences, among which passes Broad
Street, its finest avenue, one hundred and thirty-two
feet wide, shaded by majestic trees, bordered with
many ornamental buildings, and skirting three attrac
tive parks embowered with elms. Newark is a great
iron and steel centre, makes fine jewelry, good car
riages and excellent leather, and also brews much
lager beer. Yet few would suppose it had a strictly
Puritan origin. In 1666, hearing the praises of East
Jersey, a body of discontented men of Connecticut,
headed by their pastor, Abraham Pierson, journeyed
to the Passaic meadows and bought these lands from
the Hackensack Indians " for one hundred and thirty
pounds, twelve blankets and twelve guns." In early
life the pastor had preached at Newark in England,
for which he had quite an affection, and he gave the
Jersey settlement its name. When Philadelphia was
founded, the fame of Newark spread down there as
a producer of excellent cider and seductive Jersey
20 AMERICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
apple jack. Its most famous son of modern timea
was General Phil Kearney.
Five miles beyond Newark the diminutive Eliza
beth Kiver flows down to the Kills, and here is the
city of Elizabeth, with fifty thousand people, noted
as one of the handsomest of the Jersey towns. Like
Newark and Paterson, it is really an outlying suburb
of New York, providing homes for much of the over
flow of population, who rush into the metropolis for
business every morning, and back again every even
ing. Under the name of Elizabethport it spreads
down to the Arthur Kill, and over there are most of
its factories and extensive coal-shipping piers. The
original settlement dates from 1665, when it was
named in honor of Lady Elizabeth, wife of Sir
George Carteret, one of the grantees of East Jersey.
The early inhabitants were largely Puritans, and its
chief establishment is the extensive works of the
Singer Sewing Machine Company. Here was founded
the College of New Jersey, afterwards removed to
Princeton, and a tablet marking the original site was
unveiled in 1897. A few miles beyond, another lit
tle river flows down to the Kills, first named after old
Rahwack, the Indian sachem whose tribe owned the
land thereabouts, and here is another thriving town,
Rahway, which is noted for its carriages. At Menlo
Park, nearby, the electrical inventor, Thomas A. Edi
son, sustained by New York capital, toiled for years
in seclusion to perfect his discoveries, and developed
SOME NEW JERSEY TOWNS. 21
the germ that has grown to such vast proportions.
The " Wizard of Menlo Park " afterwards located his
chief laboratory and his home at Newark. Then,
crossing what are known as the " Short Hills n west
ward, past many villages, among them Metuchen,
once the domain of Metuching, the Indian " King of
the Rolling Land," we come to the Raritan River,
thirty-one miles from Jersey City.
Here debouches the Delaware and Raritan Canal
at New Brunswick, a city of twenty-five thousand
people. The Raritan flows through the red shales
and sandstones of Central New Jersey, generally a
chocolate-colored stream, and goes off to form Rari
tan Bay, fifteen miles below. Factories cluster on
the New Brunswick lowlands along the river and
canal, but there is a handsome town built upon the
higher grounds, encircling the lower and older por
tions like a crescent. The Dutch came here from
the Hudson River early in the eighteenth century
and found a village which had been started by some
fishermen from Long Island. They organized the
town, naming it in honor of the Ducal House of
Brunswick. Its most prominent feature is Rutgers
College, housed in red sandstone buildings upon at
tractive grounds, alongside the railway, a venerated
foundation of the Dutch Reformed Church, originally
chartered by King George III. as "Queen's Col
lege/ 7 but afterwards receiving the name of Rutgers
from a benefactor in 1826. It has an important ad-
22 AMEKICA, PICTUKESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
junct in the New Jersey Agricultural College. There
is also the Dutch Reformed Theological Seminary,
the first established in America, and dating from
1771, its main building, also named from its chief
benefactor, being Hertzog Hall. An early traveller,
visiting New Brunswick in 1748, described it as
u a pretty little town with four churches 5" and these
quaint buildings are still there, the ancient Christ
Church being surrounded with the graves of the first
settlers. Eighteen miles to the southeast the Revo
lutionary battle of Monmouth was fought in June,
1778, and a monument commemorates it at Freehold
(Monmouth Court-house). Sir Henry Clinton, having
evacuated Philadelphia, was marching towards New
Brunswick, intending to embark on the Raritan for
New York. Washington, coming from Valley Forge
in pursuit, gave him battle. The day was very hot,
and the result was an uncertainty, General Charles
Lee's misconduct, for which Washington reprimanded
him on the field, preventing a victory, and at night
the British withdrew quietly. Lee was afterwards
court-martialed and suspended from command for a
year. Monmouth was the scene of " Molly Pitcher's"
famous exploit. She was Mary Hays of Carlisle,
Pennsylvania, wife of John Hays, a soldier in the
First Pennsylvania Artillery. Molly was with the
army, and engaged in bringing water to the battery,
which was behind a hedgerow, her husband manag
ing one of the cannon. The British made a charge,
GKEATEK NEW YOKK. 23
and a shot killing him, the officers, having no one to
manage the gun, ordered it withdrawn. Molly saw
her husband fall and heard the order ; dropping her
bucket, she seized the rammer and served the gun
with skill and dexterity. Next morning General
Greene presented her to General Washington, who
conferred upon her the office of Sergeant. She
afterwards lived at Carlisle Barracks, and died there
in 1823.
GREATER NEW YORK.
The Dutch city of New Amsterdam, which became
New York by the English conquest in 1664, was of
slow growth. It had hardly more than twenty thou
sand inhabitants at the time of the Revolution, being
less than either Boston or Philadelphia, and a map
made in 1767 shows that the town scarcely extended
beyond Wall Street. At the beginning of the nine
teenth century there were sixty thousand people, and
its rapid growth began through large immigration
after the War of 1812, and was stimulated by the
completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, which gave it
greatly increased foreign trade. By the new Charter
of " Greater New York " coming into operation in
1897, the city was made, next to London, the largest
in the world, being expanded beyond Manhattan
Island, so as to include all the outlying cities. It
now consists of five boroughs, Manhattan, the Bronx,
Brooklyn, Queens and Richmond, having an area of
three hundred and twenty square miles, and a popu-
24 AMEKICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
lation exceeding three and one -half millions. If Jer
sey City and the other New Jersey settlements on
the west side of the Hudson were added, the popula
tion would be four millions. This great city is about
thirty-five miles long from north to south, and nine
teen miles wide. The long and narrow island of
Manhattan stretches thirteen miles, while it is not
much over two miles broad in the widest part, and
sometimes narrows to a few hundred yards, particu
larly in the northern portion. The Harlem River
and the winding strait of Spuyten Duyvel separate
northern Manhattan from the mainland. The island
is very rocky, excepting the southern part, which is
alluvial, and at the upper end the cliffs rise precipi
tously from the Hudson over two hundred and thirty
feet into Washington Heights, and the surface de
scends sharply on the eastern side to the Harlem
flats. It does not take the visitor long to recognize,
however, that the capacious harbor, the converging
rivers and numerous adjacent arms of the sea com
bine all the requisites of a great port, and they could
not have been better planned if human hands had
fashioned them. There is a vast wharf-frontage, for
over fifty miles of shore-line are available for ship
ping, thus accommodating an almost limitless com
merce. This has made the metropolis and continues
its wonderful growth.
At the lower end of Manhattan is the Battery
Park, of about twenty acres, with the elevated rail-
GEEATEE NEW YOEK. 25
ways coming over it from both sides of the city, and
joining at the lower point of the island in a terminal
station at the South Ferry. Here were located the
old forts for the city defense, but the park superseded
them after the War of 1812, and in the earlier years
of the nineteenth century this was the fashionable re
sort for an airing. The old circular fort, Castle Gar
den, now the Aquarium, was formerly a popular place
of amusement, and here, under the auspices of the
great manager, Barnum, Jenny Lind made her first
appearance in America in 1850. The Park contains
a statue of John Ericsson. The lower point of the
island is Whitehall Slip, and here is the Government
Barge Office, an appanage of the Custom House.
To the northward of the Battery is the Bowling
Green, the space between them having been the site
of the original Dutch palisade fort which guarded
New Amsterdam. A row of fine residences was
built here, which afterwards became the favorite
locality for steamship offices, and the new Custom
House is now being constructed on their site. This
Bowling Green, a triangular space of about a half-
acre, was in the early days surrounded by the homes
of the proudest Knickerbockers. For seven years
during the Revolution, and until the evacuation, No
vember 25, 1783, this was the British headquarters.
Here lived Cornwallis, Howe and Clinton, Benedict
Arnold occupied No. 5 Broadway, and Washington's
headquarters was in No. 1, on the west side, now oc-
26 AMEEICA, PICTUKESQUE AND DESCKIPTIVE.
cupied by the towering Washington Building, rising
nearly three hundred feet to the top of the cupola.
To the eastward is the spacious Produce Exchange,
in Italian Renaissance, with its huge square tower,
part of the ground on which it stands having been
the site of the house where Robert Fulton lived and
died. Talleyrand also once lived on Bowling Green.
In the centre is the statue of Abraham de Peyster, an
original Knickerbocker, erected in 1895. There was
a leaden statue of King George III. here at the open
ing of the Revolution, but it was pulled down when
the Declaration of Independence was promulgated in
1776, carried to Litchfield, Connecticut, and melted
into bullets for the Continental soldiers, so that it was
facetiously said at the time that "King George's
troops will probably have his melted Majesty fired at
them."
BROADWAY.
The two smaller streets on either side of the Bowl
ing Green, Whitehall and State Street, unite to the
northward and form Broadway. This is the chief
highway of New York, and one of the most famous
in the world, extending in various forms all the way
to Yonkers, a distance of nineteen miles. The long
and narrow formation of Manhattan Island puts Broad
way longitudinally in the centre of the city, and neces
sarily throws into it an enormous traffic. One can
hardly make any extended movements in New York
without getting into Broadway. Hence the noted
BROADWAY. 27
street has its show, always on exhibition, of the rest
less rush of life in the modern Babylon. The archi
tecture of its great buildings, which tower far sky
ward, excites admiration, and its perpetual din of
traffic, with the moving crowds and jam of vehicles,
is the type of New York activity. This wonderful
street is eighty feet wide between the buildings, and
extends of that width from the Bowling Green five
miles to Central Park at Fifty -ninth Street ; and
from its upper end, beyond this, the " Grand Boule
vard," one hundred and fifty feet wide, with pretty
little parks in the centre, is prolonged northward.
In its course, which inclines somewhat to the west
ward, Broadway diagonally crosses Fifth, Sixth and
Seventh Avenues, and at the Central Park boundary
intersects Eighth Avenue. Here is the " Merchant's
Gate," entering the Park from Broadway, the oppo
site entrance from Fifth Avenue being known as
the " Scholar's Gate." The intermediate entrances
at Sixth and Seventh Avenues are the "Artist's
Gate " and the " Artisan's Gate."
A survey of Broadway gives the best idea of the
characteristics of New York. Its lower course is a
succession of wealthy financial and business estab
lishments and huge office buildings, and the adjacent
streets on either side are similarly occupied. Banks,
trusts, insurance offices, and manufacturers' and
merchants' counting-rooms, railroad and steamship
offices are everywhere. But in the midst of all this
28 AMEKICA, PICTUKESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
display of worldly wealth and grandeur is the quiet
graveyard at the head of Wall Street, wherein stands
the famous Trinity Church. Its chimes, morning
and evening, summon the restless brokers and busi
ness men to attend divine service, though few may
take heed. It is a wealthy parish, with over $500,-
000 annual revenue, maintaining a magnificent choir
and various charities, and owns valuable buildings all
about. The old graveyard stretches along Broad
way, and in Church Street, behind, the elevated rail
way trains rush by every few minutes. It is part
of the valuable domain of Trinity Church that " the
heirs of Anneke Jans n have long been trying to re
cover. Anneke Jans Bogardus was an interesting
Dutch lady who died in Albany in 1663, having out
lived two husbands. The first husband owned the
whole of the Hudson River front of New York be
tween Chambers and Canal Streets, with a wide strip
running back to Broadway. Her heirs sold this to
the British Colonial Government, and it was known
as the " King's Farm," being afterwards given as an
endowment to Trinity Church. This is what the
present generation of heirs want to recover, but thus
far have gained more notoriety than cash by the
effort.
In 1696 the first Trinity Church was built, being
afterwards burnt, while a second church was built
and taken down, to be replaced by the present fine
Gothic brownstone edifice, whose magnificent spire
BROADWAY. 29
rises two hundred and eighty-four feet. This church
was dedicated in 1846, and its chancel contains a
splendid reredos of marble, glass and precious stones,
the memorial of William B. Astor, while the bronze
doors are a memorial of his father, John Jacob Astor.
The churchyard is chiefly a mass of worn and
battered gravestones, resting in the busiest part of
New York, the oldest stone being dated 1681, for it
has been a burial-place more than two centuries.
Near its northern border is the Gothic "Martyrs'
Monument," erected over the bones of the patriots
who died in the British prison-ships, moored over on
the Brooklyn shore during the Revolution. There
are hints, however, that it was not so much the rev
erent memory of these heroes that prompted the
erection of the monument as the desire of the vestry
to stop the proposed opening of a street through the
yard. There is also a remembrance that, while these
patriots were in prison dying, among their relentless
foes was the Trinity rector, Dr. Inglis. When Gen
eral Washington came into New York in 1776 he
desired to worship at the church, and sent an officer
to Dr. Inglis, on Sunday morning, to request that he
omit reading the usual prayers for the king and the
royal family. The rector refused, and afterwards
said : " It is in your power to shut up the churches,
but you cannot make the clergy depart from their
duty." Among the noted graves is that of Charlotte
Temple, under a flat stone, having a cavity out of
30 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
which the inscription plate has been twice stolen.
Her romantic career and miserable end, resulting in
a duel, have been made the basis of a novel. Wil
liam Bradford's grave is here, one of Penn's com
panions in founding Philadelphia; but he removed
to New York, published the first newspaper there,
and for fifty years was the official printer. A brown-
stone mausoleum covers the remains of Captain
James Lawrence of the frigate " Chesapeake,"
killed in action in 1813, when his ship was taken
by the British ship " Shannon," his dying words
being, " Don't give up the ship." Here also are
buried Alexander Hamilton, Robert Fulton, Albert
Gallatin and other famous men, almost the latest
grave being that of General Philip Kearney, killed
in the Civil War.
SOME FAMOUS BUILDINGS.
The great number of immensely tall office-build
ings on lower Broadway, literally " sky-scrapers," so
encompass the street as to give it the appearance of
a deep canyon as one gazes along it between them.
The Bowling Green Building out-tops the Washing
ton Building, and there are the Welles, Standard Oil
and Aldrich Court Buildings, the latter marked by a
tablet of the Holland Society, being erected on the
site of " the first habitation of white men on Man
hattan Island." Opposite it is one of the most curi
ous appearing of these tall structures, the Tower
SOME FAMOUS BUILDINGS. 31
Building, nearly two hundred feet high and only
twenty-five feet wide. Just above, the tall light
sandstone building of the Manhattan Life Company
is surmounted by a cupola three hundred and fifty
feet high. The Empire Building rises twenty stories,
and the American Surety Building at the corner of
Pine Street, nearly opposite Trinity churchyard,
twenty-three stories, three hundred and six feet,
being surmounted by the various weather-gauging
instruments of " Old Probabilities." Here are also
the magnificent buildings of the Union Trust and the
Equitable Life Companies.
Opposite Trinity Church, Wall Street leads off
from Broadway, with winding course and varying
width, down to the East River, following the line of
the ancient Dutch palisade wall which it has replaced.
Here is the financial centre and the domain of the
bankers. One block down, Broad Street enters
from the south, and the narrower Nassau Street goes
out to the north. At this corner, on the one hand, is
the white marble Drexel Building, Mr. J. Pierpont
Morgan's office, and on the other the United States
Treasury and Assay Office. The huge Manhattan
Trust Building also is there, rising three hundred
and thirty feet, and opposite is the Stock Exchange,
while across Broad Street from the latter is the Mills
Building, the home of many bankers and brokers.
In Nassau Street is the magnificent building of the
Mutual Life Insurance Company. These financial
32 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
structures at Broad and Wall Streets are regarded as
the most valuable real estate in the world. The
Treasury and Assay Office contain most of the gold
owned by the Government, and in the latter the
kegs of gold are made up that are shipped to Europe.
It holds millions of gold bars that make annual ex
cursions in fast steamers across the ocean and back
again, to adjust our varying foreign exchange bal
ances. The Treasury is a white marble building
fronted by an imposing colonnade and a broad flight
of steps, and here is a bronze statue of Washington
on the spot where he was inaugurated the first Presi
dent of the United States in 1789, the location being
then occupied by the old Federal Hall, where the first
Congress met. Farther down Wall Street, the next
corner is William Street, where there is a massive
dark granite building with an elaborate Ionic colon
nade. The interior contains a large rotunda sur
mounted by a dome supported by eight immense col
umns of Italian marble. This building was origin
ally constructed for the Merchants' Exchange, and
it afterwards became the Custom House. It is here
after to be the office of the National City Bank, the
largest financial institution of New York. Wall
Street goes on to the river, where there is a ferry to
Brooklyn. Down William Street is the broad, low,
granite building, with a columned portico, of the
Farmers 7 Loan and Trust Company, another financial
institution of renown.
THE CITY HALL PAKE. 33
It is evident, as Broadway is traversed northward
between the huge office-letting structures, reared
skyward, and among them the little, narrow, crooked
streets, pouring their traffic into the main stream,
carrying a vast, surging mass of humanity, that the
crowded-in New Yorker, deprived of lateral expan
sion, thus seeks needed relief by mounting upward.
Fulton Street here stretches across the island from
river to river, the turmoil from its conflicting streams
of traffic showing the full tide of restless develop
ment in lower Broadway. Above is the white marble
Park Bank and the enormous St. Paul Building,
rising three hundred and eight feet, twenty-six
stories high. Opposite is the sombre church of St.
Paul, with a tall spire, the oldest church-building in
New York, built in 1756, containing the memorial
of General Montgomery, who fell at the storming of
Quebec in 1775, and in the graveyard a monument
to Emmet, the Irish patriot. Just beyond is the tri
angular City Hall Park, with Park Row diagonally
entering Broadway. Here can be got an idea of the
rush and restlessness of New York, for two enormous
streams of traffic pour together into lower Broadway,
at probably the worst street-crossing in the world.
THE CITY HALL PARK.
The New York City Hall Park was the ancient
" Commons," or public pasturage, and it now con
tains the headquarters of the city government, and
VOL. II. 35
34 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
may be regarded as the political and business centre.
It is enclosed by Broadway, Park Row and Chatham
Street, a triangular space, formerly a sort of garden
around the City Hall, but now well occupied by other
buildings. At the southern extremity is the Post-
office, which cost $7,000,000, a grand granite struc
ture in Doric and Renaissance, with a fine dome and
tower, which are a landmark for miles. Around
this Park, and in the many streets radiating from it,
are a vast aggregation of corporate institutions and
great buildings devoted to all kinds of business.
Here are the offices of newspapers, banks, trusts, in
surance companies, railways, lawyers, politicians, ex
changes, etc., with lunch-rooms and restaurants of
every grade, liberally provided to feed or stimulate
the multitude. The famous hotel of a past genera
tion, the Astor House, rich in historical associations,
stands on the opposite side of Broadway from the
Post-office. Along Park Row are the great news
papers, and here is Printing House Square, adorned
with statues of Benjamin Franklin and Horace
Greeley, appropriate in this region deluged with
printer's ink. Here is the Ivins Syndicate Building,
finished in 1898, the loftiest structure in New York,
twenty-nine stories, its towers rising three hundred
and eighty-two feet. The tall and narrow Tribune
Building, of red brick with white facings, has its
clock tower reared two hundred and eighty-five feet,
while beyond is the Pulitzer Building, of brownstone,
THE CITY HALL PARK. 35
with a gilded dome, its apex rising three hundred and
seventy-five feet. The building of the American
Tract Society on Nassau Street is twenty-three
stories and three hundred and six feet high, with a
restaurant on the top. Park Row runs into Chatham
Square, over which the Brooklyn Bridge terminal
comes out, with elevated and surface railroads all
about. This is a location of cheap shops and concert
halls, and is prolonged into the Bowery, an avenue
of the humbler classes, lined with shops, theatres and
saloons, generally crowded, and having four sets of
street cars running on the surface, besides the ele
vated roads above. The ancient Dutch farms on
this part of the island were known as the " Bauer-
eies," whence came the name of the street.
Chambers Street bounds the City Hall Park on
the north, and upon it faces the Court-house, a mas
sive Corinthian building of white marble, finished in
1867, famous as the structure which the "Tweed
Ring " of that time used to extract about $15,000,000
from the city treasury on fraudulent bills, or more
than five times the actual cost of the work. It stands
on part of the site of an old fort, which in the Revo
lution was the British outpost commanding the ap
proach to the city by the Northern or Bloomingdale
Road, now Broadway. The City Hall, to the south
ward, is a less pretentious and much older building,
constructed in the Italian style, of white marble with
freestone at the back to the northward, it being sup-
36 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
posed at the time of its completion, 1812, that " no
one of importance would ever live to the north of the
building/ 7 then a broad expanse of farms. Here is
the office of the Mayor and the meeting-place of the
Board of Aldermen, and its chief apartment is the
"Governor's Room/' adorned with portraits of va
rious Governors of New York and Revolutionary
patriots, and having among its treasures Washing
ton's desk and chair which he used when first Presi
dent of the United States, and also the chairs of the
First Congress. To the southwest of the City Hall
a fine statue of Nathan Hale, an early victim of the
Revolution, executed by the British in New York in
1776, faces Broadway.
Near Chambers Street and the northern end of the
Park a noted building stands on the opposite side of
Broadway, a modest brownstone structure without
any pretension nor of much height, but containing a
famous bank, whose phenomenal success is every
where known. This is the Chemical Bank, origin
ally started as a chemical manufacturing company
with banking privileges. The chemistry seems to
have been a failure and soon abandoned, but the
banking talents were so well developed that the
shares of $100 par value have sold for over forty
times that sum. The capital is only $300,000, but
it has amassed a surplus over twenty times the
amount, and is the strongest bank in New York.
Among the large shareholders are said to be three
THE CITY HALL PAEK. 37
New York ladies who married foreign titles the
Dowager Duchess of Marlborough (who was Miss
Pine, afterwards Mrs. Hamersley, and now Lady
Beresford), the Duchess de Dino (Miss Sampson), and
the Comtesse de Trobriand (Miss Jones). It is here
that the noted Mrs. Hetty Green generally conducts
her financing, a lady of immense fortune and peculiar
ideas, who has been one of the greatest money accu
mulators of New York. Across Chambers Street, and
occupying an entire block, is the building that origin
ally was " Stewart's Store," where the late Alexander
T. Stewart made most of his success in the dry-goods
trade, now converted into a vast office building for
all kinds of business. This was the outpost of the
" Dry Goods District," for Broadway northward for
several blocks, including a wide belt of adjacent
streets, now deals with all kinds of products of the
mill and loom, clothing and similar articles. Here
are located the agents and factors for many mills at
home and abroad, and their traffic sometimes exceeds
a thousand millions of dollars a year. The pulse of
the American dry-goods trade throbs in this locality,
weakening or strengthening as poor or good crops
give the farmers and working-people a surplus to
spend upon dress. Mr. Stewart once said that if
every woman decided to pass a single season without
a new bonnet it would sufficiently diminish trade to
bankrupt this whole district. Canal Street crosses
New York through the northern portion of the dis-
38 AMERICA, PICTUKESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
trict, a broad highway, formerly a water course
draining an extensive swamp across Broadway to
the Hudson River. In this locality, east of Broad
way, are two famous regions the "Five Points,"
now, however, much improved, and " Chinatown."
The latter, in Mott Street, has its Joss House, res
taurant, theatre and opium joints, and is picturesque
with swinging lights and banners. In Leonard Street,
standing where once was part of the swamp, is the
noted Tombs City Prison, thus named because origin
ally it was a sombre gray building in the gloomy
Egyptian style, but this was recently replaced by a
modern structure. The Criminal Courts adjoining
are connected with it by a bridge.
PETER COOPER AND PETER STUYVESANT.
At Bond Street, in advancing up Broadway, are
encountered the booksellers, this with adjacent streets
being the home of much of that trade. In Lafayette
Place is the spacious Astor Library, and in the wide
Astor Place is the handsome new building of the
Mercantile Library. The former is now a part of the
New York Public Library. A half-century ago the
site of the Mercantile Library was occupied by the
" Astor Place Opera House," then a leading theatre,
and in the adjacent streets occurred the " Macready
riots " in 1849. The rivalries of Edwin Forrest and
Macready resulted in an effort by the partisans of the
former to prevent the latter from playing in the Opera
PETEK COOPEE AND PETER STUYVESANT. 39
House on the night of May 10th. The Forrest faction
attacked the building with stones, and the police
being unable to control them, troops were called out,
and, firing several volleys along Astor Place, they
suppressed the riot and dispersed the mob, but at a
cost of about sixty killed and wounded. At the end
of Astor Place and its junction with Third Avenue is
the Cooper Institute, occupying an entire block, a
large brownstone building with a fine front, founded
and endowed in 1857, at a total cost of about $1,000,-
000, by Peter Cooper, for the free education of men
and women in science and art. His statue stands in
front. It also received in 1900 additional gifts from
his executors and $300,000 from Andrew Carnegie.
Peter Cooper was a wealthy manufacturer and mer
chant of the broadest philanthropy. At a recent an
niversary of the Institute his son-in-law, Abram S.
Hewitt, speaking of him, said: "Fifty years ago
three men, all of whom started in life as poor boys,
got together and talked over various ways by which
they could be of benefit to the public. They were
Peter Cooper, Ezra Cornell and Matthew Vassar.
The latter said he would found a school for girls, and
he founded Vassar College. Mr. Cornell said he
would found a school for boys, and he founded Cor
nell University. Peter Cooper said he would found
a school for both girls and boys, and he founded
Cooper Union. But Mr. Cooper's school differs from
the others, in that here, any boy or girl may receive
40 AMEKICA, PICTUBESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
an education absolutely free of charge." Opposite
the Cooper Institute is an immense red building, the
"Bible House," the home of the American Bible
Society, where the Scriptures are printed by the mil
lions, in all languages, for distribution throughout the
world over eighty different languages and dialects
being used.
Diagonally northeast from Astor Place runs Stuy-
vesant Street, formerly the country lane leading out
to the ancient farmhouse of old Governor Stuyvesant,
surnamed " Peter the Headstrong." Here was built
" St. Mark's Church in the Bowerie " in the last cen
tury, then a mile out of town, and the quaint little
Stuyvesant House still stood, at that time, perched
on a high bank near the church, having, with its
odd-looking overhanging upper story, been built of
small yellow bricks brought out from Holland. In
the days of New Amsterdam this region was Gov
ernor Stuyvesant's "Bauerie," and to it he retired
when compelled to surrender to the English in
1664. He lived in this secluded spot for eighteen
years, dying in 1682, and his brown gravestone
occupies a place in the wall of the church. He was
the last of the Dutch Governors, energetic, aristo
cratic and overbearing, and described by Irving as
a man " of such immense activity and decision of
mind that he never sought nor accepted the advice
of others;" Irving further saying that he was a
" tough, sturdy, valiant, weather-beaten, mettlesome,
PETEE COOPER AND PETEE STUYVESANT. 41
obstinate leather-sided, lion-hearted, generous, spirited
old Governor."
Returning to Broadway, for a mile or more it, with
the adjacent streets, is the great retail shopping dis
trict. Here on the pleasant afternoons are throngs of
shoppers. A short distance above, Broadway bends
to the left, displaying Grace Church, with its rich
marble fagade, beautiful spire, and adjoining rectory,
chantry and church house, an unique ecclesiastical
group, dating from 1846, when it was far " up town,"
but now almost covered-in by the huge surrounding
stores. Fourteenth Street crosses beyond, and here
is Union Square, a pretty oval park of about four
acres, adorned by an ornamental fountain and statues
of Washington, Lafayette and Lincoln. Large build
ings and stores surround the square, the chief being
Tiffany's noted jewelry establishment. Fourteenth
Street is a wide avenue, with an extensive shipping
trade. To the eastward of Broadway is the Academy
of Music and the noted Tammany Hall. This is the seat
of the " Tammany Society," established in 1789 for
benevolent purposes, but now controlled by the Demo
cratic political organization ruling New York. The
Hall is a capacious brick structure with stone facings,
surmounted by a statue of its presiding genius, the old
chief and warrior of the Lenni Lenapes, St. Tam
many, who with outstretched hand beneficently looks
down upon the street. The sturdy Indian, however,
was probably more used to the mild and just methods
42 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
of William Penn and his Quakers on the Delaware
than to the political schemes on the Hudson, of which
fate seems to have made him a patron saint.
MADISON SQUARE.
Broadway reaches Madison Square at Twenty-
third Street, another wide highway crossing the city,
and also intersects Fifth Avenue, which is the west
ern side of the Square. This junction has a park of
about six acres, surrounded by large hotels and noted
buildings, and alongside the triangular intersection
of Broadway and Fifth Avenue is a handsome gran
ite monument to General Worth, a hero of the War
with Mexico. The plateau on which it stands is usu
ally availed of as the site for the official reviewing
stage for processions. This Square is the great centre
of elaborate civic and military displays, and has, with
its surroundings and the light stone of the adjacent
buildings, an air that is decidedly Parisian, it occupy
ing much the same position for New York as the
Place de la Concorde in Paris, or Trafalgar Square
in London. In Madison Square are statues of Ad
miral Farragut (the finest statue in New York), Wil
liam H. Seward, President Arthur and Roscoe Conk-
ling. At the northwest corner of the Square was for
many years Delmonico's famous restaurant, since
moved farther up town. Its owner, after feeding
wealthy New Yorkers on the choicest viands for sev
eral decades, finally lost his mind, and in a fit of aber-
MADISON SQUAKE. 43
ration wandered over into the wilderness in New Jer
sey, and becoming lost in the woods, actually died of
starvation. The new Appellate Court of New York
is on the eastern side of the Square ; at the northeast
corner is the Madison Square Garden, and at the
southeast corner the Madison Square Presbyterian
Church, where the great clerical censor of New York,
Rev. Dr. Parkhurst, occupies the pulpit. Madison
Square may be regarded as the social centre of mod
ern New York. Far to the northward Fifth Avenue
stretches, with its rows of palatial brownstone resi
dences, and towards the north-northwest Broadway
extends for two miles to Central Park, passing many
hotels, theatres, and the tall " French flats " that have
been devised for residences in the crowded city
where the land surface is so scarce. It also passes,
at the intersection of Sixth Avenue, the Greeley
and Herald Squares, with statues of Horace Greeley
and William E. Dodge, and the New York Herald
Building. A short distance beyond is the Metro
politan Opera House, the finest theatre in the city,
rebuilt after a fire in 1893. Broadway at Fifty-
ninth Street reaches the southwest corner of Cen
tral Park and intersects Eighth Avenue, and here
is the Columbus Monument, a tall shaft surmounted
by a marble statue, erected in 1892. Broadway
then becomes the magnificent " Grand Broadway
Boulevard," with rows of trees, prolonged far north
ward.
44 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
FIFTH AVENUE.
Fifth Avenue, one hundred feet wide, is probably
the New York street that is most talked about, for
they say the main object of working so hard to get
rich in the metropolis is to be able to live in a fine
mansion on Fifth Avenue. This great highway ex
tends northward almost in the centre of Manhattan
Island, but it has an humble beginning, starting from
the original " Potter's Field," where for many years
the outcast and the unknown were buried and over
a hundred thousand corpses are believed to have
been interred. When the city spread beyond this
cemetery it was decided to make the place a park,
and thus was formed Washington Square on Fourth
Street, a short distance west of Broadway, an en
closure of about nine acres. From this Square Fifth
Avenue is laid in a straight line six miles northward,
to the Harlem River. The fine Washington Centen
nial Memorial Arch spans the avenue at the southern
end, near the Square, marking the Centenary of
Washington's inauguration as President. In fhe
lower portions the famous avenue has been largely
invaded by business establishments, but above, it is
the finest residential street in the world, there being
four or five miles of architectural magnificence, in
which for two miles it borders Central Park. The
street displays the best dwelling and church archi
tecture, the progress northward into the newer por-
FIFTH AVENUE. 45
tion showing how the styles have changed. All rail
ways have been carefully excluded from this street.
At the southern end the older houses are generally
of brick, gradually developing into the use of brown-
stone facings, and then into almost uniform rows of
elaborate brownstone buildings, with imposing por
ticos reached by high and broad flights of steps.
The rich yet gloomy brown is somewhat monotonous,
but as Central Park is approached this is broken, as
all styles of designs and materials are used. Fifth
Avenue has the great " Methodist Book Concern " at
Twentieth Street, and in this neighborhood are also
several of the leading book houses. The wealthy and
exclusive Union Club is at Twenty-first Street, with
the Lotus Club in a more modest house adjacent.
Northward from Madison Square the great street
stretches up the aristocratic grade of Murray Hill,
with its rows of stately buildings. Parallel and a
short distance eastward is Madison Avenue, also a
street of fashionable residence, and second only to
Fifth Avenue in grandeur. At Twenty-ninth Street
is the plain and substantial granite Dutch Reformed
Church, and to the eastward is an odd-looking little
church that has attained a wide reputation. It is a
picturesque aggregation of low brick buildings, set
back in a small enclosure between Fifth and Madison
Avenues, and looking like a quaint mediaeval struc
ture. Some years ago a pompous rector, when asked
to read the last prayers over the dead body of an
46 AMEEICA, PICTUKESQUE AND DESCKIPTIVE.
actor, sent the sorrowing friends to this church, say
ing he could not thus pray for the ungodly, but they
might be willing to do it at the little church around
the corner. The public quickly caught on, through
newspaper aid, and the result was that this attractive
Church of the Transfiguration performed the last
rites in presence of an overflowing congregation, and
its .official title has since been overshadowed by the
popular one of "the Little Church Around the Corner."
It is much attended by the theatrical fraternity, and
contains a handsome memorial window to Edwin
Booth.
Mounting the gentle grade of Murray Hill, we
come to Thirty-fourth Street, the locality typifying
the two greatest fortunes amassed in America before
the advent of the Vanderbilts. The whole block be
tween Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth Streets is occu
pied by the towering Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, built of
brick and sandstone in German Renaissance, and
occupying the land originally the home of the As-
tors, while across Thirty-fourth Street is the white
marble Stewart palace. The ancestor of the Astor
family, John Jacob Astor, accumulated the largest
fortune known in this country before the Civil War,
his estates representing the early growth of New
York, and the wealth coming from the advancing
value of land as the city expanded. He was a poor
German peasant-boy who came from the village of
Waldorf, near Heidelberg, to London, and worked
FIFTH AVENUE. 47
there prior to 1783, making musical instruments for
his brother. In that year, at the age of about twenty,
he sailed for America with $500 worth of instru
ments, meeting a furrier on the ship, who suggested
that he trade the instruments for American furs.
This he did in New York, and returning to London,
sold the furs at a large profit. Coming back to New
York, he established a fur-trade with England, and
built ships for his business. He prospered, and at
the beginning of the nineteenth century was worth
$250,000. Then he began buying land and houses
in New York, built many buildings, and was so
shrewd in real-estate investments that they often in
creased a hundredfold. He was liberal and charita
ble, and dying in 1848, his estate, then the largest in
the country, was estimated at $25,000,000. His
chief public benefaction was the Astor Library, which
his son, William B. Astor, also aided, so that besides
the buildings it has an endowment of about $1,800,-
000. The great Astor estates, now represented by
the fourth generation, are estimated at over $200,-
000,000.
The splendid palace at the northwest corner of
Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street was built by
Alexander T. Stewart when at the height of his fame
as the leading New York merchant. Intended to
eclipse anything then known in New York, he ex
pended $3,000,000 upon the building and its decora
tion, so that this house outshone all other New York
48 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
residences until the Vanderbilt palaces were erected
farther out Fifth Avenue. Its latest occupant has
been the Manhattan Club. Stewart's fortune was
accumulated through the facilities at New York for
successful trading, though much of his wealth was
afterwards invested in large buildings in profitable
business localities, and notably in great hotels.
Stewart, like Astor, began his career with almost
nothing, but at a later period. He was born at Bel
fast, Ireland, in 1802, studied at Trinity College,
Dublin, but before taking his degree migrated to
New York as a teacher in 1818. He got into the
dry-goods trade in a small way near the City Hall
Park, and his business grew until he acquired all the
adjacent buildings, and put up the store at Chambers
Street, and afterwards the retail store farther up
Broadway. Enlarging in every direction, his busi
ness became the greatest in the country, with branches
in the leading cities. He was an extensive importer,
and owned various factories making the fabrics he
sold. His business methods were profitable but un
popular, involving the remorseless crushing of rivals,
so that he had few friends and many enemies. Yet
he was charitable, sending a shipload of provisions to
relieve the Irish famine in 1846, and he made large
public gifts to aid suffering. When he died he was
building on Fourth Avenue an enormous structure
intended as a " Home for Working Girls," on which
$1,400,000 were expended. It was opened soon after
THE VANDEEBILTS. 49
his death, but with such stringent regulations that a
rebellion soon arose among the intended beneficiaries,
and it had to be closed. There was a shrewd sus
picion that the difficulty came by design, for the
building was soon reopened as a hotel. Stewart had
scarcely moved into his marble palace when he died,
his body being put temporarily into a vault in the
churchyard of old "St. Mark's Church in the Bow-
erie," awaiting removal to the magnificent mauso
leum preparing for it at Garden City, Long Island.
Then came the horrible news that the corpse had
been stolen to avenge business tyranny. The child
less widow lived in gloomy grandeur in the palace
until her death, rarely seeing visitors, and having
watchmen pacing the sidewalk at all hours. Stewart
left no direct descendants, and his great business has
gone, like his estate, to strangers.
THE VANDEEBILTS.
The construction of the white marble Stewart pal
ace was the first serious innovation made upon the
rich brownstone fronts of Fifth Avenue, the posses
sion of which was a necessary adjunct to social stand
ing in New York before the Civil War. The mate
rial, quarried generally in Connecticut, was in such
extensive use that it gave a distinctive coloring to
New York, its sombreness and uniformity of archi
tecture making most of the residential streets corri
dors of gloom. For years, as a local authority de-
VOL. II. 36
50 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
scribed it, "our new houses and blocks were all
turned out from the same moulds, and apparently
congealed from the same coffee-colored liquid." The
builders, since the war, have made large inroads with
other materials, thus giving more individuality to the
finer buildings of later construction. To the east
ward, Fourth Avenue is tunnelled for several blocks
under Murray Hill, to carry street railways up to the
Grand Central Station at Forty-second Street, the
open spaces above, giving the tunnel light and air,
being surrounded by pleasant little parks, so that the
widened street, called Park Avenue, is an attractive
residential region, the view being closed to the north
ward by the louvre domes of the Vanderbilt railway
station.
Continuing out Fifth Avenue, the " Old Brick
Church " of the Presbyterians, built solid and sub
stantial, with a tall spire, stands about on the most
elevated portion of Murray Hill, the congregation
dating from 1767. A short distance beyond, at
Thirty-ninth Street, is the finest club-house in New
York, the elaborate brick and brownstone Union
League Club, its spacious windows disclosing the lux
urious apartments within. Just above is the historic
Vanderbilt house, where the old Commodore lived a
wide, brownstone dwelling, having alongside a car
riage entrance into a small courtyard. The Vander
bilt fortunes, the greatest accumulated, represent the
financially expansive facilities of modern New York
THE VANDEKBILTS. 51
as manipulated by corporation management and the
Stock Exchange. Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt,
born on Staten Island in 1794, in 1817, at the age
of twenty-three, owned a few small vessels, and esti
mated his wealth at $9000. He became a steamboat
captain, and went into the transportation business
between New York and Philadelphia, afterwards
broadening his operations, and in 1848 owning most
of the profitable steamboat lines leading from New
York. When the California emigration fever began,
he started ocean steamers in connection with the
transit across the Isthmus of Panama. This busi
ness grew, and at the height of his steamship career
the Commodore owned sixty-six vessels. The finest,
named the Vanderbilt, which cost him $800,000, he
gave the Government for a war vessel, to chase the
rebel privateers. As American vessel-owning be
came unprofitable, he determined to abandon it and
devote himself to railway management, having
already bought largely of railway stocks. When he
thus changed, he estimated his fortune at $40,000,-
000. He got control of various railroads leading
east, north and west from New York, buying the
shares at low prices, his excellent methods improving
their earning powers, so that their value greatly en
hanced. The greatest of these corporations was the
New York Central and Hudson River Railroad.
When the Commodore died his estate was estimated
at $75,000,000, left almost wholly to his son William
52 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
H. Vanderbilt. When the latter died it had reached
$200,000,000, bequeathed chiefly to his two eldest
sons, Cornelius, who died in 1899, and William K.
Vanderbilt. The family are now housed in a row of
palaces farther out the avenue near Central Park,
and there are fabulous estimates of their colossal for
tunes, which are the greatest in America, and prob
ably in the world.
Upon the west side of Fifth Avenue the New York
Public Library is being erected on the site of the old
Croton Reservoir, which occupied the summit of Mur
ray Hill, and behind it is the pretty little Bryant
Park, extending to Sixth Avenue. This Library
comes from the consolidation of the Astor and Lenox
Libraries, augmented by the Samuel J. Tilden Trust
Fund, amounting to about $2,500,000. North of
this, Forty-second Street crosses the city, having the
Grand Central Station of the Vanderbilt lines oppo
site Fourth Avenue, the only railway station in New
York, though other roads are expecting to come in
by tunnels under the rivers. At Forty-third Street
and Fifth Avenue is the finest American synagogue,
the Jewish Temple Emanu-El, a magnificent speci
men of Saracenic architecture, the interior being rich
in Oriental decoration. Creeping plants tastefully
overrun the lower portions of its two great towers.
There are numerous fine churches on this portion of
the avenue, two of which are rather more famous
than the others. When the old Dutch Governor Peter
THE VANDEKBILTS. 53
Minuit bought Manhattan Island from the Indians, he
founded an orthodox Dutch church in 1628. This
church is now a costly brownstone structure in Dec
orated Gothic at the corner of Forty-eighth Street,
having a crocketed spire two hundred and seventy
feet high. Its inscription tells us it is the " Colle
giate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of the City
of New York, organized under Peter Minuit, Di
rector General of the New Netherlands, in 1628,
chartered by William, King of England, 1696."
The present church was built in 1872. Occupying
the entire block at Fiftieth Street is the magnificent
white marble Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Pat
rick, in Decorated Gothic, with two spires rising
three hundred and thirty-two feet. This noble
church much resembles the great Cathedral at Co
logne, particularly in the interior. Behind it, front
ing on Madison Avenue, is the Archbishop's white
marble residence, and adjacent is the old building of
Columbia College, the original King's College of New
York, founded in 1754 by a fund started from the
proceeds of various lotteries, which then raised
$17,215. It now has new buildings elsewhere.
In the neighborhood of these churches there must
not be overlooked, in this part of Fifth Avenue, the
residence of Helen Gould, a square-built house with
an elaborate portico, at the corner of Fifty-seventh
Street. This was originally the home of one of the
most extraordinary men ever developed in New
54 AMEEICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCEIPTIVE.
York Jay Gould. He was an orphan boy in North
eastern Pennsylvania, who became a clerk in a coun
try store, a surveyor and map-maker, and finally was
employed in a tannery, and to sell its leather first
took him to New York. Finally he removed there,
and soon became a leading Wall Street stock opera
tor. Nobody ever made such daring ventures ; he
became the "great bear" on the market, wreck
ing, pulling down, ruining'j controlling newspapers,
courts, legislatures, and being even accused of trying
to bribe a President. Then, as he acquired wealth,
he became an extensive investor in railways and tel
egraphs, and died, leaving a fortune estimated at
$80,000,000. He is buried in a magnificent mauso
leum, a miniature of the Pantheon, in Woodlawn
Cemetery, in the northern suburbs, and his daughter
Helen is trying, by her beneficent charities, to make
the best use she can of the share of the money she
inherited. Westward from Fifty -first Street are the
famous Vanderbilt palaces where most of the sons
and daughters of William H. Vanderbilt reside, five
grand residences which cost $15,000,000 to build
and furnish. Standing among them is the Fifth Ave
nue Presbyterian Church, said to be the largest and
wealthiest in the world of this denomination, where
the late pastor, Dr. John Hall, is described as preach
ing to $250,000,000 every Sunday. This is the
most splendid portion of Fifth Avenue, with grand
residences all about, and as Central Park is ap-
CENTRAL PARK. 55
preached, there are also enormous apartment-houses
and huge hotels. The avenue reaches the Park at
Fifty-ninth Street, and for two miles its grand buildings
face that attractive pleasure-ground. At Seventieth
Street is the Lenox Library, the benefaction of James
Lenox, and at Eighty-second Street the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, containing some of the finest collec
tions in the world, and patterned largely after the
British Museum. Its treasures of art and science,
antiquities and museums, are valued at $9,000,000,
and it has an elaborate building fronting on Fifth
Avenue, within the Park.
CENTRAL PARK.
New York is very proud of its great pleasure-
ground, the Central Park, upon which has been lav
ished all that art and money could accomplish. This
Park is a parallelogram in the centre of Manhattan
Island, a half-mile wide and two and a half miles
long, covering eight hundred and forty-three acres,
though nearly one-fourth of this space is occupied by
the Croton water reservoirs. The original surface
was either marsh or rock, very rough, and with to
pography generally the reverse of that needed for a
park. It took prodigious labor and an enormous out
lay to overcome the difficulties, but skillful engineer
ing and landscape gardening have made the most of
the unsightly surface, so that it has become one of the
handsomest parks in the world, its beauties increas-
56 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
ing as the growing trees mature. Entering at the
" Scholar's Gate n from Fifth Avenue, the road within
the Park leads by a gently winding course past vista
views and pretty lakes to the Mall, or general prom
enade. Here, on pleasant days, thousands gather to
listen to the music. To the westward are broad
green surfaces giving a tranquil landscape, and look
ing northward through the avenue of elms upon the
Mall, a little gray stone tower called the Observatory
closes the view far away over another pretty lake.
At the end of the Mall a terrace is crossed bordering
this lake, the ground sloping to its edges. Here a
fountain plashes on one side, and on the other is the
concert ground, overlooked by the Pergola, a shaded
Gallery. Across the lake, on the Observatory side,
is the Ramble, a rocky, forest-covered slope with
paths winding through it, and on the highest point a
massive Belvedere. There are a menagerie and an
aviary, and the children have playgrounds and varied
amusements. Beyond this enchanting region the
road winds past statues and ever-changing beauties
of garden and landscape, and comes out in a space
alongside the smaller reservoir, where stands Cleo
patra's Needle, brought from Egypt and set up near
the Museum of Art. Then the road passes along
side the larger reservoir, with barely enough room to
get through between it and Fifth Avenue, though
both are admirably masked. The northern portion
of the Park has greater natural attractions and less
CENTRAL PAEK. 57
ornamentation, the land ascending to a fine lookout
on the western side, where there is a grand view
over the Harlem River, displaying the tall arches of
the "High Bridge" bringing the Croton Aqueduct
across, and the tower alongside, which makes a high
level reservoir. The expanding city, however, is ex
tending its buildings over large surfaces north and
west of the Park.
One Hundred and Tenth Street is the northern
boundary of Central Park. Upon the western side
of the Park, in Manhattan Square, is being gradu
ally constructed the American Museum of Natural
History, with elaborate buildings and collections
already exceeding $3,000,000 in value. Near the
northwestern corner of the Park, extending to One
Hundred and Twenty -third Street, is the long and
narrow Morningside Park, a high elevation held by
massive retaining walls on the hill-slope, and ascended
by flights of steps. Morningside Avenue, its western
boundary, has at One Hundred and Twelfth Street
what will be the largest ecclesiastical edifice in the
United States, the new Episcopal Cathedral of St.
John the Divine, of which the corner-stone was laid
in 1892, and building slowly progresses. The splendid
St. Luke's Hospital adjoins to the northward, while
to the northwest, on an elevated site overlooking the
Hudson River, are the fine new buildings of Colum
bia College in an enclosure of about twenty acres.
This great University has buildings and collections
58 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
valued at $7,000,000, an endowment of $12,000,000,
and is attended by about two thousand students.
Farther west ^ard, upon the high ground at the edge
of the Hudson River, stretches the stately Riverside
Park for about three miles, making a magnificent
drive, along which many handsome residences are
being constructed. Near its northern end is the tomb
of General Grant, a white granite mausoleum ninety
feet square and surmounted by a cupola, which was
finished in 1897 and cost $600,000. The interior
arrangement is like Napoleon's tomb in Paris, the
body, contained in a red porphyry sarcophagus, being
placed in an open crypt below the centre of the dome.
Beyond Central Park, the broad public roads known
as the Boulevards traverse the island northward, and
many elaborate structures are being erected along
them.
SPUYTEN DUYVEL AND CROTON.
The Spuyten Duyvel Creek, the strait connecting
the Harlem with the Hudson, winds through a deeply-
cut gorge around the northern end of Manhattan and
makes it an island. Knickerbocker, the veracious
historian of early Dutch New York, tells how it got
its name. Old Governor Stuyvesant, he says, had a
wonderful trumpeter, Anthony von Corlaer, who per
sisted in swimming across during a violent storm, and
lost his life. Thus of it, Knickerbocker writes :
" The wind was high, the elements were in an up
roar, and no Charon could be found to ferry the ad-
"ark, the bro:
-vard, and
rate e -ed along
ikerbocker w
Grant's Tomb, Nefo York
'IE
SPUYTEN DUYVEL AND CKOTON. 59
venturous sounder of brass across the water. For a
short time he vapored like an impatient ghost upon
the brink, and then, bethinking himself of the
urgency of his errand (to arouse the people to
arms), he took a hearty embrace of his stone bottle,
swore most valorously that he would swim across
in spite of the devil en spyt den duyvel and
daringly plunged into the stream. Luckless An
thony ! Scarcely had he buffeted half-way over
when he was observed to struggle violently, as if
battling with the spirit of the waters. Instinctively
he put his trumpet to his mouth, and giving a
veheirent blast, sank forever to the bottom. The
clangor of his trumpet, like that of the ivory horn
of the renowned Paladin Orlando, when expiring on
the glorious field of Roncesvalles, rang far and wide
through the country, alarming the neighbors around,
who hurried in amazement to the spot. There, an
old Dutch burgher, famed for his veracity, and who
had been a witness to the fact, related to them the
melancholy affair, with the fearful addition (to which
I am slow in giving belief) that he saw the Duyvel,
in the shape of a huge moss-bunker (a species of in
ferior fish), seize the sturdy Anthony by the leg and
drag him beneath the waves. Certain it is, the
place, with the adjoining promontory which projects
into the Hudson, has been called Spyt den Duyvel
ever since."
The narrow and elevated northern prolongation of
60 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND BESCEIPTIVE.
Manhattan is the picturesque district of Washington
Heights. -Here is the attractive Trinity Church
Cemetery, laid out on the battlefield of Harlem
Heights, a hotly contested Revolutionary conflict,
fought on September 16, 1776, and some distance
northward, on the highest point of the island, ele
vated two hundred and sixty feet above the Hudson
River, there are still seen the remains of Fort Wash
ington, which was bravely but unsuccessfully de
fended against British attacks in the following No
vember, and had to be abandoned. Across the
Harlem River is the ancient suburb of Morrisania.
Here was Washington's headquarters during those
conflicts, and here lived Lewis Morris, one of the
signers of the Declaration of Independence, and his
half-brother, Gouverneur Morris, a noted New York
statesman, who bore a striking resemblance to Gen
eral Washington. The historic old house at Mor
risania was afterwards acquired by Madame Jumel,
and when Aaron Burr, in his old age and poverty,
met this wealthy widow, he courted and married her
in 1833, he being then seventy-eight years old.
Here they lived for a brief period " during the days
of his octogenarian love," as the annalist has it, but
soon quarrelled and separated. The house is now
preserved as a Revolutionary Museum. Not far
away was the Grange, the home of Alexander Ham
ilton, who planted there a group of thirteen trees
named after the thirteen original States of the Union,
SPUYTEN DUYVEL AND CROTON. 61
in which all flourished, as we are credibly informed,
excepting the " South Carolina tree/ 7 which persisted
in growing up very crooked. Upon the top of
Washington Heights and the precipitous slopes of
the Spuyten Duyvel and Harlem there are many fine
villas, and down in the bottom of the gorge the
New York Central Railroad seeks its route out to
the Hudson River bank. The historic old King's
Bridge spans the Harlem, deep down in the valley,
while all along the river is the fine new drive, the
" Speedway," upon which the New Yorkers display
the qualities of their fastest horses.
The splendid Washington Bridge, built of steel at
a cost of $2,700,000, carries one of the Boulevards
across the Harlem at a height of one hundred and
fifty feet ; but the great landmark is the High Bridge
which brings the Croton Aqueduct over, its tall
granite piers and graceful arches displaying singular
beauty from every point of view. This aqueduct is
forty miles long, and has been well described as " a
structure worthy of the Roman Empire." It origin
ally cost $12,500,000, subsequent improvements ab
sorbing millions more. The Croton River, coming
down through Westchester County, falls into the
Hudson about twenty-five miles above the city, and
its headwaters are dammed, making artificial lakes
gathering the supply. The Aqueduct was finished in
1842, and, going through tunnels and rock-cuttings,
has a cross-section of about fifty-four feet and an in-
62 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE
clination of one foot to the mile, or thirty-three feet
in the distance to the Harlem River. About one
hundred and fifteen millions of gallons go through it
daily, moving at the rate of a mile and a half per
hour. Three huge pipes carry the water across the
High Bridge at one hundred and sixteen feet eleva
tion. There are eight arches in the river crossing,
their openings being eighty feet wide and one hun
dred feet high, to allow the passage of vessels, and
seven narrower arches of fifty feet span on the banks.
At the New York end of this picturesque bridge is
the tall tower, rising two hundred and sixty-five feet,
which has water pumped into its surmounting tank
to supply the highest parts of the island. New York,
however, long since outgrew the capacity of this
famous aqueduct, so that a new one of much greater
size was tunnelled underground and finished in 1 890,
which is fourteen feet high, and bored at an average
depth of one hundred and fifty feet below the sur
face, and is carried three hundred feet under the Har
lem River bed, its estimated daily capacity being
three hundred millions of gallons. The receiving
reservoirs in Central Park hold over a thousand mil
lions of gallons. An imposing gate-house at One
Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street admits this supply
into the northern city mains. The great Quaker
Bridge dam across the Croton is two hundred and
seventy-seven feet high and thirteen hundred and
fifty feet long, making the most enormous artificial
THE BKONX AND THE NEW PARKS. 63
reservoir in the world, holding forty thousand mil
lions of gallons. It has cost New York over $70,-
000,000 to thus insure an ample water supply, free
of all risk from drought.
THE BRONX AND THE NEW PARKS.
Across Harlem River, to the north and east, is the
attractive region of the Bronx, much of the surface
being yet in its primitive condition as maintained in
the old estates that have come down from the early
days of the Knickerbockers. Here are being laid
out several new and large parks. Van Cortlandt
Park, near the Hudson, about four miles north of the
High Bridge, covers about eleven hundred acres,
Pelham Bay Park, on the shore of Long Island
Sound, nine miles from the Harlem, seventeen hun
dred and fifty acres, and the Bronx Park, between
them, six hundred and fifty acres. These three great
pleasure-grounds are being gradually developed, and
the plan is to connect them with magnificent tree-
lined avenues six hundred feet wide. The western
verge of Van Cortlandt Park finely overlooks the
Hudson, and it is intended largely for military uses,
with parade-grounds and rifle-ranges. It has an at
tractive lake ; and the quaint old mansion where lived
the Van Cortlandts, whose successive generations
owned the estate, built in 1748, is preserved as a
Museum of Colonial Relics. To the eastward, a shal
low and almost aimless little stream, flowing from
64 AMEKICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
above White Plains down to Long Island Sound,
with many pools and rapids, and occasionally broad
ening into mirror-like lakes, was long the eastern
boundary of New York City. This is the Bronx
River, coming through a green, well-watered and
shaded valley, a half to three-quarters of a mile wide,
and a considerable part of this bewitching region
makes the Bronx Park,
" Where gentle Bronx, clear, winding, flows
The shadowy banks between ;
Where blossomed bell or wilding rose
Adorns the brightest green."
The wildness and seclusion of this place, its natu
ral charms and romantic character, make one almost
believe that New York cannot possibly be near such
an attractive wilderness. Nature seems to have espe
cially designed it for a park, and art cannot improve
it. Huge rocks and giant trees flourish here, among
them the Delancey pine, one hundred and fifty feet
high and straight as an arrow, standing in .a promi
nent position and having a huge branch reaching up
ward upon one side, with interlacing boughs, making
it appear not unlike a gigantic harp. The Delan-
ceys once owned the place. A "balanced boulder"
is nearby, weighing hundreds of tons, yet very easily
rocked. The Bronx in one portion flows deep down
between high, rocky walls, where the thin-armed
white birches wave their slender limbs a hundred feet
above the water. Here was an early home of the
THE BKONX AND THE NEW PARKS. 65
Lorillards, now a Museum and large Botanical Gar
den. Here are also the grounds of the New York
Zoological Society, the animals roaming in extensive
enclosures, where they are placed, as far as possible,
in their native surroundings.
The peninsula of Throgg's Neck is the northern
headland at the entrance of East River into Long
Island Sound. Beyond this, the waters deeply in
dent the New York shore, and there is thrust out the
green peninsula of Pelham Neck. This is some dis
tance beyond the Bronx. Eastchester Bay is on the
southern side of the neck ; Pelham Bay beyond it ;
and immediately in front City Island, reached by a
long drawbridge. To the north is Hunter's Island,
connected by another bridge. Hunter's Island and
more than two square miles of the hills and meadows
adjacent on the mainland make the new park of
Pelham Bay. Various old mansions scattered over
this domain were the homes of the Hunters, Loril-
lards and other prominent families. The island be
longed to many generations of Hunters, and near
the bridge a large gateway has " Hunter's Island n
carved on one of the marble gate-posts. Years ago
another wealthy man bought the island, and these
words offending him, he brought a marble-mason out
from New York, who chiselled them off, and carved
instead the words "Higgins's Island." But after
Higgins had his day and was gathered unto his
fathers, the next owner, revering rather the antiquity
VOL. II. 37
66 AMERICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
of the place, had " Higgins " eliminated and " Hun
ter's Island " restored, though the gate-post became
quite thin under this treatment. On the western
edge of Pelham Bay Park is Hutchinson's River,
flowing down into Eastchester Bay, and recalling the
days of the Salem witchcraft. Poor Anne Hutchin-
son fled here to escape burning as a witch, and on
City Island built a hut on a little cape still called
Anne Hook. She lived there peacefully for a year,
harming nobody and declining every invitation to
stir from her humble abode. One day a young girl
went to visit Anne, but found the hut in ashes, and
before the door lay the poor woman, where she had
been tomahawked and scalped by the Indians. No
one has built a house on Anne Hook since, and many
have been the tales told of ghostly Indian revels on
bleak and rainy nights around the site of the burning
hut. On the mainland were Indian villages, and here
have been found relics, and in 1899 there was ex
humed the skeleton of an Indian warrior.
EAST RIVER AND HELL, GATE.
The Harlem River, flowing into the East River,
divides Manhattan from Ward's Island, and this, with
Randall's Island to the north and BlackwelTs Island
to the south, forms the group of "East River
Islands" upon which are the penal and charitable
institutions of the great city. The chief of these are
on Blackwell's Island, a long, narrow strip stretching
EAST EIVEE AND HELL GATE. 67
nearly two miles in the centre of East River, and
barely more than two hundred yards wide. It covers
one hundred and twenty acres, and has the peniten
tiary, almshouses, workhouses and hospitals, the spa
cious buildings being of granite quarried there by the
convicts. Over on the New York City shore is the
extensive Bellevue Hospital. In cases of vagrancy
and minor crimes, the offender is said to be " sent up
to the Island." Ward's Island has a surface of two
hundred acres, and here are the Lunatic Asylum and
Emigrant Hospital. Randall's Island has the institu
tions for children and idiots, while upon Hart's Island,
out in Long Island Sound, are industrial schools and
the pauper cemetery. The buildings are all upon a
most elaborate scale, and it costs over $2,000,000 for
their annual maintenance. A steamboat ride along
East River, with these extensive establishments and
their well-kept grounds passing in review, is a most
interesting suburban excursion.
The Long Island shore to the southward of Ward's
Island is thrust out in a way that curves and con
tracts the East River passage, which, turning east
ward just below where the Harlem River comes in,
goes through the famous Hell Gate to reach the
Sound. Formerly, the swift tidal currents boiled and
eddied through this dangerous pass, Hallett's Point,
jutting out from Long Island, narrowing the channel,
and Pot Rock, Flood Rock, the Gridiron and other
reefs making navigation perilous. Many were the
68 AMEKICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
wrecks here, and frequent ineffective efforts were
made to improve the passage. The Government
finally undertook the work in 1866 under a compre
hensive plan projected by General Newton. His first
task was the removal of the Hallett's Point reef, a
mass of rock projecting three hundred feet into the
stream and throwing the whole tidal current coming
in from the Sound against the great opposing rock
called the Gridiron. He first sunk a shaft upon the
Point and excavated the inland side so that it made
a perpendicular wall which was curved around, and
designed for the future edge of the river. From the
shaft, tunnels were bored into the reef under the
river in radiating directions, being connected by con
centric galleries. The design was to remove as much
rock as possible without letting the water in from
overhead, and then to blow the rocky roof and sup
porting columns into fragments and remove them at
leisure. This work began in 1869, the shaft being
sunk thirty-two feet below mean low water and the
tunnels drilled out, inclining downward under the
river. In 1876 the task was finished, and thousands
of separate dynamite blasts had been placed in the
roof and supporting columns, ready for the explosion
on Sunday, September 24th. This being the greatest
artificial explosion ever attempted, there was much
trepidation shown in New York for fear of the shock,
while everywhere the keenest interest was taken in
the result. The blast was entirely successful, being
THE BKOOKLYN BKIDGE. 69
discharged by General Newton's little child, who
touched the electric key. The calculation had been
so accurately made that the great reef was pulver
ized, and the fragments fell into the spaces excavated
beneath without causing more than a slight tremor in
the adjacent region. By a similar system and more
extensive work, Flood Rock was afterwards removed
from mid-channel, the second great blast reducing it
to fragments, being discharged in October, 1885.
The terrors of Hell Gate are gone, though the tide
still flows swiftly through the strait.
THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE.
The growth of population on Long Island has
caused various new bridges and tunnels to be pro
jected for crossing East River. One new bridge is
to cross at BlackwelFs Island, with a pier on the
island. Another now nearly completed, and esti
mated to cost $10,000,000, crosses from Grand Street
to Broadway in Brooklyn. The Long Island Rail
road is arranging to bore a tunnel under East River,
to be operated by electricity, to bring its trains into
New York. The East River being the locality for
most of the foreign shipping, the bridges are at high
elevations, the great Brooklyn Bridge, which crosses
from City Hall Park, being one hundred and thirty-
five feet above the water. Its massive piers are
among the tallest structures about New York, rising
two hundred and sixty-eight feet. This, the largest
70 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCKIPTIVE.
suspension bridge in the world, was begun in 1870
and opened for traffic in 1885. The piers stand
upon caissons sunk into the rocky bed of the river,
which is forty-five feet below the surface on the
Brooklyn side and ninety feet below on the New
York side. Their towers carry four sixteen-inch wire
cables that sustain the bridge, which is built eighty-
five feet wide, giving ample accommodation for two
railways, two wagon roads also carrying electric cars,
and a wide raised footway in the centre. The bridge
cost nearly $15,000,000, the distance between the
piers is about sixteen hundred feet, and its entire
length between the anchorages of the cables is three
thousand four hundred and seventy-five feet. The
cable anchorages are enormous masses, each contain
ing about thirty-five thousand cubic yards of solid
masonry. The whole length of the bridge and its
elaborate approaches is considerably over a mile. Its
projector was John A. Roebling, who died during the
early work, and its builder, his son Washington
Roebling, who caught the dreaded " caisson disease "
while superintending labor under water, and for
years afterward an invalid, watched the progress of
the later work from his chamber window on Brook
lyn Heights nearby. The bridge has carried an
enormous traffic, taxing its capacity to the utmost,
and its passengers average over a million a week.
The view from its raised footway is one of the most
superb sights of New York, disclosing both cities,
THE CITY OF CHUKCHES. 71
and the extensive wharves and commerce of East
River, the Navy Yard just above, and for miles over
the surrounding region and down through the harbor
to the distant blue hills of Staten Island.
THE CITY OF CHURCHES.
The Borough of Brooklyn, which has grown from
the overflow of New York, whose people are said to
go over there " chiefly to sleep or be buried," is pop
ularly known as the " City of Churches." A large
portion of the working population of the metropolis,
as well as the merchants and business men, make it
their home and dormitory, while there are beautiful
cemeteries in the suburbs peopled largely by dead
New Yorkers. Greenwood, overlooking New York
harbor from Gowanus Heights in South Brooklyn, is
regarded as one of the finest American cemeteries.
In no other city can be found such an aggregation
of churches, developed in a past generation, and
under the ministry of a regiment of distinguished
clergymen, then led by Beecher and Storrs, so that
the popular title was well bestowed. Brooklyn is
entirely the growth of the nineteenth century, a
growth due to the inability of New York to spread,
excepting far northward. It stretches several miles
along East River and three or four miles inland, and
grows rapidly. When the century began, however,
it was hard work to find three thousand people there,
and, strangely enough, they had to cross over to New
72 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCEIPTIVE.
York to go to church. Just about the time old Peter
Minuit was buying Manhattan from the Indians, a
band of Walloons first settled in Brooklyn. Their
descendants drove cows across East River to Gov
ernor's Island to graze, the Buttermilk Channel be
tween them being then shallow enough for fording,
though it is now scoured out deep enough to float the
largest vessels, the docks located where the cows then
crossed now accommodating an enormous commerce.
At first a little ferry from Fulton Street to Peck Slip,
New York, accommodated the straggling village, and
it has grown into more than a dozen steam ferries of
the largest capacity, which (besides the bridge) will
carry daily a half-million people across at one cent
apiece, this fleet of packet-boats being the greatest
transporters of humanity in the world.
The Indians called the region around Wallabout
Bay, and Gowanus Mercychawick, meaning "the
sandy place." When the Walloons came along, they
began settling on the shores of the bay, which they
called Waal-bogt, afterwards gradually changed to its
present name of Wallabout. In 1646 the town was
organized by Governor Kieft as Breuckelen, he ap
pointing Jan Eversen Bout and Huyck Aertsen as
" schepens " or superintendents to preserve the peace
and regulate the community. During the Revolu
tion the British prison-ships were moored in the Wal
labout, and it is estimated that eleven thousand five
hundred Americans, chiefly seamen, died upon them,
THE CITY OF CHUKCHES. 73
the shores of the bay being full of dead men's bones,
which the tides for many years washed out from the
sand. In 1808 these bones were finally collected and
put in a vault near the Navy Yard, which had been
established on the bay. This is the chief naval sta
tion of the United States, covering about eighty-eight
acres, including all the available space. There is at
tached a large naval hospital, while between the two
is the immense Wallabout Market, covering forty-five
acres, the largest in Brooklyn, its buildings being
brick structures in the old Dutch style.
Fulton Street is the chief highway of Brooklyn,
beginning almost under the shadow of the great
Bridge. It is a broad and attractive street, stretch
ing six miles to the eastern edge of the city, and
about one mile from the river it passes the various
city buildings, including the Post-office, Court-house
and Borough Hall, all handsome structures. In front
of the Borough Hall is a fine statue of Brooklyn's
most famous clergyman, Henry Ward Beecher. From
Fulton Street radiate several of the highways lead
ing into the fashionable residential quarter, Brook
lyn or Columbia Heights, overlooking East River,
where the tree-bordered streets are lined with costly
and attractive dwellings. Here in Orange Street, in
a very quiet spot, is Brooklyn's most noted edifice, a
plain, wide, unornamented brick building, with the
inscription, " Plymouth Church, 1849." Here
preached for nearly forty years, until he died in
74 AMEKICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
1887, Beecher, the great Puritan, whose family was
so noted. His father, Lyman Beecher, like the son,
fought slavery and intemperance in Boston, Litch-
field and Cincinnati, and was an impressive pulpit
orator. The old man was eccentric, however, and
after being wrought up by the excitement of preach
ing, is said to have gone home and let himself down
by playing on the fiddle and dancing a double-shuffle
in the parlor. He had thirteen children, nearly all
famous, and has been described as " the father of
more brains than any other man in America." Four
sons were clergymen and two daughters noted au
thoresses. Henry Ward, who ruled Brooklyn, and
Harriet, who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, were among
the great leaders of the anti-slavery movement.
Clinton Street leaves Fulton a little beyond
Orange, and passes southward through Brooklyn
Heights, being the chief street of the fashionable
district. Embowered in trees, handsome churches
and residences border it, and Pierrepont, Eemsen,
Montague and other noted streets extend at right
angles from it to the edge of the bluff, where the
Heights fall sharply off to the river. Here, at sev
enty feet elevation, and overlooking the lower level
of buildings and piers at the water's edge, are the
terraces where the finest residences are located,
having a magnificent outlook upon the harbor and
New York City beyond. The ships land their car
goes within almost a stone's throw of the palaces.
THE CITY OF CHUKCHES. 75
In this district there are several large apartment-
houses and various clubs, a statue of Alexander Ham
ilton adorning the front of the Hamilton Club at
Remsen and Clinton Streets. Upon Remsen Street is
another noted building, the Congregational " Church
of the Pilgrims/ 7 a spacious graystone edifice with
towers, its most prominent tower and spire being a
commanding landmark for vessels sailing up New
York Bay. There is let into the outer wall of this
church, about six feet above the pavement, a small
piece of the original " Plymouth Rock " whereon the
Pilgrims in 1620 landed in Massachusetts Bay a
dark, rough-hewn fragment, projecting with irregular
surface a few inches from the wall. As an author,
lecturer and preacher, the veteran pastor for over a
half-century, Dr. Richard Salter Storrs, acquired
wide renown. Upon Clinton Street is the elegant
Pointed Gothic brownstone St. Ann's Episcopal
Church, famous for its choir, and on Montague Street
the Holy Trinity Church, its spire rising two hundred
and seventy-five feet. But almost everywhere are
churches, there being about five hundred in Brooklyn.
The noted Pratt Institute is one of the best known
charities of the city, founded and endowed by Charles
Pratt, an oil prince, as a technical school, its spacious
and well-equipped buildings caring for thirty-four
hundred students. The object of this noble institu
tion is " to promote manual and industrial education,
and to inculcate habits of industry and thrift."
76 AMEEICA, PICTUKESQUE AND DESCKIPTIVE.
GREENWOOD CEMETERY AND PROSPECT PARK.
A border of tombs almost surrounds Brooklyn, for
in the suburbs are the great cemeteries which are
the burial-places of both cities. In lovely situations
upon the surrounding hills are Greenwood, Cypress
Hills, Evergreen, Holy Cross, Calvary, Mount Olivet,
The Citizens' Union, Washington and other ceme
teries, occupying many hundreds of acres. Of these,
the noted Greenwood is the chief, covering some four
hundred acres on Gowanus Heights, south of the
city. This is a high ridge dividing Brooklyn from
the lowlands on the south side of Long Island, and it
has elevations giving charming views. The route to
it crosses various railroads leading to Coney Island,
which is the ultimate objective point of most Brook
lyn lines of transit. A neat lawn-bordered road
leads up to the magnificent cemetery entrance on
Fifth Avenue, an elaborate and much ornamental
brownstone structure rising into a central pinnacle
over a hundred feet high. This entrance covers two
fine gateways, with representations of Gospel scenes,
the principal being the Raising of Lazarus and the
Resurrection. The grounds display great beauty,
the ridgy, rounded hills spreading in all directions,
the surface being an alternation of hills and vales,
vaults terracing the hillsides, with elaborate mauso
leums above and frequent little lakes nestling in the
pleasant valleys. Vast sums have been expended on
GEEENWOOD CEMETEKY AND PKOSPECT PAKK. 77
some of the grander tombs, which are upon a scale
of great magnificence. The attractive rural names
of the walks and avenues, the delicious flowers and
foliage, the balmy air, the lakes, valleys and points
of beautiful outlook giving grand views over New
York Bay and the surrounding country, make
Greenwood a park as well as a cemetery, and it is
generally admitted to be without a peer. Many
costly pantheons and chapels cover the remains of
well-known people, and one mausoleum is a large
marble church. A three-sided monument of pecu
liar construction standing on a knoll marks the
resting-place of Samuel F. B. Morse, the teleg
rapher. Horace Greeley's tomb has his bust in
bronze on a pedestal. A colossal statue surmounts
the grave of the great De Witt Clinton, the Gov
ernor of New York who built the Erie Canal and
thus secured the commercial supremacy of the city.
The romantic career of Lola Montez ended in Green
wood. Commodore Garrison, who was at one time
Vanderbilt's rival in steamship management, is in
terred in a mosque. The tomb of the Stein ways is
a large granite building. A magnificent marble
canopy crowns the Scribner tomb, having beneath it
an angel of mercy. There is an appropriate monu
ment to Roger Williams. Here are also buried Elias
Howe, the inventor of the sewing-machine, Peter
Cooper, Henry Ward Beecher, James Gordon Ben
nett, Henry George and others of fame. The Fire-
78 AMEEICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCEIPTIVE.
men, the Pilots and the New York Volunteers all
have grand monuments, the statue sentinels of the
latter overlooking the bay. Among these magnifi
cent sepulchres, probably the most magnificent is
that of Charlotte Canda, an heiress, who died in
early youth, her fortune being expended upon her
tomb.
There is a high lookout upon the eastern border of
this attractive place, where the flat land at the base
of the ridge spreads for miles away to the sea. The
Coney Island hotels, by the ocean side, are dim in
the distance, and far over the water the Navesink
Highlands close the view beyond Sandy Hook. The
many railroads leading to Coney Island can be traced
out, as on a map, across the level land. Over on the
western side of the cemetery is another lookout,
having a broad view of Brooklyn and the harbor,
extending to the hills of Staten Island and the dis
tant Jersey lowlands beyond. This is the verge of
Gowanus Heights, with the busy commerce of the
port spread at its base. It is this magnificent scene
which the marble sentinels overlook who are guard
ing the Volunteers' Monument erected by the city of
New York.
Between Greenwood Cemetery and Prospect Park
there are various railways, all going to Coney Island,
and also the Ocean Parkway, leading thither, a
splendid boulevard, two hundred feet wide, and
planted with six rows of trees, being flanked on
GREENWOOD CEMETERY AND PEOSPECT PARK. 79
either side by a broad cycle-path. It is laid in a
straight line from the southwestern corner of the
Park for three miles to the great seaside resort.
Prospect Park covers nearly a square mile on an
elevated ridge on the edge of Brooklyn, and it has
great natural attractions which did not need much
change to improve the landscape, while the fine old
trees that have been there for centuries are in mag
nificent maturity. Its woods and meadows, winding
roads, lakes and views, combine many charms. On
Lookout Hill, rising two hundred feet, the most com
manding point, with a view almost entirely around
the compass, there is a monument on the slope in
memory of the Maryland troops who fell in the Rev
olutionary battle of Long Island, fought in August,
1776, on these heights. The Park is ornamented
with several statues, including one of Abraham Lin
coln, and there is a bust of John Howard Payne, the
author of Home, Sweet Home. It has an extensive
lake, a deer preserve, children's playgrounds, and a
concert grove and promenade. The main entrance
is a fine elliptical plaza with a splendid fountain, and
adorned by a Memorial Arch to the Soldiers and
Sailors of the Civil War, and a statue of James
Stranahan, a venerable citizen of Brooklyn, fore
most in all its good works, who died in 1898. The
Brooklyn Institute, an academy of art and science
with a large membership, has a large building in the
Park.
80 AMEEICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
CONEY ISLAND.
Pretty much all routes through Brooklyn, as al
ready indicated, lead to Coney Island, the barren
strip of white sand, clinging to the southern edge of
Long Island, about ten miles from New York, which
is the objective point of the populace when in swel
tering summer weather they crave a breath of sea
air. The antiquarians of the island insist that it was
the earliest portion of these adjacent coasts discov
ered, and tell how Verrazani came along about 1529
and found this sand-strip, and how Hudson, nearly a
century later, held conferences with the Indians on
the island. But however that may be, its wonderful
development as a summer resort has only come since
the Civil War. It has a hard and gently-sloping
beach facing the Atlantic, and can be so easily and
cheaply reached, by so many routes on land and
water, that it is no wonder, on hot afternoons and
holidays, the people of New York and Brooklyn go
down there by the hundreds of thousands. Coney
Island is about five miles long, and from a quarter-
mile to a mile in width, being separated from the ad
jacent low-lying mainland only by a little crooked
creek and some lagoons. It has two bays deeply in
dented behind it, Gravesend Bay on the west and
Sheepshead Bay on the east. The name is derived
from Cooney Island, meaning the "Rabbit Island/ 7
rabbits having been the chief inhabitants in earlier
CONEY ISLAND. 81
days. The Coney Island season of about a hundred
days, from June until September, is an almost unin
terrupted festival, and nothing can exceed the jollity
on these beaches, when a hot summer sun drives the
people down to the shore to seek relief and have a
good time. They spread over the miles of sand-
strip, with scores of bands of music of varying merit
in full blast, minstrel shows, miniature theatres, Punch
and Judy, merry-go-rounds and carrousels, big
snakes, fat women, giant, dwarf, midget and pugil
istic exhibitions, shooting-galleries, concerts, cir
cuses, fortune-tellers, swings, toboggan slides, scenic
railways, and myriads of other attractions ; lakes of
beer on tap, with ample liquids of greater strength ;
and everywhere a good-humored crowd, sight-seeing
and enjoying themselves, eating, drinking, and very
numerously consuming the great Coney Island deli
cacy, " clam-chowder." To the clam, which is uni
versal and popular, the visitors pay special tribute.
This famous bivalve is the Mya Arenaria of the New
England coast, said to have been for years the chief
food of the Pilgrim fathers. Being found in abund
ance in all the neighboring waters, it is served in
every style, according to taste. As the Coney Island
" Song of the Clam " has it :
" Who better than I ? in chowder or pie,
Baked, roasted, raw or fried ?
I hold the key to society,
And am always welcome inside."
VOL. II. 38
82 AMEEICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCEIPTIVE.
The long and narrow Coney Island sand-strip may
be divided into four distinctive sections a succes
sion of villages chiefly composed of restaurants,
lodging-houses and hotels, built along the edge of
the beach, and usually on a single road behind it.
In the past generation the rougher classes best knew
its western end or Norton's Point, a resort of long
standing. The middle of the island is a locality of
higher grade West Brighton Beach. Here great
iron piers project into the ocean, being availed of
for steamboat landings, restaurants and amusement
places, while beneath are bathing establishments.
Electricity and fireworks* are used extensively to add
to the attractions, and there is also a tall Observatory.
The broad Ocean Parkway, coming down from Pros
pect Park and Brooklyn, terminates at West Brighton
Beach. East of this is a partially vacant, semi-
marshy space, beyond which is Brighton Beach, there
being a roadway and elevated railroad connecting
them. Brighton is the third section, and about a
half-mile farther east is the fourth and most exclusive
section Manhattan Beach. Here are the more elab
orate and costly Coney Island hotels. In all this dis
trict the power of the ocean is shown in the effect of
great storms, which wash away roads, railways and
buildings, and shift enormous amounts of the sands
from one locality, piling them up in front of another.
Huge hotels have had to be moved, in some cases
bodily, a thousand feet back inland from the ocean
CONEY ISLAND. 83
front, to save them, and immense bulkheads con
structed for protection ; but sometimes the waves
play havoc with these. Very much of the money
spent by the visitors has to be devoted to saving the
place and preventing the wreck of the great build
ings. But this does not worry the visitors so much
as it does the landlords. On a hot day the vast
crowds arriving on the trains are poured into the
hotels, and swarm out upon the grounds fronting
them, where the bands play. Here the orchestras
give concerts to enormous audiences. The piazzas
are filled with supper-parties, the music amphithea
tres are crowded, and thousands saunter over the
lawns. As evening advances, the blaze of electric
illumination and brilliancy of fireworks are added,
and the music, bustling crowds and general hilarity
give the air of a splendid festival. The bathing estab
lishments are crowded, and many go into the surf
under the brilliant illumination. Not a tree will grow,
so that the view over the sea is unobstructed, and out
in front is the pathway of ocean commerce into New
York harbor, with the twinkling, guiding lights of
Sandy Hook and its attendant lightships beyond
What a guardian to the mariner is the lighthouse :
" 'Tis like a patient, faithful soul
That, having reached its saintly goal,
And seeing others far astray
In storms of darkness and dismay,
Shines out o'er life's tempestuous sea,
A beacon to some sheltered lee,
The haven of eternity."
84 AMEEICA, PICTUKESQUE AND DESCKIPTFVE.
The tall Observatory, on its airy steel framework,
rises three hundred feet to overlook the wonderful
scene. When the top is reached, the first impression
made is by the dissonant clangor of the many bands
of music below, heard with singular clearness and
much more intensity of sound than on the ground.
This discord ascends from all sorts of structures, gen
erally having flat pitch-and-gravel roofs, forming a
variegated carpet far below. Coney Island stretches
along the ocean's edge, with the lines of foaming surf
slowly rolling in. To the eastward, at Brighton and
Manhattan Beaches, it bends backward like a bow,
with semicircular indentations where the sea has
made its inroads. To the westward, the curve of the
beach is reversed, and the extreme point of the island
ends in a knob having a distinctive hook bent back
on the northern side. Behind the long and narrow
strip of sand there are patches of grass, and much
marsh and meadow, spreading away to the north
ward, and meandering through the marsh can be
traced the crooked little tidal creek and series of
lagoons separating Coney from the mainland. Far
away northward runs the broad tree-bordered Ocean
Parkway, with the hills of Prospect Park and the
tombs and foliage of Greenwood Cemetery hiding
Brooklyn, and closing the view at the distant horizon.
Various railways stretch in the same direction, some
crossing the bogs on extended trestle-bridges. Many
carriages are moving and thousands of people walk-
CONEY ISLAND. 85
ing about in the streets and open spaces beneath us,
while upon the ocean side the piers extend out in
front, with their steamboats sailing to or from the
Narrows to the northward, around the knob and
hook at Norton's Point. Far south over the water,
are the distant Navesink Highlands behind Sandy
Hook and the low adjacent New Jersey Coast, gradu
ally blending into the Staten Island hills to the west
ward. Around from the south to the east is the
broad and limitless expanse of ocean, where, in the
words of Heinrich Heine :
" The cloudlets are lazily sailing
O'er the blue Atlantic sea."
Far to the eastward, seen across the broad Jamaica
Bay, are more low sandy beaches, each with its pop
ular resort, though all pale before the crowning glories
of Coney Island. There is Rockaway, with its iron
pier and railway connecting with the mainland to the
northeast, also Arverne and Edgemere, the distant
cottage-studded Long Beach, and the hazy sand-
beaches of Far Rockaway. And as we gaze over
this wondrous scene down by the water side, the
freshening wind gives a pleasant foretaste of old
ocean, and recalls the invocation of Barry Cornwall :
" The sea ! the sea ! the open sea !
The blue, the fresh, the ever free !
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth's wide regions round.
86 AMEKICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
' ' Fm on the sea ! I'm on the sea !
I am where I would ever be,
With the blue above, and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe'er I go.
" I never was on the dull tame shore,
But I loved the great sea more and more."
THE ENVIRONMENT OF LONG
ISLAND SOUND.
IX.
THE ENVIRONMENT OF LONG ISLAND SOUND.
The Isle of Nassau Captain Adraien Blok Eoodt Eylandt
Block Island Great South Bay Great South Beach Ja
maica Bay Hempstead Bay Fire Island and its Lighthouse
Shinnecock Quogue East Hampton Lyman Beecher
John Howard Payne Garden City Jericho Elias Hicks
Flushing Bay Throgg's Neck Willett's Point Little Neck
Bay Great Neck Sands Point Harbor Hill William Cul-
len Bryant Oyster Bay Lloyds' Neck Nathan Hale
Eonkonkoma Lake The Wampum Makers Mamaroneck
Byram Eiver The Wooden-Nutmeg State Brother Jona
than Greenwich Old Put's Hill Stamford Colonel Abra
ham Davenport The Dark Day Norwalk Sasco Swamp
Fairfield Pequannock Eiver Bridgeport Phineas T. Bar-
num Joyce Heth General Tom Thumb Jenny Lind
Old Stratford Milford New Haven Quinnepiack John
Davenport Yale College Killingworth Elihu Yale-
Steamboat Fulton East and West Eocks The Eegicides
Wallingf ord James Hillhouse Savin Eock Saybrook
Point Guilford Connecticut Eiver The Sachem's Head
Thimble Islands Saybrook Platform Old Saybrook
Thames Eiver New London Groton Silas Deane Fort
Hill Pequot Hill Defeat of the Pequots Pawcatuck
Stonington Watch Hill Point Westerly Orient Point-
Plum Island Plum Gut Shelter Island The Gull Islands
The Horse Eace Fisher's Island Gardiner's Island
Lyon Gardiner Captain Kidd and his Buried Treasures
Sag Harbor Montauk Indians Money Pond Fort Pond
Bay Montauk Point and its Lighthouse Ultima Thule
Isle of Manisees Block Islanders Whittier Palatine
Wreck.
(89)
90 AMEKICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
THE ISLE OF NASSAU.
THE first white man who sailed upon Long Island
Sound was the bluff old Dutch navigator, Captain
Adraien Blok. Desirous of adventure and spoil, he
built upon the shore of the Battery, in 1614, the first
ship ever constructed at New York, a blunt-pointed
Dutch sloop-yacht of sixteen tons, which he named
the " Onrest." The four little huts he had upon the
shore to house his builders and crew were among the
first structures of the early Manhattan colony. Fit
ting her out, he braved the terrors of the Hell Gate
passage and started on a voyage of discovery on Long
Island Sound, which he explored throughout. He
found the mouth of the principal river of New Eng
land, the Connecticut, and coasting around Point Ju
dith, entered Narragansett Bay, and cast anchor be
fore an island with such conspicuously red-clay shores
that he called it Roodt Eylandt, or the Red Island, on
which Newport now stands. Then he ventured out
to sea and found the bluff Sshores of Block Island, to
which he gave his own name. Sated with explora
tion and loaded with spoil exchanged with the In
dians, he then returned to New York and told of his
wonderful adventures. His was the first vessel,
manned by white men, known to have sailed upon
the "Mediterranean of America," as Long Island
Sound is popularly called. This grand inland sea is
generally from twenty to thirty miles wide, and is
THE ISLE OF NASSAU. 91
enclosed by Long Island, the ancient Isle of Nassau
of the Dutch, stretching for one hundred and thirty-
miles eastward from New York harbor, and being
likened to a fish lying upon the water. It has a gen
erally bluff northern shore along the Sound, and the
southern coast, which is low and level almost to the
eastern extremity, lies nearly due east and west, the
island finally breaking into a chain of narrow penin
sulas and islands facing the rising sun. The southern
border is a continuous line of broad lagoons, sepa
rated from the Atlantic by long and narrow sand-bars.
The chief lagoon is the Great South Bay, eighty miles
long, fronted by the curious formation of the Great
South Beach, stretching its entire length, and from
one to five miles wide. Upon the outer beaches, and
within the lagoons, are a succession of noted seashore
resorts. Eastward, beyond Jamaica Bay and Rock-
away, is Long Beach, and behind it Hempstead Bay.
Then come Jones' Beach and Oak Island, with Mas-
sapequa, Amityville and Lindenhurst behind them.
Then we are at Babylon and Bayshore, with the
Great South Bay fronted by Fire Island, and beyond
it the long sand-strip of the Great South Beach.
The famous lighthouse of Fire Island, the guiding
beacon to New York, one hundred and sixty-eight
feet high, is flanked by summer hotels, and its flash
ing electric light of twenty-three million candle-
power is the most powerful on the Atlantic Coast.
The Great South Bay spreads far eastward past
92 AMEKICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
Patchogue to Moriches, and then comes Quogue and
the Hamptons, where the level land rises into the
Shinnecock hills. At the eastern extremity are
Amagansett and Montauk. It is a long coast, fringed
with lights to point the mariner's way into New York
harbor.
They tell us that when the " Onrest " came into
the Sound there were thirteen tribes of Indians on
Long Island, and that it was the mint for the abo
rigines, these tribes being the great makers of wam
pum, the Indian money, for which its beaches and
bays furnished the materials. The Montauks, on
the eastern end, were the most formidable, and were
usually carrying on wars with the Pequots, across
the Sound in New England. Out on Shinnecock
Neck is the reservation where live the small remnant
of the Shinnecock tribe, there being barely a hun
dred of them, each family in a little house on a little
farm it tills. Around Jamaica Bay once lived the
Jameko tribe, all now disappeared. At quaintly
named Quogue, Daniel Webster used to go fishing
and bathing. The hill tops of the Hamptons have
perched upon them the picturesque old Dutch wind
mills which are so attractive to the artists, and at
East Hampton still stands the venerable gabled
house where lived Lyman Beecher in his earlier
ministry, and where his elder children, Catharine and
Edward Beecher, were born. Here also passed his
boyhood, before he began wandering over the earth,
THE NOKTHEKN LONG ISLAND SHOKE. 93
the author of Home, Sweet Home, John Howard
Payne, his father being the village schoolmaster.
Payne's quaint little shingled cottage is East Hamp
ton's most sacred memorial. The inhabitants of East
Hampton are so much in love with their healthy
home, which dates from 1648, that on its two hun
dred and fiftieth anniversary, celebrated in 1898,
the announcement was made that they "like East
Hampton in a thick fog better than any other place
in full sunshine." Eastward from Jamaica, in the
western centre of Long Island, are Creedmoor, the
noted rifle range, Hempstead, where the New York
troops were mobilized in 1898 for the Spanish War,
and Grarden City, the model suburban town laid out
by Alexander T. Stewart, containing a handsome
Episcopal Cathedral. Not far away is Hicksville,
and to the northward the ancient town of Jericho.
This was a tract bought from the Indians by Robert,
the brother of Roger Williams, in 1650, which after
wards became a place of Quaker settlement, and here
lived and preached for sixty years the famous Elias
Hicks, the founder of one of the Quaker sects. He
was an opponent of war and of slavery, and rode all
over the country as a missionary preacher.
THE NORTHERN LONG ISLAND SHORE.
The steamboat entering Long Island Sound from
New York, after passing Hell Gate and crossing
Flushing Bay, emerges from the strait of East River
94 AMEEICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCEIPTIVE.
between Throgg's Neck and Whitestone. Upon the
end of Throgg's Neck, the jutting point has the gray-
stone ramparts and surmounting earthworks of its
ancient guardian, Fort Schuyler. Thrust forward
from the Long Island shore, as if to meet it, is the
protruding headland of Willett's Point, the Govern
ment torpedo station. Here also is an old stone fort
down by the waterside, with the extensive ramparts
of a modern fort on the bluff above. These are the
defensive works commanding the approach to New
York from Long Island Sound. In the neighboring
havens are favorite anchorages for yachts. Beyond
are the expansive waters of the Sound, and far off
southward, thrust into the land, are the deep recesses
of Little Neck Bay, made famous by its clams, and
protected to the eastward by the curiously bifurcated
peninsula of Great Neck. The northern Long Island
shore is very irregular, and rises into hills. Bold
peninsulas and deep bays form it, the surface being
corrugated into hillocks and valleys, and penetrated
by narrow, shallow harbors. The waves of the
Sound have eroded the shores into steep and often
precipitous bluffs of gravel, sometimes rising a hun
dred feet above the water, where narrow beaches,
strewn with boulders, border them. At Sands Point
is a great peninsula protruding in high sandy bluffs,
and behind it is the highest mountain on Long
Island, Harbor Hill, rising three hundred and fifty
feet above the village of Roslyn, at the head of the
William Cullen Bryant at "Cedar-
hurst," l&slyn
A'
N>^*i t
THE NOETHERN LONG ISLAND SHOEE. 95
deeply indented Hempstead Harbor, where lived
at his home of Cedarmere, for many years, Wil
liam Cullen Bryant, who now sleeps in the little
cemetery.
Oyster Bay is deeply indented into the land to the
eastward, surrounded by villas and attractive homes,
and beyond protrudes the broad, high headland of
Lloyds 7 Neck. This was strongly fortified by the
British in the Revolution, and King William IV.,
then the youthful Duke of Clarence, was at one time
an officer of the garrison. It was attacked and cap
tured by the Americans who came over from Con
necticut in 1779, the garrison being taken prisoners.
Subsequently the British again took possession, and
the French from Newport attacked them in 1781,
but were repulsed. The hero of Oyster Bay is
Captain Nathan Hale of Connecticut, whose statue
stands in New York City Hall Park. He had been
sent by Washington in 1776, across the Sound, to
examine the British defenses of Brooklyn, and, re
turning, was captured by some Tories at Oyster Bay,
and the next day hanged in New York as a spy.
Though but twenty-one years old, he met his fate
bravely, saying : " I only regret that I have but one
life to give for my country." The British destroyed
his farewell letters, the provost-marshal saying
" that the rebels should not know they had a man
in their army who could die with so much firmness."
Oyster Bay was bought in 1653 from the Matinecock
96 AMERICA, PICTUKESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
Indians by a Pilgrim colony from Sandwich, Massa
chusetts, and a treaty made at Hartford established
it as the boundary between the Dutch of New York
and the English of New England. To the eastward
are Huntingdon, Setauket and Port Jefferson, popu
lar resorts, and inland are Jerusalem and Islip, the
latter settled and named in the seventeenth century
by emigrants from old Islip, Oxfordshire, England.
Here is the famous Ronkonkoma Lake, so named by
the Indians from the white sand of its shores. It is
a pretty sheet of fresh water among the forests,
about a mile in diameter, of great depth, and has
neither inlet nor outlet, though its surface level regu
larly rises and falls every four years. Here lived
the chief wampum makers, the Secatogue and Patch-
ogue tribes. Their wampum mainly consisted of the
thick blue part of clam shells, ground into the form
of bugle beads, and strung upon cards a foot long.
ENTERING NEW ENGLAND.
Coming out of New York on the northern shore
of Long Island Sound, the land is found to be pro
fusely sprinkled with outcropping rocks, a develop
ment so universal that to one place the Indians gave
the name of Mamaroneck, meaning " the place of
rolling-stones." These rocks are gathered into piles
for fences, which cross the surface in all directions,
and it requires serious effort to till the stony land.
About twenty-five miles from New York is the Byram
ENTEKING NEW ENGLAND. 97
River, the Connecticut boundary, the old saying
being that New England stretches "from Quoddy
Head to Byram River." This original Yankee land,
though the smallest section of the United States, has
made the deepest impress upon the American char
acter. They have not enjoyed the agricultural ad
vantages of other sections, the bleak climate, poor
soil and lavish distribution of rocks and sterility
making farming hard work with meagre results, so
that the chief Yankee energy has been devoted to
the development of manufactures, literature, com
merce and the fisheries ; this wonderful race who
have had to practically live by their wits having ad
mirably succeeded. Crossing Byram River brings
us into the " Land of Steady Habits," Connecticut,
the " Wooden-Nutmeg State," the special home of
" Yankee Notions," which gave the country the
original personation of " Brother Jonathan " in Gov
ernor Jonathan Trumbull, who was so useful to Gen
eral Washington. Consulting him in many emer
gencies, Washington was wont to remark, "Let us
hear what Brother Jonathan says," a phrase finally
popularly adopted by making him the national imper
sonation.
Connecticut has the great Puritan College of the
country Yale ruled by the Congregationalists. It
has varied manufactures, to which its abundant
water-powers contribute, and in which nearly all its
people are engaged, its methods being largely the in-
VOL. 1139
98 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
ventions of its own sons, of whom three are promi
nent Eli Whitney of the cotton-gin, Samuel Colt
of the revolver, and Charles Goodyear of india-
rubber fame. When De Tocqueville was in America,
he was much impressed by the development of the
inventive genius, education and political force of the
State, which he described as a little yellow spot on
the map, and at a dinner he proposed a toast, saying,
in his quaint, broken English : " And now for my
grand sentiment : Connect-de-coot de leetle yellow
spot dat make de clock-peddler, de school-master and
de Senator j de first give you time, de second tell
you what to do with him, and de third make your
law and civilization." Connecticut gets more patents
proportionately than any other State, one to eight
hundred inhabitants being annually granted ; it makes
clocks for all the world, and leads in india-rubber and
elastic goods, in hardware and myriads of " Yankee
notions," besides being well in the front for sewing-
machines, arms and war material. It is named after
the chief New England river, and its rugged surface
is diversified by long ridges of hills and deep valleys,
running generally from north to south, being the pro
longation of mountain ranges and intervales that are
beyond the northern border. The picturesque Hou-
satonic comes from the Massachusetts Berkshire hills
down through the western counties ; the centre is
crossed by the Connecticut Valley, which has great
fertility and beautiful scenery, while in the eastern
ENTERING NEW ENGLAND. 99
section the Quinnebaug River makes a deep valley,
and, flowing into the Thames, seeks the Sound at
New London. These many hills make many streams,
all having water-powers, around which cluster nu
merous busy factories.
The southwestern town of Connecticut is Green
wich, and in front Greenwich Point is thrust out into
the Sound, while, as the Yankee land is entered by
railway, on a high hill stands the Puritan outpost,
seen from afar a stately graystone Congregational
Church with its tall spire. The ancient Greenwich
village was built on the hillside at Horse Neck, and
it was here, in 1779, that General Putnam swiftly
galloped down the rude rocky stairway leading from
the old church, to get away from the British dra
goons, on what has since been known as " Old Put's
Hill," and they were too much astonished either to
chase or shoot him. Beyond is Stamford, a busy
factory town, where lived in the eighteenth century
Colonel Abraham Davenport, described as "a man
of stern integrity and generous benevolence." He
was a legislator, and when, on May 19, 1780, the
memorable " Dark Day " came in New England,
some one, fearing it was the day of judgment, pro
posed that the House adjourn. Davenport opposed
it, saying, " The day of judgment is either approach
ing, or it is not ; if it is, I choose to be found doing
my duty ; I wish therefore that candles may be
brought." This scene has been immortalized by
100 AMEKICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
Whittier. The town of Norwalk is beyond, another
nest of busy mills, spreading upward on the hill-
slopes from the Sound. The original settlers bought
from the Indians in 1640 a tract extending "one
day's north walk " from the Sound, and hence the
name. Fine oysters are gathered in the spacious
bay, and the people make shoes and hats, locks and
door-knobs. On the lowlands to the eastward the
Pequot Indian nation, once ruling all this part of
New England, the name meaning " the destroyers,"
was finally overpowered in 1637 by the Colonial
troops in the Sasco Swamp, now a cultivated farm,
with almost the only highly fertile land seen in the
immediate region. Most of the Pequots were cap
tured and sold as slaves in the West Indies. Beyond
is tranquil Fairneld, embowered in trees and intro
duced by a rubber-factory, its green-bordered streets
lined with cottages, and church-spires rising among
the groves, while along the shore it has the finest
beach on Long Island Sound.
BRIDGEPORT, OLD STRATFORD AND MILFORD.
Pequannock, the "dark river" of the Indians,
flows out of the hills to an inlet of the Sound, where
the enormous mills of the active city of Bridgeport
have gathered a population of over fifty thousand
people, in a hive containing some of the world's
greatest establishments for constructing sewing-ma
chines and firearms, building carriages, and making
BEIDGEPOET OLD STEATFOED MILFOED. 101
cutlery, corsets and soaps, while other goods also
occupy attention. The grand Seaside Park esplanade
overlooks the harbor, and towards the north the city
stretches up the slopes into Golden Hill, named from
its glittering mica deposits, where magnificent streets
display splendid buildings. When the Pequots were
exterminated in 1637, colonists founded this town,
gradually crowding the Paugusset Indians, who
owned the land, into a small reservation on Golden
Hill. The great establishments to-day are the
Wheeler and Wilson and Howe Se wing-Machine
Works, Sharp's Rifle Factory and the Union Metal
lic Cartridge Company ; and Bridgeport is also the
headquarters of the chief American circus. The
stately and high-towered mansion of Waldemere
fronts the park, and was the home of Bridgeport's
best-known townsman, the veteran showman, Phineas
T. Barnum. Born in Connecticut, at Bethel, in
1810, he died at Bridgeport in 1891. He first de
veloped the financial advantages of amusing the pub
lic, and possibly humbugging them on a grand scale,
and by working upon his oft-quoted theory that " the
people liked to be humbugged," twice amassed a
large fortune. In early life he wandered over the
country earning a precarious livelihood in various
occupations, and in Philadelphia in 1834 began his
career as a showman. He bought for $1000 a
colored slave-woman, Joyce Heth, represented to be
the nurse of George Washington and one hundred
102 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
and sixty-one years old. From her exhibition his
receipts reached $1500 a week, and she died the
next year. In 1842 he began exhibiting Charles S.
Stratton, " General Tom Thumb," a native of Bridge
port, born in 1832, whose size and growth were as
usual until his seventh month, when he had a stature
of twenty-eight inches, and ceased to grow. Barnum
exhibited him in the United States, France and Eng
land, and attracted world-wide notoriety. Barnum
started the American fashion of paying extravagant
sums to opera-singers, in 1849 engaging Jenny Lind
to sing at one hundred and fifty concerts in America
for $1000 a night, the gross receipts of a nine months'
tour being $712,000. He subsequently had his for
tune swept away through endorsing $1,000,000 notes
for a manufacturing establishment that went down in
the panic of 1857. His fortunes were revived, how
ever j he had museums in the leading cities, and in
his later life had the " Greatest Show on Earth,"
which set out every spring from Bridgeport. Tom
Thumb in 1863 married Lavinia Warren of Middle-
boro', Massachusetts, a dwarf like himself, and he
died in 1882.
To the eastward a short distance, and in sharp
contrast with active Bridgeport, is quiet old Strat
ford, with Stratford Point protruding in front into the
Sound, at the entrance of the stately and placid
Housatonic, which comes down through the meadow-
land just beyond the village. Here there are neither
BRIDGEPORT OLD STRATFORD MILFORD. 103
watering-place hotel nor busy factory to disturb the
ancient order of things, encumber the greensward, or
encroach upon the sleepy and comfortable houses,
where one may dream away in the twilight, under
the shade of grand trees that are even older than the
town. Stratford is much the same now as when set
tled by a Puritan colony from Massachusetts in 1639,
the leader and pastor being Adam Blackman, whom
Cotton Mather called " a Nazarite purer than snow
and whiter than milk." Across the patches of marsh
land, adjoining the Housatonic, is Milford, its half-
mile-long stretch of village green neatly enclosed,
and its houses upon the bank of the silvery Wap-o-
wang, back of which spread the wide streets lined by
rows of overarching elms. A colony from Milford
in England settled here in 1639 and soon crowded
the Indians off the land, establishing the primitive
church, which was the usual beginning of New
England settlements. Then, true to the Ameri
can instinct, they proceeded to hold a convention,
the result being the adoption of the following plat
form :
Voted, That the earth is the Lord's and the ful
ness thereof.
Voted, That the earth is given to the saints.
Voted, That we are the saints.
They had a good deal of trouble afterwards, both
with the Dutch from New York and the Indians, but
the saints ultimately possessed the earth in peace,
104 AMERICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
and their successors are now making straw hats for
the country.
THE CITY OF ELMS.
The city of New Haven, the most populous in
Connecticut, having a hundred thousand people, is
built upon a plain, surrounded by hills, at the head
of a deep bay extending several miles northward
from Long Island Sound. The magnificent elms,
arching over the streets and the Public Green, and
grandly rising in stately rows, make the earliest and
the deepest impression upon the visitor. In one of
his most eloquent passages, Henry Ward Beecher
said that the elms of New England are as much a
part of her beauty as the columns of the Parthenon
were the glory of its architecture. The grand foliage-
arched avenues of New Haven are unsurpassed else
where, so that they are the crowning glory as well
as the constant care of the townsfolk. Among the
finest is the avenue separating the Yale College
grounds from the Public Green a magnificent
Gothic aisle of the richest foliage-covered interlacing
boughs. The Indian name for the region round
about New Haven was Quinnepiack, and the placid
Quinnepiack River, coming from the northward,
flows through a deep valley past the towering East
Rock into the harbor. Old John Davenport was the
leader and first pastor of the infant colony that set
tled here. He was a powerful Anglican parish pastor
of London who had joined the Puritans, and in 1637
THE CITY OF ELMS. 105
was forced to leave for New England with many of
his people. They spent a year in Boston, but in
April, 1638, sailed around Cape Cod to the Sound,
and landed at Quinnepiack, where they laid out a
town plan with nine squares for buildings, surround
ing a large central square, the Public Green. At
the foundation, Davenport delivered a most impres
sive sermon from the text, "Wisdom hath builded
her house ; she hath hewn out her seven pillars ;"
and from this came the original scheme of govern
ment for the colony by the seven leading church
members, who were known as the " seven pillars."
The colony got on well with the Indians, who re
vered Davenport, calling him " so big study man."
They bought the whole tract of one hundred and
thirty square miles from the Indians for thirteen
coats. At first, however, they did not prosper, their
trading ventures proving unfortunate, and they de
termined to abandon the place and remove elsewhere,
selecting Jamaica, and afterwards Galloway in Ire
land. The ship carrying their prospectors to Ireland
sailed in January, 1647, but was never heard from
afterwards, save when, as the legend has it, "the
spectre of the ship sailed into the harbor in the teeth
of a head-wind, and when in full view of the anxious
people, it slowly melted into thin air and vanished."
Then they decided to remain, and getting on better,
in 1665 united their plantation with that of Connec
ticut at Hartford, under the condition that each
106 AMERICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
should be a capital, a compact observed until 1874,
when Hartford was made the sole capital. The
British in July, 1779, attacked and partly burnt and
plundered the town, the Americans galling them by
desultory attacks as they passed through the streets.
They captured Rev. Naphtali Daggett, President of
Yale College, musket in hand, and with repeated
bayonet-thrusts forced him to guide them. When he
was wearied and sore from wounds they asked,
" Will you fight again ?" He sturdily answered, " I
rather believe I shall if I have an opportunity."
Being forced to pray for the King, he did it thus :
" Lord, bless thy servant King George, and grant
him wisdom, for thou knowest, O Lord, he needs
it."
The great fame of New Haven comes from Yale
College, having two hundred and fifty instructors
and over twenty-five hundred students, the orthodox
Congregational University of New England, which
for two centuries has exerted a most advantageous
and widely diffused influence upon the American in
tellectual character, and around it and its multitude
of buildings of every kind clusters the town. In the
year 1700 ten clergymen planned to have a college
in the colony of Connecticut, and for the purpose
contributed as many books as they could spare for its
library. In 1701 it was chartered, and began in a
very small way at Saybrook, at the mouth of Con
necticut River, during the first year having only one
THE CITY OF ELMS. 107
student. The pastor of the adjacent village of Kil-
lingworth was placed in charge, and for several
years the students went there to him, though the
commencements were held at Say brook, and in 1707
the college was located at Saybrook. Subsequently,
for a more convenient location, it was removed to
New Haven, the first commencement being held
there in 1718, and its first building being named
Yale College, in honor of Elihu Yale, a native of the
town, born in 1648, who went abroad, and afterwards
became Governor of the East India Company. He
made at different times gifts of books and money
amounting to about five hundred pounds sterling, the
benefactions being of greater value because of their
timeliness. His name was afterwards adopted in the
incorporation of the university. Timothy Dwight
and Theodore D. Woolsey were perhaps the greatest
Presidents of Yale, and among its graduates were
Jonathan Edwards, Eli Whitney, Samuel F. B.
Morse, Benjamin Silliman, Noah Webster, John C.
Calhoun, J. Fenimore Cooper, James Kent, William
M. Evarts, John Pierpont and Samuel J. Tilden.
The College buildings are of various ages and styles
of architecture, the original ones being the plain
" Old Brick Row " on College Street, northwest of
the Public Green, behind which what was formerly
a large open space has been gradually covered with
more modern structures. The line of ancient build
ings facing the Green has a venerable and scholarly
108 AMERICA, PICTUKESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
aspect, stretching broadly across the greensward,
fronted by noble elms arranged in quadruple lines
along the street. One of these houses, Connecticut
Hall, was built with money raised by a lottery, and
from the proceeds of a French prize-ship in the
colonial wars, when Connecticut aided the King
by equipping a frigate. There are on the cam
pus statues of the first rector, Abraham Pierson,
President Woolsey and Professor Silliman. Vari
ous elaborate buildings are also upon adjacent
grounds, such as the Peabody Museum, the Sheffield
Scientific School, of four halls ; the Divinity Halls,
Observatory, Laboratory and Gymnasium, while the
entrance to the campus from the Public Green is by
an imposing tower-gateway known as Phelps Hall.
The Peabody Museum has one of the best natural-
history collections in the country, and the College
Library approximates three hundred thousand vol
umes. Besides the Academic Department, Yale has
schools of Science, Law, Medicine, Theology and the
Fine Arts, and its properties and endowments ex
ceed $10,000,000, the grounds occupying nine acres.
NEW HAVEN ATTRACTIONS.
But New Haven is much more than Yale College.
It is a great hive of industry, manufacturing all
kinds of a Yankee notions," with agricultural ma
chinery, corsets, scales, organs, pianos, carriages,
hardware and other things, and it has a large com-
NEW HAVEN ATTEACTIONS. 109
merce along the coast and with the West Indies. It
was to New Haven that the first steamboat navigat
ing Long Island Sound went from New York in
March, 1815, the Fulton, which occupied eleven
hours in going there, and fifteen hours in returning
two days later, being delayed by fog, subsequently,
however, making the trip in less time. This boat
was constructed by Kobert Fulton, and carried a
figure-head of him on her bow. She was one hun
dred and thirty-four feet long, and of three hundred
and twenty-seven tons, built with a keel like a ship,
having a sloop bow, and being rigged with one mast
and sails to accelerate her speed. She was managed
by Elihu S. Bunker, and her ability to pass through
Hell Gate against a tide running six miles an hour
was regarded as one of the marvels of that time.
The New York Evening Post of March 25, 1815,
describing her, said, " We have been assured that
this establishment has cost $90,000, and we believe
it may with truth be affirmed that there is not in the
whole world such accommodations afloat as the Ful
ton affords. Indeed, it is hardly possible to conceive
that anything of the kind can exceed her in elegance
and convenience." Many were the races she had
with the " packet-sloops " that plied on the Sound
and often beat her, when the wind was fair.
There are tastefully adorned suburbs surrounding
New Haven, where the hills afford charming pros
pects. The two great attractions, however, are the
110 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
bold and impressive promontories known as the East
and West Rocks, which are high buttresses of trap
rock, lifting themselves from the plain on each side
of the town in magnificent opposition, and rising four
hundred feet. The geologists say they were driven
up through the other strata, and some people think
these grim precipices in remote ages may have sen
tinelled the outflow of the Connecticut River, be
tween their broad and solid bases, to the Sound.
Each tremendous cliff is the termination of a long
mountain range coming down from the far North.
The Green Mountain prolongation, stretching through
ridges southward from Vermont, is represented in
the West Rock, while the East Rock terminates the
Mount Tom range, through which the Connecticut
River breaks its passage in Massachusetts, and part
of which rises a thousand feet in the " Blue Hills of
Southington," which are the most elevated portion of
Connecticut. Thus projected out upon the plain,
almost to Long Island Sound, the summits of these
two huge rocks afford grand views. In the Judge's
Cave, a small cleft in a group of boulders on the
West Rock, the three regicides, Groffe, Whalley and
Dixwell were in hiding for some time in 1661, and
the three streets leading out to this rock from the
city are named after them. It is recorded that a
man living about a mile away took them food until
one night a catamount looked in on them, and
"blazed his eyes in such a frightful manner as
NEW HAVEN ATTEACTIONS. Ill
greatly to terrify them." DixwelFs bones repose upon
the Public Green at the back of the " Centre Church/ 7
which stands in the row of three churches occupying
the middle of the Green that was the graveyard of
colonial New Haven, and Whalley is buried nearby.
There is a grand approach to the East Rock, which
is elevated high above the marshy valley of Mill
River, winding about its base, and upon the topmost
crag is a noble monument reared to the soldiers who
fell in the Civil War. The whole surface of the
East Rock is a park, and upon the face of the cliff
the perpendicular strata of reddish-brown trap stand
bolt upright. From this elevated outpost there is a
charming view over the town spreading upon the flat
plain, and the little harbor stretching down to the
Sound 5 and beyond, across the silvery waters, can be
traced the hazy hills of Long Island, twenty-five
miles away. Two little crooked rivers come out of
the deep valleys on either side of the great rock,
winding through the town to the harbor, while all
about, the country is dotted with flourishing villages.
Among them is Wallingford, to which the railway
leads northeast amid meadows and brickyards until it
reaches the high hill, whose church-towers watch
over the population, largely composed of plated-ware
makers. When this town was founded, John Daven
port came out from New Haven and preached the
initial sermon from the appropriate text, " My be
loved hath a vineyard on a very fruitful hill."
112 AMEEICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCEIPTIVE.
Hillhouse Avenue, a broad and beautiful elm-
shaded street bordered by fine mansions, leads out to
the " Sachem's Wood," which was the home of the
Hillhouses, of whom James Hillhouse was the great
Connecticut Senator after the Revolution. His re
mains repose in the old Grove Street Burying-
Ground, where rest many other famous men of the
Academic City, among them Timothy Dwight, Ly-
man Beecher, Samuel F. B. Morse, Benjamin Silli-
man, Elbridge Gerry, Roger Sherman, of whom Jef
ferson wrote that he " never said a foolish thing in
his life," Eli Whitney, and Noah Webster, who, be
fore he compiled his famous dictionary, had published
the " Elementary Spelling Book," which had a sale
of fifty millions of copies. The New Haven City
Hall, fronting the Green, is one of the finest munici
pal buildings in New England. The three churches
occupying the centre of the Green are the North, the
Centre, and Trinity churches, the first two Congrega-
tionalist and the last Episcopal, the row presenting a
curiously quaint and ancient appearance. The favorite
resort of the people of New Haven is Savin Rock, a
promontory four miles away, pushing a rocky front to
the Sound at the end of a long sandy beach, and hav
ing a good view, being located westward from the har
bor entrance.
OLD SAYBROOK.
The Connecticut River flows into Long Island
Sound thirty-three miles east of New Haven at Say-
OLD SAYBEOOK. 113
brook Point. Between is the venerable village of
Guilford, where Fitz Greene Halleck was born, and
where the three regicides were also for some time hid
den. Out in front is the bold and picturesque Sachem's
Head, which got its name from a tragedy of the Pe-
quot War in 1637. The Mohican chief Uncas pur
sued a Pequot warrior out on this point, and shoot
ing him, put his head in the fork of an oak tree,
where it remained many years. The group of
Thimble Islands are off shore, having been repeat
edly dug over by deluded individuals searching for
the buried treasures of Captain Kidd. Saybrook
Point was the place of earliest settlement in Connec
ticut. The first English patent for lands on these
coasts was granted to Lord Saye and Seal and Lord
Brooke, and the colony was given their double name.
The original settlement was planned with great care,
as it was expected to become the home of noted men,
and a fort was built on an isolated hill at the river's
mouth. According to the British historian, it was to
Saybrook that Cromwell, Pym ? Hampden and Hasel-
rig, with their party of malcontents, intended to emi
grate when they were stopped by the order of King
Charles I. Had this migration been made, it might
have greatly changed the subsequent momentous
events in England ending with the execution of that
king. A little westward of the old colonial fort
guarding the river entrance, a public square was laid
out, where, according to the town plan, their houses
VOL. II. -40
114 AMEKICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCEIPTIVE.
were to have been built. The first Yale College at
Saybrook was a narrow one-story house eighty feet
long, and looking much like a ropewalk, which was
afterwards removed, with the college, to New Haven.
Its founders were pious men, who in 1708 drew up
the celebrated " Saybrook Platform," with a declara
tion that " the churches must have a public profes
sion of faith, agreeable to which the instruction of
the college shall be conducted."
The ancient fort at Saybrook, built by Plymouth
people in 1635, stood upon a steep and solitary knoll
near the Connecticut River, which in 1872 was car
ried off bodily by a railroad to make embankments
across the adjacent lowlands. The earliest governor
of the colony came out in 1636, Colonel Fen wick,
afterwards one of the regicide judges. Old Saybrook
is now a quiet village, chiefly spread along one hand
some wide street, canopied over by the arching
branches of its stately elms, under which the distant
vista view looks almost like a scene through a veri
table foliage tunnel. The broad Connecticut flows in
front, back and forth with the tide from the Sound,
its restfulness in keeping with the ancient town, as
yet uninvaded by business bustle or manufacturing
energy. The Saybrook fort repelled the Pequots in
1637 ; and afterwards, in the Connecticut boundary
disputes with the Dutch at New York, the latter, ac
cording to the veracious chronicler, marched against
it "brimful of wrath and cabbage," but seeing it
THE THAMES TO THE PAWCATUCK. 115
would be stoutly defended, he adds that "they
thought best to desist before attacking." The Brit
ish captured it in 1814, and ascending the river in a
sudden raid, destroyed a large number of vessels.
THE THAMES TO THE PAWCATUCK.
The river Thames, coming down out of the hills
and receiving the Quinnebaug, flows into the Sound
twenty miles east of the Connecticut, and here is
the pleasant city of New London, with about fifteen
thousand people. Thus the early settlers renewed in
the New England colony the names of old London and
Father Thames, replacing the original Indian titles
of Pequot for the town and Mohegan for the river.
New London is built on a hillside, famous for com
fortable old mansions and noble trees on the hilly
streets, running down the declivity to the harbor, in
the upper part of which is a navy yard. On either
side of the harbor entrance are the gray walls and
grassy mounds of the ancient defensive works, Forts
Griswold and Trumbull, which got their chief scars
during the Revolution. The most sacred New Lon
don memory is of Nathan Hale, who lived there, his
little house being preserved as a relic. The Thames
is a fine estuary, and upon it are sailed the great
Yale and Harvard boat-races. New London was the
headquarters of the Connecticut navy during the
Revolution, a fleet of twenty-six vessels. After Ar
nold's treason, he came in September, 1780, with
116 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
ships and a large force of troops, captured Fort
Trumbull and burnt the town. Afterwards they at
tacked Fort Griswold across the river, losing large
numbers in storming it, and when the garrison had
surrendered they were massacred. A fine granite
Obelisk contains the names of the slain, and bears
the inscription : " Zebulon and Naphtali were a
people that jeoparded their lives till death in the high
places of the Lord." The people of New London go
down to the Sound for recreation and clam-bakes,
the wide-spreading beaches having numerous hotels
and summer cottages. All this region in the early
times was the home of the Niantic Indians, a clan of
the Narragansetts, their sachem being Ninigret, the
brother of Canonicus and uncle of Miantonomoh,
whose names are preserved in powerful American
warships.
Beyond the Thames is Groton, known as the home
of Silas Deane, the early American diplomatist, a
.hilly township, with little good soil. On its verge
are Fort Hill, where Sassacus, the sachem of the
Pequots, had his royal fortress, and Mystic, with the
popular resort of Mystic Island just off shore. To
the northward of Mystic is Pequot Hill, where Colonel
Mason attacked that tribe in May, 1637. He had
marched out of Rhode Island with ninety English
and over four hundred Mohicans and Narragansetts
under the sachems Uncas and Miantonomoh, but
when they arrived at the Pequot stronghold, the In-
THE THAMES TO THE PAWCATUCK. 117
dian allies were afraid to attack and drew off. Noth
ing daunted, Mason and his colonial soldiers pre
pared to do the work alone, and as a preliminary
knelt down in prayer. At the sight of this, another
sachem, Wequash, who had been their guide, was
amazed and asked an explanation, and when he un
derstood it, became so impressed that he was con
verted, afterwards preaching throughout New Eng
land. Mason and his men assaulted the stronghold
in the darkness, and got inside the palisades, but
being overwhelmed by the superior numbers, fell
back after setting fire to the wigwams. The fire
compelled the Pequots to flee, and then the English
and friendly Indians surrounded the hill and shot
down the fugitives, there being six hundred Pequots
shot or burnt, this being the death-blow to the tribe.
Old Cotton Mather, who recorded it, wrote : " It was
a fearful sight to see them frying in the fire, and the
streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible
was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory
seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise
thereof to God." Sassacus, from Fort Hill, sent re
inforcements, but they were too late, although they
harassed Mason's retreat, and Sassacus was soon
forced also to flee, the remnant of the Pequot tribe
being killed or captured in Sasco Swamp.
This region was Pawcatuck, and its chief town
now is Stonington, built on a fine harbor, near the
Rhode Island boundary, which is protected by the
118 AMERICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
protruding arm of Watch Hill Point, the whole coast
thereabout being filled with summer hotels and cot
tages. Stonington is on a narrow rocky peninsula,
and of this town, in the early part of the nineteenth
century, President D wight of Yale College wrote,
referring to its reputation, that " Stonington and all
its vicinity suffers in religion from the nearness of
Rhode Island." The place was bombarded for three
days, in 1814, by a British fleet, but all attempts to
land were successfully repulsed. Watch Hill Point
is a high bold promontory, with sand beaches stretch
ing both ways and hooking around westward so as to
enclose Stonington harbor. To the eastward is
Westerly on the Pawcatuck River, noted for its fine
granite quarries and textile factories.
EASTERN LONG ISLAND.
From the Long Island shore, opposite the mouth
of Connecticut River, there protrudes northeastward
an elongated and almost bisected peninsula, ending in
Orient Point. The eastern end of Long Island di
vides into two arms, this being the northern one,
having at its outer extremity Plum Island, the pas
sage between being the famous " Plum Gut," a short
cut occasionally taken by cunning yachtsmen racing
around Long Island. Orient Point was originally the
" Oyster Pond Point," its name having been modern
ized, and Plum Island, covering more than a square
mile, is said to have been bought from the Indians by
EASTERN LONG ISLAND. 119
the first colonists in 1667 for a hundred fish-hooks
and a barrel of biscuit. A succession of islands
stretches out from it over northeastward towards the
Khode Island shore, and these guard the entrance to
the Sound. The southern arm of Long Island ex
tends much farther eastward than the northern one,
and ends in Montauk Point. Enclosed between these
branching peninsulas is Shelter Island, thus appro
priately named from its well protected harbors. It
is a delicious island, about four by six miles in ex
tent, picturesque and irregular in outline, having
cliffs and promontories dropping off into tiny coves
and bays with little beaches, their shores rich with
the attractions that shells and sea mosses give. In
the interior are rolling hills and fresh-water ponds.
Out in front on either hand are the blue waters of
Peconic and Gardiner's Bays, with the broad Atlantic
beyond. This island was the home of the Manhasset
Indians, and that was its early name. To its hospit
able shores fled some of the persecuted Quakers of
New England, when driven out by the Puritans, the
settlement being made as early as 1652. The
records tell that in the eighteenth century George
Whitefield came and preached here with such fervor
and success that he was constrained to ask, "And is
Shelter Island become a Patmos ?" It is in a delight
ful location, and from the breezy hill-tops which have
a grand outlook over the azure waters there can be
seen a vision
120 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
" of islands that together lie
As quietly as spots of sky
Amongst the evening clouds."
The array of islands guarding the entrance to the
Sound beyond Plum Island begins with Great Gull
and Little Gull Islands, the latter marking the edge
of the " Horse Race," as the rapid tidal current in
and out of the Sound between Little Gull and
Fisher's Island is called. This Race is off the
mouth of the Thames River, beyond which is Fisher's
Island, nearer the Connecticut shore, an island nine
miles long, and forming a sort of barrier protecting
the Thames entrance from the ocean storms. This
elongated island, covering about twelve square miles,
was originally " Ye Governour's Farme of Fyscher's
Island," owned by Governor John Winthrop of Con
necticut, to whom it was granted in 1668, remaining
in his family for two centuries, when a wealthy New
Yorker bought it for a stock-farm. The adjacent
waters are now a favorite locality for United States
naval evolutions. To the eastward of Shelter Island,
and lying in front of Gardiner's Bay, is Gardiner's
Island, covering about six square miles, and having
a long protruding northern point stretching up to
wards Plum Island. This island was the Indian
Monchonock, and Lyon Gardiner, the first English
man who settled anywhere in the State of New York,
came along in 1639, and bought it from them for
some rum and blankets, a gun and a large black dog,
EASTEKN LONG ISLAND. 121
and his descendants have since been the owners. He
was a veteran of Cromwell's wars, and always had
the confidence of the Indians. Gardiner's Island was
a favorite resort of the noted freebooter Captain
Kidd, and while thousands of people at many places
have at various times searched for his buried treas
ures, this is the only place that anything was ever
found. Kidd was the son of a Scottish clergyman,
became a mariner, and was sent from New York in
an armed vessel to chase the pirates off the coast.
Succeeding admirably, he was placed at the head of
a new ship, the "Adventure," with one hundred and
fifty men, and sent to chastise the freebooters in the
East Indies. But after rounding the Cape of Good
Hope and entering the Indian Ocean he turned pirate
himself, crossing the Indian and Pacific Oceans,
rounding Cape Horn, sailing up the Atlantic, and
sweeping the West Indies. In two years he circum
navigated the world, became the most famous pirate
in history, and landed at Gardiner's Island, burying
his treasures. He was afterwards captured in Bos
ton and sent to London, where he was hanged in 1701
on a charge of murder. The Earl of Bellamont,
Governor of Massachusetts, took from Kidd part of
his plunder, and learning the hiding-place on Gardi
ner's Island, had the locality dug up, recovering gold,
silver, jewels and merchandise, valued at $70,000.
Kidd's exploits are commemorated in a song which
is of world- wide renown, thus beginning :
122 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
"I'll sing you a song that you'll wonder to hear,
Of a freebooter, lucky and bold
Of old Captain Kidd of the man without fear,
How himself to the devil he sold.
" His ship was a trim one as ever did swim,
His comrades were hearty and brave,
Twelve pistols he carried, that freebooter grim,
And he fearlessly ploughed the wild wave."
To the southward of Shelter Island, on the south
ern peninsula of Long Island, is the well-protected
roadstead of Sag Harbor, formerly a famous whaling
port, but most of its maritime glory has departed.
Massachusetts fishermen first settled the place, and it
had at one time a fleet of over forty whale ships,
earning $1,000,000 a year; but the California gold-
hunting fever in 1849-50 is said to have diverted its
mariners and began the paralysis of this industry,
which subsequently died out almost everywhere. It
has about two thousand people, and its admirable situa
tion has made it an attractive summer resort, while it
is also developing some manufactures. On the penin
sula to the southward are perched various old-time
windmills, with their broad gyrating sails, in the wide-
spreading land of the Hamptons. Far to the east
ward the peninsula stretches out to Montauk Point,
the end of Long Island. Here is the reservation of
the remnant of the Montauk Indians, their name
meaning the " Fort Country," as they were the most
powerful tribe on the island, and made some defenses
in their hilly region. The Sachem Wyandance who
EASTEKN LONG ISLAND. 123
was at their head when the white men came, in the
seventeenth century, was wise and sagacious, and be
came their firm ally, fighting the Pequots and their
other enemies. In all the adjacent waters vast num
bers of menhaden are caught. Here was located the
camp, in 1898, where the American troops returning
from the torrid heats and malaria of the Cuban-Span
ish war recuperated, over thirty thousand men being
cared for previously to discharge. Captain Kidd was
at one time around here also, and is supposed to have
sunk bags of treasure in one of the little lakes, which
has since been called Money Pond, but none was ever
found there. Fort Pond Bay, a spacious harbor on
the northern side of Montauk Point, has been often
suggested as a haven for transatlantic steamers, being
safe and commodious. The plan suggested is to
bring the passengers by fast railway trains from
New York. Out on the eastern rocky buttress of
Montauk Point is the tall white lighthouse tower,
containing a most powerful Fresnel light, the gift of
the French Government, visible for twenty miles at
sea, its intense white light varied by occasional
flashes. This is the guiding beacon of the eastern
extremity of Long Island, and the solid buttress on
which it stands Mrs Sigourney calls
" Ultima Thule of this ancient isle,
Against whose breast the everlasting surge,
Long travelling on and ominous of wrath,
Forever beats."
124 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
THE ISLE OF MANISEES.
Fifteen miles northeast of Montauk Point, out in
the ocean, is Block Island, lying midway between the
extremity of Long Island and Point Judith, on the
western side of the entrance to Narragansett Bay. It
is about eight miles long, with a prominent white
light for a beacon on each end, north and south, and
is a curious isolated place amid the rolling waves of
the Atlantic. Its balmy climate and equable tempera
ture have made it a favorite summer resort, being
popularly called the " Bermuda of the North," while
some of its admirers say it is destined to become the
American Isle of Wight. It was known to the In
dians as Manisees, the " Isle of the Little God," and
when the whites first came, its aboriginal people were
great wampum makers. The Puritans campaigned
on the island, defeating the Indians, and in 1638
they sent sixty feet of wampum to Boston for tribute,
but the English did not permanently settle there till
1661. It is an elongated island, with high bold
shores, abrupt hills, narrow valleys and sundry ponds,
one, the " Great Salt Pond," near its centre, being
of considerable size. The surface, however, is en
tirely destitute of trees, and the only harbor is behind
the protecting refuge of a breakwater, built some time
ago by the Government. As the ocean waves are
always buffeting and washing away the shores, its
ultimate total disappearance is predicted, but this im-
THE ISLE OF MANISEES. 125
pending fate is said not to seriously alarm the in
habitants, who are, by the way, almost all Baptists.
Until recently, so little was actually known of these
Block Island folk, who were nearly all born there,
and relatives, that a strong belief was prevalent on
the adjacent mainland that the genuine native Block
Islanders had only one eye apiece. They are strange
and antiquated, and many of the old people have
never been off the island. Some of them recall as a
wonderful journey taken years ago, in early youth,
how they ventured so far away from home as to sail
" across to the Continent," as they call the remainder
of the United States. They gather sea-weed, which
brings them quite a revenue, and dig peat, which is
largely used for fuel. Their little stone-walled fields,
ancient windmills and lily-strewn ponds are pictur
esque, and their ancestors are buried in the ancient
burying-ground, which visitors find interesting, and
then climb Beacon Hill to get a view that is unique in
being an almost complete circle of the sea. This attrac
tive place, swept by ocean breezes, is the eastern out
post of Long Island, and no better idea of it has ever
been given than by Whittier's poem on the Palatine
wreck, opening by describing Block Island :
" Leagues north, as fly the gull and auk,
Point Judith watches with eye of hawk ;
Leagues south, thy beacon flames, Montauk !
"Lonely and wind-shorn, wood-forsaken,
With never a tree for Spring to waken,
For tryst of lovers or farewells taken,
126 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
"Circled by waters that never freeze,
Beaten by billow and swept by breeze,
Lieth the island of Manisees,
"Set at the mouth of the Sound to hold
The coast lights up on its turret old,
Yellow with moss and sea-fog mould.
" Dreary the land when gust and sleet
At its doors and windows howl and beat,
And Winter laughs at its fires of peat !
" But in summer-time, when pool and pond,
Held in the laps of valleys fond,
Are blue as the glimpses of sea beyond ;
"When the hills are sweet with brier-rose,
And, hid in the warm, soft dells, unclose
Flowers the mainland rarely knows ;
"When boats to their morning fishing go,
And, held to the wind and slanting low,
Whitening and darkening, the small sails show,
" Then is that lonely island fair ;
And the pale health-seeker findeth there
The wine of life in its pleasant air.
"No greener valleys the sun invite,
On smoother beaches no sea-birds light,
No blue waves shatter to foam more white 1"
ASCENDING THE HUDSON RIVER.
ASCENDING THE HUDSON RIVER.
Hudson River Scenery Fort Washington Fort Lee The Pali
sades Piermont Greenwood Lake Tuxedo Lake Font
Hill Yonkers Philipse Manor Mary Philipse Hastings
Dobbs's Ferry Tappan Zee The Flying Dutchman
Tarrytown Andre" and Arnold Tappan Irvington Sun-
nyside Washington Irving The Sleepy Hollow Ichabod
Crane Point-no- Point Rockland Lake Sing-Sing Croton
Point Haverstraw Bay Stony Point Treason Hill Ver-
planck's Point The Highlands The Donderberg and its
Goblin Peekskill Anthony' s Nose lona Island West
Point Forts Clinton and Montgomery Sugar Loaf Moun
tain Buttermilk Falls Constitution Island Susan Warner
General Kosciusko Beverly House Arnold's Treason
Old Cro' Nest Flirtation Walk The Storm King Mount
Taurus Joseph Rodman Drake The Culprit Fay Cornwall
Fishkill Newburg Bay Newburg and Washington's
Headquarters Ural Knapp The Tower of Victory Enoch
Crosby, the Spy The Devil's Dance Chamber The Long
Reach Poughkeepsie Lakes Mohonk and Minnewaska
Vassar College Crom Elbow Rondout Kingston Esopus
Rhinebeck and Rhinecliff Ellerslie Rokeby Wilders-
cliff Montgomery Place Plattekill Clove Saugerties Liv
ingston Manor Clermont Chancellor Livingston Fulton's
First Steamboat Catskill Mountains Natty Bumppo Rip
Van Winkle Slide Mountain Kaaterskill Clove Kaaters-
kiU Falls Haines's Falls The Big Indian City of Hudson
The Dutch New Lebanon The Shakers Mother Ann
Lee Kinderhook Stuyvesant Landing Martin Van Buren
Schodack The Mohicans Beeren Island The Overslaugh
The Patroons The Van Rensselaers The Anti-Rent War
Albany New York State Capitol Albany Medical Col-
VOL. II. 41 ( 129 )
130 AMERICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCEIPTIVE.
lege Calvin Edson Albany Academy Prof. Joseph Henry
Dudley Observatory Van Rensselaer Mansion Vander-
heyden Palace Lydius House Balthazar Lydius Anneke
Jans Bogardus Albany Kegency Schuyler Mansion Erie
Canal Basin Troy The Monitor Mohawk River Still-
water Schuylerville Burgoyne's Defeat General Eraser's
Death Bound Lake Ballston Spa Saratoga Lake and Town
High Kock Spring Sir William Johnson Saratoga Hotels
Saratoga Springs Congress Spring Hathorn Spring
Mount McGregor Fort Edward Israel Putnam Jenny Mc-
Crea Baker's Falls Sandy Hill Quackenboss' Adventure
Glen's Falls Last of the Mohicans Hawkeye Sources
of the Hudson The Adirondack Wilderness Hendrick
Spring The Tear of the Clouds Indian Pass Tahawas, the
Sky-Piercer Schroon Lake The Battenkill.
THE HUDSON RIVER SCENERY.
THE noble Hudson is one of the most admired of
American rivers. It does not possess the vine-clad
slopes and ruined castles and quaint old towns of the
Rhine, but it is a greater river in its breadth and
volume and the commerce it carries. It has scenery
fully as attractive in the Palisades and Highlands, the
Helderbergs and Catskills, and on a scale of far more
grandeur, while the infinite variety of its shores and
villas and the many flourishing river towns are to
most observers more pleasing. A journey along the
Hudson presents ever varying pictures of rural
beauty, in mountain, landscape, field and village j at
times almost indescribably grand, and again entranc
ing in the autumn's gorgeous coloring of the forest-
clad slopes, and the brilliant picture under our clear
American skies. George William Curtis, voicing the
THE HUDSON EIVEE SCENEEY. 131
opinion of most of our countrymen, is enthusiastic
about the Hudson, saying : " The Danube has in
part glimpses of such grandeur, the Elbe sometimes
has such delicately pencilled effects, but no European
river is so lordly in its bearing, none flows in such
state to the sea. Of all our rivers that I know, the
Hudson with this grandeur has the most exquisite
episodes. Its morning and evening reaches are like
the lakes of a dream." The Hudson may not have
as many weird and elfish legends as so many historic
centuries and the mythical preceding era have gath
ered upon the annals of the Rhine, but its beauties,
tragedies and folklore have been a favorite theme,
and the romantic and poetic fancies of Irving, Drake
and Cooper, with many others, have given it plenty
of fascinating literature and picturesque incident.
Oliver Wendell Holmes thus sings the praises of the
Hudson :
" I wandered afar from the land of my birth,
I saw the old rivers renowned upon Earth ;
But fancy still painted that wide-flowing stream,
With the many-hued pencil of infancy' s dream.
" I saw the green banks of the castle-crowned Ehine,
Where the grapes drink the moonlight and change into wine,
I stood by the Avon, whose waves, as they glide,
Still whisper his glory who sleeps by their side.
" But my heart would still yearn for the sound of the waves,
That sing as they flow by my forefathers' graves ;
If manhood yet honors my cheek with a tear,
I care not who sees it nor blush for it here.
132 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
" In love to the deep-bosomed stream of the West,
I fling this loose blossom to float on its breast ;
Nor let the dear love of its children grow cold,
Till the channel is dry where its waters have rolled."
THE PALISADES.
In ascending the Hudson from New York, there
are passed on either hand the heights which were
covered in early Revolutionary days with the defenses
of New York, Fort Washington and Fort Lee, but
beyond the names no trace of either fort remains.
The British captured both in the latter part of 1776,
and afterwards held them. Fort Lee is now a favor
ite picnic ground. Above it rises the great wall of
the Palisades, the wonderful formation built up of
columned trap rock that extends along the western
river bank for twenty miles up to Piermont, this
rocky buttress making the northern limit of New Jer
sey on the Hudson River. Occasionally a patch of
trees grows upon the tops or sides of the Palisades,
while the broken rocks and debris that have fallen
down make a sloping surface from about half-way up
their height to the water's edge. These columns rise
in varying heights from three to five hundred feet.
This grand escarpment of the Palisades is a giant
wall along the river bank, sometimes cut down by
deep and narrow ravines, through which the people
behind them get brief peeps at the picturesque
stream far below. Their general surface makes a
sort of long and narrow table-land, barely a half-mile
Palisades of the Hudson
THE PALISADES. 133
to a mile wide, dividing the Hudson from the valley
of the Hackensack to the westward, the top being
usually quite level, and in most cases having a growth
of trees. These desolate-looking Palisades are a bar
rier dividing two sections of country seeming in sharp
contrast. To the westward, the inhabitants lead
simple pastoral lives in a region of farm land and
dairies. To the eastward, the opposite shore of the
Hudson is a succession of villas and fashionable sum
mer resorts, whither the New York people come out,
seeking a little rest and freshness after the season's
dissipation. From the tops of the Palisades are ad
mirable views both east and west, displaying some of
the finest sunrises and sunsets seen along the great
river. Extensive blasting operations, to get the build
ing-stone and paving material for which they form
valuable quarries, are marring the beauty of the Pali
sades, but legal arrangements are maturing for their
preservation. Their highest elevation, the Indian
Head, not far above Fort Lee, rising five hundred
and ten feet, has been ruined by these blasts, which
at times will break off many thousand tons of rock
at a single explosion.
The rocky buttress of Piermont, the termination
of the Palisades on the Hudson, gets its name from a
pier, a mile long, which is extended from the shore
at the foot of the mountain out to deep water, and a
branch of the Erie railway terminates here. This
line runs inland northwestward through a fine coun-
134 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCBIPTIVE.
try. Over there is Greenwood Lake, known as the
"miniature Lake George," a beautiful river-like
body of water, ten miles long and a mile wide, almost
entirely enclosed in the mountains, and presenting
extremely picturesque scenery. This lake is at a
thousand feet elevation, with clear and deep spring
water, and in the neighborhood are the smaller but
as charming Lakes Wawayanda, Macopin and Ster
ling. The long look over mountain and vale causing
an expression of surprise in broken English from an
Indian gazing upon the attractive prospect, is said to
have named the first of these pretty little lakes ;
" Away, way, yonder," he said, but it sounded like
" Wa-wa-yanda," and the name has since clung to it.
Not far away, among these mountains, is Tuxedo
Lake, the fashionable resort of the Tuxedo Park As
sociation, also reached by the Erie railway. This
club of wealthy New Yorkers has made a paradise
among the Allegheny foothills, with game-preserves,
golf-links, club-house, and many cottages for the
members.
Above Spuyten Duyvel Creek the western Hudson
River shore presents the monotonous front of these
Palisades, stretching for miles apparently without a
sign of active life j but the eastern bank is a far dif
ferent picture of undulating hills, with gentle slopes
to the water's edge, and covered in every eligible
position with an endless variety of villas, presenting
every phase of artistic taste and the development of
THE PALISADES. 135
abundant wealth. These summer homes upon the
Hudson are among the crowning glories of the ever-
changing river scene. Here is the famous Font Hill,
now the Convent of Mount St. Vincent. In 1850
the tragedian Edwin Forrest built it for his home, a
mediaeval graystone castle, with moat and drawbridge
and six battlemented towers ; but he held it only a
few years, when he quarrelled with his wife, and sold
the estate for $100,000 to the Sisters of Charity of
the Order of St. Vincent de Paul for their Mother
House, which had to remove from the site of Central
Park in New York. The cross now surmounts the
tallest castle tower, and it is surrounded by noble
trees which have grown higher than the turrets,
while on the hill behind, and almost overshadowing
the little castle, is a huge red-brick convent building.
Lawns slope down to the shore, and there are superb
river views, with the grand wall of the Palisades
rising high in front.
Yonkers is seventeen miles above New York, a
galaxy of castellated and ornamental mansions fring
ing the town about, upon the amphitheatre of hills
surrounding the flat depression on which it is mainly
built. The little Neperhan or Sawmill River pours
down a series of rapids through it before reaching
the Hudson, with factories bordering the banks,
while the great Vanderbilt railway, the New York
Central, with a half-dozen sets of rails, runs along
the front of the town. Here are now forty thousand
136 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
people, in sharp contrast with the time when Hen-
drick Hudson, exploring the river, anchored in front
of the little Indian village of Napperhamok, or the
"Rapid Water." Curiosity brought them out in
canoes to examine his ship, the " Half Moon," and
he bought oysters and beans, saying he found them
"a loving people who attained great age." The
Dutch early bought land from these Indians for a
settlement, and it became the domain of Patroon
Vanderdonck, who set the town going under the
name of Yonk-heer, or the " young master," mean
ing the heir of the family. Then the English came
along and it became the " Philipse Manor," the old
stone manor house built in 1682 being the anti
quarian attraction, and used now as a sort of City
Hall, a Soldiers' Monument standing in front. This
was a manor of twenty-four thousand acres stretch
ing along the river from Spuyten Duyvel up to the
Croton. The third of the English lords of the
manor was Fredericke Philipse, who was a shrewd
aristocrat, and during the Revolution tried the dif
ficult political game of a neutral, desirous of keeping
on the winning side. But neither party trusted him,
and although Washington had been his guest in the
famous old manor house, yet he was attainted of
treason by the State of New York, his great manor
confiscated, cut up into small tracts and sold. The
romance of Yonkers is the love story of his daughter, .
Mary Philipse, the " belle of the Hudson Valley."
THE PALISADES. 137
Tradition tells of her as the first love of Washington,
but he wooed in vain, and she married another.
Cooper made her the heroine of his novel The Spy.
The lands of this manor are among the most
prized locations on the Hudson. Magnificent estates
cover the sloping eastern bank, with hundreds of
villas of all kinds and styles, fortunes being expended
upon their elaborate decoration. Highly ornamental
grounds upon the hillsides and terraces surround
costly houses, built to reproduce palaces, churches,
castles, baronial halls and old manors, with some
sombre buildings not unlike tombs. There is every
conceivable structure the florid imagination of an
architect can fashion into a dwelling, some being of
great size. They show up prettily among the trees,
and some are thrust out upon crags almost overhang
ing the river, others nestle far back in clefts, and
still others are set high upon the slopes. Amid the
grand display is the villa-environed and exclusive
town of Hastings-on-the-Hudson ; and a mile above,
and still in the gilded colony, is the village of Dobbs's
Ferry. It got its name from the venerable John
Dobbs, a Swede, who came over from the Delaware
River to run the ferry during the Revolution. Not
long ago some of the modern aristocrats of the place
got ashamed of their old Dobbs heritage and sought
to change the name to Paulding. Then came a
sharp controversy, fanned into fever heat by the
sensational warriors of the New York newspapers.
138 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
Soon, however, the Pauldingites surrendered, old
Dobbs was vindicated, and Dobbs's Ferry the place
remains. It was here in the Livingston Mansion, in
1783, that Generals Washington, Carleton and Clin
ton met to finally settle the terms of English recog
nition of American independence. Two miles above
is Irvington, with more elaborate villas. This favored
region of the Hudson is the choicest abiding-place of
the New York multi-millionaires, and a newspaper
scribe on one occasion counted in the space of six
miles above Hastings the rural homes of sixty-three
men whose aggregate wealth was estimated at more
than $500,000,000. The single million fellow no
longer cuts a figure in such a galaxy. On an emi
nence near Irvington stood the country house of the
wealthiest of them, loftily situated, a white stone
building with a tall tower, having very attractive
surroundings. This was the Paulding Manor of
Lyndehurst, the home of Jay Gould.
THE TAPPAN ZEE.
Over opposite, the grand terminating buttress of
the Palisades, Piermont, compresses the river chan
nel, the rocks then receding, so that to the northward
it broadens into the beautiful lake of the Tappan
Zee. Here is the boundary dividing New Jersey
from New York, and the long ridge, retiring from
the river, stretches inland some miles, encircles the
town of Nyack, and comes back to the river some
THE TAPPAN ZEE. 139
distance above in an abrupt elevated cliff known as
Point-no-Point. This lake is over four miles wide,
and is the scene of the legend of " The Flying
Dutchman of the Tappan Zee." Irving tells us that
often in the still twilight of a summer evening, when
the sea would be as glass, and the opposite hills
threw their shadows half across it, a low sound would
be heard, as of the steady vigorous pull of oars,
though no boat could be seen. Some said it was a
whale-boat of the ancient water-guard, sunk by the
British ships during the war, but now permitted to
haunt its old cruising-grounds. But the prevalent
opinion connected it with the awful fate of " Rambout
Van Dam of graceless memory." He was a roys-
tering Dutchman of Spuyten Duyvel, who in a time
long past navigated his boat alone one Saturday
the whole length of the Tappan Zee to attend a
quilting-party at Kakiat, on the western shore. Here
he danced until midnight, when he started home.
He was warned it was the verge of Sunday morning,
but he went off, swearing he would not land until he
reached Spuyten Duyvel, if it took him a month of
Sundays. He was never seen afterwards, but may
still be heard, plying his oars, being " the Flying
Dutchman of the Tappan Zee, doomed to ply be
tween Kakiat and Spuyten Duyvel until the day of
judgment." There is also another legend of a stout,
round, Dutch-built vessel of the olden time, with
high bow and stern, sailing up New York harbor in
140 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
the teeth of wind and tide. She never returned
down the Hudson, but the Dutch skippers plying the
river often saw her, sometimes along the Palisades,
or off Croton Point, or in the Highlands, but never
above them. Sometimes it was by the lightning
flashes of a storm upon a pitchy night, and giving
glimpses of her careering across the Tappan Zee or
the wide waste of Haverstraw Bay. Sometimes on
quiet moonlight nights she would lie under a high
bluff in the Highlands, all in deep shadow, excepting
her topsails glittering in the moonbeams. She ap
peared always just before or after or during unruly
weather, and all the skippers knew her as the " Storm
Ship." Some maintained this phantom was the
" Flying Dutchman," come from the Cape of Good
Hope into more tranquil waters. Others held it to
be Hendrick Hudson and the shadowy crew of the
" Half Moon " sailing to their revels in the Catskills.
We are told by Irving that " she still haunts the
Highlands and cruises about Point-no-Point. People
living along the river insist they sometimes see her
in summer moonlight, and that in a deep still mid
night they have heard the chant of her crew as if
heaving the lead."
Tappan Village, naming the Tappan Zee, is some
distance back from Piermont. Over on the eastern
bank, nearly opposite Nyack, is Tarrytown, the
" Torwen-Dorp " or " Wheat-Town " of the ancient
Dutch, which has gradually changed to the present
THE TAPPAN ZEE. 141
name. The genial Irving, never at a loss for a
reason for the names of places along the river, tells
how the good housewives named it Tarrytown be
cause of their spouses 7 propensity to linger in the
village tavern on market days. It is now one of the
most elegant places on the Hudson, notable for its
splendid villas. The attractive region about the
Tappan Zee is full of Revolutionary memories, and
particularly of the great historic tragedy made by the
treason of Arnold and the capture of Andre. Major
John Andre, at the age of twenty-nine, in 1780, was
Adjutant General of the British Army, then com
manded by Sir Henry Clinton in New York. On
September 20th Andre came to Dobbs's Ferry to
meet Arnold, with whom he had been in secret cor
respondence in reference to the surrender of West
Point, where Arnold commanded. The next night
he met Arnold at Stony Point, just below the High
lands, and started back with Arnold's passport and
documents enabling the British to so direct an attack
upon West Point as to capture it. These papers
were in Arnold's handwriting, and at his suggestion
Andre concealed them between the soles of his feet
and his stockings. Andre tried to make his way
down the eastern side of the Hudson to New York
in disguise, taking the Tarrytown road, through what
was then known as the " neutral ground," which was
overrun by marauders from both armies. When
within a half-mile of Tarrytown, at a little stream
142 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
since called Andre's Brook, lie was captured by
Paulding, Williams and Van Wert, three American
scouts, whom he mistook for his own partisans, and
they searched him and found the treasonable papers.
Rejecting all bribes, they took him across the Hudson
to Tappan, then the American army headquarters,
where he was condemned and hanged as a spy on
October 2d. The old house wherein he was im
prisoned still stands in Tappan, and his remains were
interred there until 1821, when they were conveyed
to Westminster Abbey, London.
THE HOME OF WASHINGTON IRVING.
Near Irvington is Sunny side, long the home of the
famous and genial Washington Irving. In the early
days this house was built by a cynical Dutch coun
cillor named Wolfert Acker, who inscribed over the
door, " Lust in Rust," meaning t( pleasure in quiet,"
whence the English called it "Wolfert's Roost."
As the Spanish Escurial had been modelled after the
famous gridiron of the blessed Saint Lawrence, so
this loyal councillor is said to have modelled his house
after the cocked hat of the doughty Dutch Governor,
Peter the Headstrong. The old house with its quaint
Dutch gables became in time the castle of Baltus Van
Tassel, and being held by Jacob Van Tassel, an ac
tive American partisan during the Revolution, the
British sacked and burned it. The eastern front is
overrun by ivy given Irving by Sir Walter Scott at
THE HOME OF WASHINGTON IRVING. 143
Abbotsford, and originally from Melrose Abbey. The
great author lived here from 1846 until his death in
1859, and his pen has immortalized the neighbor
hood. Nearby is the sequestered vale of Slaeperigh
Haven, famed in the " Legend of the Sleepy Hollow."
Not far from Tarrytown, he writes, there is a little
valley, or rather a lap of land among high hills, one
of the quietest places in the whole world. A small
brook glides through it with just murmur enough to
lull one to repose 5 and the occasional whistle of a
quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only
sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tran-
quility. At the opening of this hollow, by the side
of a winding lane, stands the ancient Dutch church,
which is the oldest religious house in New York
State. It is a curious little building with a di
minutive spire enclosing a bell with the inscrip
tion, " Si . Deus . Pro . Nobis . Contra . Nos . 1685 "
If God for us, who against us. It was built of
bricks brought out from Holland, and in the ancient
and mossy graveyard, almost under the shadow of
the old church, Irving is buried. He lies upon a
beautiful sunny slope, whence one can look into the
Sleepy Hollow, and also far over the lovely Tappan
Zee and its pleasant surroundings, a spot he selected
for his tomb. Longfellow thus sweetly sings of this
modest grave :
"Here lies the gentle humorist, who died
In the bright Indian Summer of his fame
144 AMEKICA, PICTUKESQUE AND DESCKIPTIVE.
A simple stone, with but a date and name,
Marks his secluded resting place, beside
The river that he loved and glorified.
Here in the autumn of his days he came,
But the dry leaves of his life were all aflame
With tints that brightened and were multiplied.
How sweet a life was his ; how sweet a death !
Living, to wing with mirth the weary hours,
Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer ;
Dying, to leave a memory like the breath
Of summer, full of sunshine and of showers,
A grief and gladness in the atmosphere."
Only a short distance from the church is the old
bridge made famous in the legend describing the es
capade of the schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, with his
" soft and foolish heart toward the sex." In his love
he had a rival in the stalwart and muscular Brom
Bones. The legend tells us that Ichabod taught the
Dutch urchins of these parts, and at the same time
paid court to old farmer Van TassePs daughter, the
fair Katrina. Brom Bones, otherwise Brom Van
Brunt, determined to drive him away. One dismal
night Ichabod left the Van Tassel mansion in very
low spirits. In the hush of midnight he could hear
the watchdog bark, distant and vague, from the far
opposite shore of the Hudson. Irving tells us a be
lief existed in a spectre the Headless Horseman of
Sleepy Hollow supposed to be the spirit of a Hes
sian trooper whose head had been carried off by a
cannon-ball. Nearing the old church, this horrid
ghost appeared in pursuit of Ichabod, who was be-
THE HOME OF WASHINGTON IEVING. 145
stride an inflexible old horse called Gunpowder. The
terrified schoolmaster made all haste to reach the
bridge, having passed which, he would be beyond the
power of his pursuer. He spurred Gunpowder for
ward, but looking back, beheld the spectre close be
hind him, and in the very act of hurling its horrid
head at him. The crash came ; Ichabod rolled to
the ground ; the spectre and Gunpowder rushed past
him in a whirlwind. Next day, we are told, a shat
tered pumpkin was found in the road, and not long
afterwards Brom Bones led Katrina to the altar, but
the luckless Ichabod was never heard of again.
In the hills behind Point-no-Point, on the western
verge of the Tappan Zee, at one hundred and sixty
feet elevation, is Rockland Lake, a crystal sheet of
water which gives New York much of its ice supply,
the blocks being sent from the top of the hill on a
long slide to the barges that carry it down the river.
As they glide along, they look in the distance, under
the sunlight, like a string of diamonds. Hook Moun
tain, separating the lake from the river, is over six
hundred feet high, and out of the lake flows the
Hackensack River behind the Palisades, through the
Jersey meadows to Newark Bay. Just above Tarry-
town, on the eastern shore, is Sing-Sing Village, on
a pretty slope, the name coming from the Indian Os-
sining, meaning " a stony place." Here, just back
from the shore, is the famous Sing-Sing Prison, the
long, low tiers of white stone buildings having the
VOL. II. 42
146 AMERICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
railway tunnelled through them, and the pleasant
village rising on the hillside behind. The convicts
built their own prison many years ago, with stone
hewn out of an adjacent marble ridge, called Mount
Pleasant. Just above, the long forest-covered pro
jection of Teller's or Croton Point, thrust for two
miles, or more than half-way across the broad river,
from the eastern bank, makes the northern boundary
of the Tappan Zee. The West Shore railway, which
has come up through the Hackensack Valley from
Jersey City, emerges high on the western hills and
runs gradually down to the river bank, so that the
Hudson above has a railway on either shore. Along
side the Point, the Croton River flows in, the Reser
voir being about six miles up that stream. It was
off Teller's Point the British sloop " Vulture " an
chored, when she brought Andre up from New York
for his interview with Arnold.
ENTERING THE HIGHLANDS.
Beyond Teller's Point is another broadened ex
panse of the Hudson, Haverstraw Bay, spreading in
parts five miles wide, its western shore lined with
brickmaking establishments, lime-kilns and the fac
tories which break up the stone quarried in the
neighboring hills into Belgian blocks for New York
street paving. Far in front, over the spacious bay,
looms up the distant range of Hudson River High
lands, an outcrop of the great Kittatinny ridge,
ENTEKING THE HIGHLANDS. 147
stretching broadly across the country, a part of the
same deep blue-gray mountain wall we have already
penetrated farther south. Its changing hues and ap
pearance, as approached, remind of Campbell's couplet
in the Pleasures of Hope :
" 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue."
High Torn, just behind the bank below Haver-
straw, rises over eight hundred feet, while above is
Stony Point, the outcrop of a long line of limestone
hills stretching into the river. Between it and the
town, standing on a little eminence not far from the
shore, was the frame house of Smith the Tory,
known as the " Treason House," where Andre and
Arnold had their clandestine meeting to arrange the
surrender of West Point, this eminence now being
known as " Treason Hill." Across the ferry to Ver-
planck's Point, on the opposite shore, Andre went
when the meeting was over, and started on his fate
ful journey down to Tarrytown. The two Points
suddenly narrow the Hudson, above Treason Hill, to
a half-mile width, and they -make the northern bound
ary of Haverstraw Bay. This is a region filled with
Revolutionary memories. These Points commanded
the southern river entrance to the Highlands, and
behind them, back of the western shore, rises the
buttress of the Kittatinny and the outpost of the
pass, the massive Donderberg Mountain, eleven hun-
148 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
dred feet high. The eastern Point was part of the
Van Cortlandt manor, whose heiress, Gertrude, mar
ried Philip Verplanck, for whom it was named.
Forts were built on both Points to control the river,
and the British surprised and captured both of them
in June, 1779, giving Washington much annoyance ;
but General Wayne, in July, by one of the most
brilliant movements of the war, surprised and re
captured Stony Point. On the site of the old fort,
and built of some of its materials, is now a little*
lighthouse guiding the river navigation. Over on
the opposite shore, behind Verplanck's Point, Baron
Steuben drilled the Revolutionary soldiers. This
region now is chiefly devoted to the peaceful occupa
tions of burning lime and making bricks.
The Hudson bends towards the northeast along
the base of the towering Donderberg, the Thunder
Mountain, the limestone quarries cut into its cliffs
looking much like an old-time fortress. The narrow
river contracted in the pass always has gusty winds
blowing over it, and this was a weird region in the
ancient Dutch regime, many a tale of woe and wonder
being told by the skippers who sailed that way.
Irving records how they used to "talk of a little
bulbous-bottomed Dutch goblin in trunk-hose and
sugar-loaf hat, with a speaking-trumpet in his hand,
which they say keeps the Donder-Berg." He de
clares " they have heard him in stormy weather, in
the midst of the turmoil, giving orders in Low Dutch
ENTERING THE HIGHLANDS. 149
for the piping up of a fresh gust of wind, or the
rattling off of another thunder-clap ; that sometimes
he had been seen surrounded by a crew of little
imps, in broad breeches and short doublets, tumbling
head over heels in the rack and mist, and playing a
thousand gambols in the air, or buzzing like a swarm
of flies about Anthony's Nose ; and that at such
times the hurry-scurry of the storm was always
greatest." The genial historian supports this state
ment by testimony. u Skipper Daniel Ouslesticker
of Fish Kill, who was never known to tell a lie," de
clared that in a severe squall he saw the goblin
"seated astride of his bowsprit, riding the sloop
ashore full butt against Anthony's Nose," but that he
was happily exorcised by " Dominie Van Geisen of
Esopus, who happened to be on board, and who sang
the song of Saint Nicholas, whereupon the goblin
threw himself up in the air like a ball, and went off
in a whirlwind, carrying away with him the nightcap
of the Dominie's wife, which was discovered the
next Sunday morning hanging on the weathercock
of Esopus Church steeple, at least forty miles off."
Such misadventures occurring, the skippers for a
long time did not venture past the Donderberg with
out lowering their peaks in homage, " and it was ob
served that all such as paid this tribute of respect
were suffered to pass unmolested."
The Hudson River Highlands in some peaks rise
nearly sixteen hundred feet. The river, coming
150 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
from the north, breaks through them in a series of
short bends, making narrow reaches, and in the
fifteen miles required for the passage presents some
of the most attractive American scenery. Beyond
Verplanck's Point is the town of Peckskill, with the
mountain range trending far away to the northeast,
the river flowing along its base, and from the view
ahead seeming to come from the lowlands beyond
Peekskill. It was not strange, therefore, that in the
early seventeenth century one of the Dutch skippers
who braved the goblin of the Donderberg, in his ex
plorations should have sailed his sloop up there, got
into a shallow creek, and run aground. This was
the misfortune of the honest Dutch mariner Jan
Peek ; but he made the best of it, and seeing that
the soil of the valley was fertile, settled there, and
the creek became Peek's Kill, and thus named the
town. The rich Canopus Valley is to the northeast
ward, and the mountains blend so well that the sharp
right-angled bend the river makes into the High
lands is completely hidden.
Thus rise, high over the valley, " the rough tur
rets of the Highland towers." The Indians believed
this mountain region was created by the mighty
spirit Manetho, to protect his favorite abodes from
the unhallowed eyes of mortals. Their tradition
was that the vast mountains of rock were raised be-
ANTHONY'S NOSE. 151
fore the Hudson poured its waters through them, and
within them was a prison where the omnipotent
Manetho confined rebellious spirits. Here, bound by
adamantine chains, jammed in rifted pines, or crushed
under ponderous crags, they groaned for ages. At
length the mighty Hudson burst open their prison-
house, rolling its overwhelming tide triumphantly
through the stupendous ruins. Entering the pass, it
really seems as if the Hudson River channel ought to
run up where Jan Peek went, but instead it goes
sharply around the ponderous base of the Donder-
berg Mountain. This is a very narrow gateway f
where the swift tidal current makes the " Race," and
in an instant the contracted passage is opened be
tween the Donderberg on the left and Anthony's
Nose on the right, entering this beautiful Highland
district, which Chateaubriand has likened to " a large
bouquet tied at its base with azure ribbon." As the
narrow strait is traversed, lona Island, tree-clad and
attractive, appears ahead, and the winds usually blow
a lively gale, buffeted from one mountain side to the
other. The tide runs swiftly around the base of
Anthony's Nose, and the romantic Brocken Kill
pours down his sloping side, while through the jut
ting point of the Nose the railway has pierced a tun
nel, making on either side a veritable nostril. The
huge tree-covered mountain rises grandly to the
clouds, while just over the tunnel at the point, a mass
of protruding rocks and timber makes a first-class
152 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
pimple to ornament the Nose. This is one of the
prominent Highland peaks, rising over twelve hun
dred feet, and is said by some to have been named
from a fancied resemblance to the nose of the great
St. Anthony, the Egyptian monk of the third century.
Irving, however, has given us the more popular
tradition that it was named in memory of luckless
Anthony the Trumpeter, who met his fate at Spuyten
Duyvel. The veracious historian Knickerbocker
writes : " It must be known that the nose of Anthony
the Trumpeter was of a very lusty size, strutting
boldly from his countenance like a mountain of Gol-
conda, being sumptuously bedecked with rubies and
other precious stones the true regalia of a king of
good fellows which jolly Bacchus grants to all who
bouse it heartily at the flagon. Now, thus it hap
pened, that bright and early in the morning the good
Anthony, having washed his burly visage, was lean
ing over the quarter railing of the galley, contem
plating it in the glossy wave below. Just at this
moment, the illustrious sun, breaking in all his
splendor from behind a high bluff of the Highlands,
did dart one of his most potent beams full upon the
nose of the sounder of brass, the reflection of which
shot straightway down hissing hot into the water
and killed a mighty sturgeon that was sporting be
side the vessel. This huge monster, being with in
finite labor hoisted on board, furnished a luxurious
repast to all the crew, being accounted of excellent
WEST POINT. 153
flavor, except about the wound, where it smacked a
little of brimstone, and this, on my veracity, was the
first time that ever sturgeon was eaten in these parts
by Christian people. When this astonishing miracle
became known to Peter Stuyvesant, and he tasted
of the unknown fish, he, as may well be supposed,
marvelled exceedingly, and as a monument thereof,
he gave the name of ' Anthony's Nose ' to a stout
promontory in the neighborhood, and it has con
tinued to be called ' Anthony's Nose ' ever since that
time."
WEST POINT.
The most famous locality in the Highlands is West
Point. "In this beautiful place," wrote Charles
Dickens, " the fairest among the fair and lovely
Highlands of the North River ; shut in by deep green
heights and ruined forts, and looking down upon the
distant town of Newburg, along a glittering path of
sunlit water, with here and there a skiff, whose white
sail often bends on some new tack as sudden flaws
of wind come down upon her from the gullies in the
hills, hemmed in besides, all around, with memories
of Washington and events of the Revolutionary war :
is the Military School of America." Opposite An
thony's Nose, Montgomery Creek flows in, its mouth
broadened into a little bay. Upon the high rocks at
the entrance, on either side, stood the great defenders
of the lower Highlands during the early Revolution,
Forts Clinton and Montgomery, considered impreg-
154 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
nable then, and to bar the river passage a ponderous
iron chain on timber floats was stretched across the
channel to Anthony's Nose. The Continental Con
gress spent $250,000 on these obstructions, but the
British in 1777 surprised and captured the forts, de
stroyed the chain and burnt the gunboats guarding
it. This was a great victory, but barren of results,
for Burgoyne's surrender soon afterwards compelled
them to abandon this region and retire down towards
New York. There are traces of the forts, and a
flagstaff on the hill north of the creek marks the site
of Fort Montgomery. Just above, on the eastern
bank, is the charming and symmetrical cone of the
Sugar Loaf Mountain, with several smaller com
panions, and the vista views along the river, and
through some of the deep valleys between these
mountains, are magnificent. The little town of Gar
rison's fringes the shore, the school of the Sisters of
St. Francis, formerly a popular hotel, is perched high
on the cliff on the western bank ; while in front the
dome of the West Point Library and the barracks
rise in view upon the Point itself, which stretches
completely across the view, its extremity hidden by
the jutting headlands of the eastern bank. Here
comes down in rainy weather the frothy current of
the beautiful Buttermilk Falls, for a hundred feet
over the rocks into the river, and the West Shore
Railroad, winding along the edge of the cliffs, cuts or
goes through their extended points, and finally darts
WEST POINT. 155
into a long tunnel bored right under the West Point
Academy.
The Hudson River, some distance above, bends
sharply around the little lighthouse on the end of
West Point, its extremity being a moderately sloping
rock covered with cedars, the reef going deep down
into the water, while on its highest part is a monu
ment to General Kosciusko, who had much to do with
constructing the original military works. The flat
and elevated surface, some distance inland, plainly
visible both from up and down the river, is the Parade
Ground, the Academic buildings being constructed
around it, while behind them on higher ground is the
dome-crowned library. The surface of West Point
is not so high as the surrounding mountains, but its
advanced position completely commands the river
approach both ways, and hence its military import
ance. Along the water's edge at the Point the rocks
are worn smooth, it is said, by so many cadets sitting
there in the summer time. Just above is the cove,
where they swim and practice at pontoon-bridge
building, and back of this cove is the artillery ground,
the guns being fired at the huge side of old Cro ? Nest
Mountain to the northward. Gee's Point is also
above, and from its extremity was extended the sec
ond big chain across to Constitution Island, used dur
ing the later years of the Revolution, to obstruct the
passage, also buoyed on timber floats ; some of its
huge links being still preserved. Constitution Island
156 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
was long the home of Susan Warner, the authoress,
who died in 1885, and her grave is in West Point
Cemetery. Her Hills of the Shatemuc is full of Hud
son River scenes, but her best-known book was The
Wide, Wide World, published in 1850.
The military post and academy of West Point is
about fifty miles north of New York, the Govern
ment domain covering twenty-four hundred acres.
The buildings stand on a plain of one hundred and
sixty acres, elevated one hundred and fifty-seven feet
above the river, with mountains all around, rising in
some cases fifteen hundred feet, the highest being
old Cro 7 Nest. South of the Academy, on a com
manding hill six hundred feet high, are the ruins of
Fort Putnam, the chief work during the Revolution.
When that war began in 1775 it was ordered that
the passes of the Hudson through the Highlands
should be fortified, and Fort Constitution was built
on the opposite island. As the higher adjacent hills
commanded it, this work was soon abandoned, and
three years later West Point was selected and forti
fied, with Fort Clinton at the Point, and several
other formidable works, becoming the "American
Gibraltar," the second massive chain being then ex
tended across to the island as an additional protec
tion. It was considered the most important post in
the country, and at the time of Arnold's treason in
September, 1780, was garrisoned by over three
thousand men, and had one hundred and eighteen
WEST POINT. 157
*.
cannon in the various works. After peace came,
the military defenses fell into ruin ; but Washington
repeatedly recommended that a military school be
established at West Point, and in 1802 it was author
ized by Congress, going into operation in 1812.
The earthworks of the original Fort Clinton on the
point, built by the youthful engineer Thaddeus Kos-
ciusko in 1778, have been restored, and are care
fully preserved. This young officer, descended from
a noble Polish family, had not completed his studies
in the military school of Warsaw when he eloped
with a girl of high rank. The enraged father pur
sued and captured them, and the youthful lover was
compelled either to slay the father or abandon the
daughter. He chose the latter, and going to Paris
met Dr. Franklin, who soon filled him with a desire
to help the struggling Americans, and he came over
and entered the army as an engineer in 1776. He
served with distinction throughout the war, was
made a General, and publicly thanked by Congress.
He fought afterwards in the Polish Revolution, and
retiring to Switzerland, died in 1817. He is buried
in the Cathedral Church of Cracow, and near that
city a mound one hundred and fifty feet high has
been raised to his memory, earth being brought from
every battlefield in Poland. The Kosciusko monu
ment of marble was erected in memory of the noble
Pole in an angle of Fort Clinton at West Point in
1829.
158 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
ARNOLD'S TREASON.
West Point itself saw no fighting, the great event
of its early history being Benedict Arnold's treason.
Across the river from the Point, and under the
shadow of Sugar Loaf Mountain, is Beverly Cove,
with a little wharf, where then stood Beverly House,
previously the home of a prominent loyalist, Colonel
Beverly Robinson of Virginia. Dr. D wight, after
wards President of Yale College, was Chaplain of a
Connecticut regiment at West Point in 1778, and he
then climbed the Sugar Loaf, describing its view
over the Highlands as " majestic, solemn, wild and
melancholy." Arnold, when he plotted for the sur
render of the post with Andre at Treason Hill,
below the Highlands, agreed to the treason for
$50,000 gold and a Brigadier General's commission
in the British army. Believing the plot was working
prosperously, Arnold, after the interview, had crossed
from the Point over to Beverly House, his head
quarters, and three days afterwards breakfasted there
on September 24, 1780. Hamilton and Lafayette
arrived early that morning and met him, announcing
that Washington was at the ferry below and would
soon join them. While at the table, Arnold received
a letter from an officer down the river with the
startling intelligence, "Major Andre of the British
army is a prisoner in my custody." Arnold is said
to have acted with wonderful coolness in the presence
ABNOLD'S TREASON. 159
of his distinguished company, and although evidence
of his own guilt might at any moment have arrived,
he thoroughly concealed his emotions. Ordering a
horse prepared, on the plea that his presence was
needed " over the river," he left the table and went
up stairs to his wife. He briefly told her they must
part, perhaps forever, as his life depended on speedily
reaching the British lines. The poor young wife, a
bride of less than two years, was horror-stricken,
and swooning, sank senseless upon the floor. Arnold
dare not summon assistance, but kissed their sleeping
infant, and mounting his horse galloped down to the
wharf. Here he jumped into his six-oared barge,
ordering them to row him swiftly down the Hudson,
strengthening their energies by a promised reward
of two gallons of rum. The oarsmen worked with a
will, not knowing where they were going, and were
astonished when he got below the Highlands to find
him guiding them to the British sloop "Vulture."
They were kept aboard as prisoners by Arnold's
orders, and saw him greeted as a friend by their
enemies. Even Sir Henry Clinton, when they ar
rived in New York, despised this meanness and
ordered their liberation.
Washington arrived at Beverly House soon after
Arnold had left, being anxious to see him, but could
not find him. The General took a hasty breakfast
and crossed over the river to West Point seeking
him, but having no suspicions. He was disappointed
160 AMEEICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCEIPTIVE.
at not finding Arnold there, and talking to Colonel
Lamb, commanding Fort Clinton, the latter told him
he had not heard from Arnold for two days. Wash
ington's suspicions began to awaken, and crossing
back to Beverly House, he was met by Hamilton,
with the papers found upon Andre, revealing Ar
nold's guilt. He summoned Lafayette and Knox for
counsel, and the deepest sorrow evidently stirred
Washington's bosom as he asked them the memora
ble question, "Whom can we trust now?" But
soon the condition of the deserted wife, who was
frantic with grief and apprehension, aroused his live
liest sympathy. Describing the scene, Hamilton
wrote : " The General went up to see her. She up
braided him with being in a plot to murder her child,
for she was quite beside herself. One moment she
raved j another she melted into tears. Sometimes
she pressed her infant to her bosom and lamented its
fate, occasioned by the imprudence of its father, in
a manner that would have moved insensibility itself."
Washington did all in his power to soothe her, be
lieving her innocent of previous knowledge of her
husband's guilt. After Arnold had got safely aboard
the "Vulture," he wrote to Washington, imploring
protection for his wife and child, saying : " She is as
good and innocent as an angel, and as incapable of
doing wrong." Ample protection was afforded, and
they were sent safely to her friends. She was Miss
Shippen of Philadelphia, and only eighteen years old
OLD CKO' NEST AND THE STOEM KING. 161
when Arnold, then the Military Governor of Phila
delphia, married her in 1778, his second wife. The
infant, James Robertson Arnold, afterwards became
a distinguished officer in the British army, serving
with credit in different parts of the world, and rising
to the rank of Lieutenant General, dying in London
in 1854. Benedict Arnold was made a Major Gen
eral by the British, and was given a considerable
sum of money $ but his life was unhappy, as he was
shunned and often insulted, and sinking into ob
scurity, he died in London in 1801. His treason
was deliberately plotted, investigation showing he
had been over a year in correspondence with the
enemy, and had sought the command at West Point,
given him in August, 1780, in order to compass its
surrender.
OLD CRO* NEST AND THE STOEM KING.
The dark pile of old Cro 7 Nest, guarding the
northern side of West Point, rises fourteen hundred
and eighteen feet, one of the noblest mountains of
the Highlands. Beyond it, the Storm King and
Mount Taurus are the northern portals of the pass,
with PollopelPs Island, rocky and tree-clad, lying in
the river between, and farther on the distant hazy
shores enclosing Newburg Bay. These buttresses
of the northern entrance solidly rise as protectors of
the pass into the valley :
" Mountains that like giants stand
To sentinel enchanted land."
VOL. II. 43
162 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
On the northern side of the promontory making
the Point, upon a little level plain above the cliffs,
overlooking the river, and almost under the shadow
of old Cro' Nest, is the West Point Cemetery. Here
is buried General Winfield Scott. Upon the Parade
Ground is the Battle Monument, erected in 1894, a
column seventy-eight feet high, surmounted by a
statue of Victory. Down along the most beautiful
part of the shore at the Point, and leading to Kos-
ciusko's Garden, a favorite resort of the Polish
officer, is the secluded path which generations of im
pulsive young cadeta have known as the " Flirtation
Walk." Beginning at the roadway, high on the
bluff, overlooking the river, it winds with devious
turns down the declivity, and after curving around
the promontory near the water's edge, sweeps grandly
up the incline again. This trysting-path leads under
a lacework of foliage, giving it pleasant and medita
tive gloom even when the sun shines brightly. Over
across the river is the village of Cold Spring, having
both above and below the shores rising steeply, and
hung upon the edge is the pretty Church of St.
Mary's, with its columned portico and surmounting
belfry. Nearby the railway running along the shore
pierces a tunnel through a rugged protruding rock.
Here is the Cold Spring foundry that makes cannon
for the army. Almost under the Parade Ground on
the northern side is the Siege Battery, where the
guns in time of artillery practice carry on a noisy
.
.
tluT1; -ity, arid after curving around
t.i, -
tive g
j; rock
that maktjs
Parade Gr^
Up the Hudson from the Water 'Battery,
West Point
OLD CEO' NEST AND THE STOKM KING. 163
and reverberating warfare across the Cove against
the dark and towering side of old Cro* Nest. This
grand mountain, the target for the youthful gunners,
inspired the muse of George P. Morris, the lyric
poet of the Highlands, whose delightful home was at
Undercliff, across the river above, at the foot of
Mount Taurus. His eyes perpetually feasted upon
the view of this peak, and thus he described it :
"Where Hudson's wave o'er silvery sands
Winds through the hills afar,
Old Cro' Nest like a monarch stands
Crowned with a single star."
The northern portal of the Highlands is guarded
on either hand by the Storm King, rising fifteen hun
dred and twenty-nine feet, and Mount Taurus, fifteen
hundred and eighty-six feet. There are also a
galaxy of attendant peaks. Beyond Mount Taurus
is Breakneck Hill, rising nearly twelve hundred feet,
with a chain of mountains stretching far to the north
east, among them the Old Beacon and the towering
Grand Sachem, sixteen hundred and eighty feet
high. The Storm King was the old Boter-Berg of
the early Dutch, thus named because, to their
matter-of-fact minds, the mountain resembled nothing
so much as a huge lump of butter. Similarly, the
eastern portal of the pass was Bull Mountain origin
ally, but has since been more classically transformed
into Mount Taurus. The ancient Knickerbocker
164 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
legend records how the primitive inhabitants chased
a wild bull around this mountain to the peak beyond
it, where he fell and broke his neck, thus naming
both of them, though Breakneck Hill yet awaits a
more classic transformation.
The geologists tell us that in early ages, like the
Minisink of the Delaware, the region north of the
Highlands adjacent to the Hudson Valley was a vast
lake, extending back to Lake Champlain, which still
remains as a fragment of the inland sea, following
the melting of the great glacier. To get a southern
outlet, the river broke through the mountain barrier
and formed the winding and romantic Highland Pass.
There is a grand outlook from the summit of the
Storm King over this valley to the northward. The
river expands into the beautiful Newburg Bay, its
most perfect land-locked harbor, and its course can
be traced through the " Long Reach " for more than
twenty miles, a broad, straight stream between the
pleasant banks, up to Crom Elbow, the "Krom
Elleboge n of the original Dutch colonists. Villages
dot the shores, and fertile fields stretch up on either
hand, while hung in mid air, far away across the
water, is the distant, slender, spider-like span of the
high railway bridge at Poughkeepsie, the route by
the " back door " into New England, which has gone
through such serious throes of reconstruction. Upon
the left hand the Catskills, and upon the right hand
the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts, bound
THE CULPKIT FAY. 165
the distant horizon. Behind, and to the southward,
the river can be traced as it winds through the High
lands down to Anthony's Nose, while nearer, one can
look into the depression on top of the adjoining
mountain, within a surrounding amphitheatre of
peaks that makes the striking resemblance giving
the significant name to the old Cro ? Nest.
THE CULPRIT FAY.
Between the Storm King and old Cro ? Nest is the
deep and beautiful Vale of Tempe, with wild ravines
furrowed through it, forming channels for clear
mountain streams, and the trees conceal many a de
licious dell. In this picturesque nook among the
mountains is laid the scene of Joseph Rodman
Drake's charming poem of " The Culprit Fay n :
" 'Tis the middle watch of a summer's night,
The earth is dark but the heavens are bright ;
Naught is seen in the vault on high
But the moon and the stars and the cloudless sky,
And the flood which rolls its milky hue,
A river of light on the welkin blue.
The moon looks down on old Cro' Nest,
She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast,
And seems his huge gray form to throw
In a silver cone on the wave below ;
His sides are broken by spots of shade,
By the walnut bough and the cedar made,
And through their clustering branches dark
Glimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark,
Like starry twinkles that momently break
Through the rifts of the gathering tempest's rack."
166 AMERICA, PICTUKESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
The story is told that Drake, then about twenty-
one years of age, and James Fenimore Cooper and
Fitz-Greene Halleck, who were his close friends, in
August, 1816, were strolling through these High
lands. His companions got into a discussion, hold
ing that our American rivers gave no such rare op
portunities for poetic fancy as the streams of older
lands. Drake disputed this, and, to prove the con
trary, composed within three days this exquisite
poem, which has largely made his fame. It is a
simple yet interesting story. The fairies living in
this beautiful valley are called together at midnight
to punish one who has broken his vow, and they sen
tence him to a difficult penance, with all the evil
spirits of air and water opposing. The genius of
the poet interweaves the poem with every natural
attraction the locality affords. Thus are the fairies
summoned to the dance :
' ' Ouphe and goblin ! imp and sprite !
Elf of eve and starry fay !
Ye that love the moon's soft light,
Hither, hither, wend your way.
Twine ye in a jocund ring ;
Sing and trip it merrily ;
Hand to hand and wing to wing,
Round the wild witch-hazel tree."
These CW Nest fairies are a dainty race. Owlet's
eyes are their lanterns 5 they repose in cobweb ham
mocks swung on tufted spears of grass and rocked
by midsummer night zephyrs j some lie on beds of
THE CULPKIT FAY. 167
lichen, with pillows of the breast-plumes of the hum
ming-bird j others nestle in the purple shade of the
four-o'clock, or in rock-niches lined with dazzling
mica. Velvet-like mushrooms are their tables, where
they quaff the dew from the buttercup. Their king's
throne is of spicewood and sassafras, supported on
tortoise-shell pillars and draped with crimson tulip-
leaves. The " culprit " himself, however, in his
beautiful outfit and quaint adventures, gives the best
imagery of the poem. At the opening of his jour
ney, chagrined and fatigued, he captures a spotted
toad for a steed, and bridles her with silk-weed twist,
spurring her onward with an osier whip. Arriving
at the water's edge, he plunges in, but leeches, fish
and other watery foes drive him back with bruised
limbs. The use of cobweb lint and the balsam dews
of sorrel and henbane relieve his wounds, and being
refreshed by the juices of calamus, he embarks in a
mussel-shell boat, painted brilliantly without and
tinged with pearl within. He gathers a colen-bell
for a cup, and sculls into the middle of the stream,
laughing at the foes who chatter and grin in the
water. There he sits in the moonlight, until a
sturgeon, coming by, leaps glistening into the silvery
light ; and then, like a liliputian Mercury, balancing
upon one foot, he lifts the flowery cup and catches
the sparkling drop that washes the stain from his
wing. He returns to the shore, having sweet nymphs
grasping the sides of the boat with their tiny hands
168 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCKIPTIVE.
and urging it onward. The next enterprise of the
"culprit" is more knightly. He is arrayed as a
fairy cavalier, in acorn helmet, plumed with thistle
down, corselet made of a bee's nest, and cloak of
butterfly wings. His shield is a lady-bug's shell;
his lance a wasp-sting ; his spurs of cockle-seed j his
bow of vine-twig strung with corn- silk j and his
arrows, nettle-shafts. He mounts a fire-fly steed,
and waving a blade of blue grass, speeds upward to
catch a flying meteor's spark. Again the spirits of
evil are let loose, those of air being as bad as those
of water. A sylphid queen tries to enchant him
with her beauty and kindness ; she toys with the
butterfly cloak as he tells the dangers he has passed.
But he never forgets the object of his pilgrimage,
and triumphing over the foes of air, he is escorted
with honor by the sylph's lovely retinue ; Ids career
is resumed, his flame-wood lamp rekindled, and be
fore a streak of dawn is proclaimed in the eastern
sky by the sentry elf, the " Culprit Fay " has made
his full penance and been welcomed back to all his
original glory. Drake died at the early age of
twenty-five, a victim of consumption, and his grave
is beside the little river Bronx in New York. To
his memory his friend Halleck wrote the noted
poem, thus beginning :
" Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days !
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise."
NEWBUKG BAY. 169
NEWBURG BAY.
Emerging from the Highlands, the gentle slopes
of the town of Cornwall are under the shadow of
the Storm King, while the mountain range stretches
off to the northeast, with Fishkill village in front,
and the Revolutionary signal station of the Old
Beacon standing up prominently behind. These
mountains were the Indian Matteawan, the " Council
of Good Fur." The same name was given the
stream draining their sides until the Dutch called it
Vis Kill, or Fish Creek, and hence its present name
and that of the village. The shores of Newburg
Bay seem low, as they are dwarfed by the mountains,
and on the western slope an elevated bench of table
land in terraces stretches back to the distant hills.
The town of Newburg, which has about twenty -five
thousand people, spreads up these terraces, and in
front there are storehouses, mills and railway termi
nals. When Hendrick Hudson sailed his ship " Half
Moon " through the Highlands, he was attracted by
the site of Newburg, and wrote : "It is as beautiful
a land as one can tread upon 5 a very pleasant place
to build a town on." A tribe of the Minsis who had
a village known as the Quassaic, meaning " the Place
of the Rock," then occupied it, and would not for a
half-century permit a settlement. They were driven
away, however, and a colony of Lutherans from the
Palatinate came here and founded the "Palatine
170 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
Parish of Quassaic." They did not flourish, and
ultimately some Scots arrived from the Tay, and see
ing quite a resemblance to their old home, named the
place Newborough. Its most distinguished citizen
has probably been General John E. Wool, born here
in 1788. At the southern end of this pleasant town,
a short distance back from the river, is its chief
celebrity, a low, old-fashioned graystone building,
appearing to be almost all roof, from which tall chim
neys rise. There is a broad lawn and flagstaff in
front, and a grove for the background. This is the
historic house, maintained by New York State as a
relic, which was General Washington's headquarters
during the closing campaign of the Kevolution. It
was built by Jonathan Hasbrouck, a Huguenot, in
1750, and is also known as the Hasbrouck House.
In its centre is a large hall, having a huge fireplace
on one side, and containing seven doors, but only one
window. This was Washington's reception hall, and
here he dined with his guests. At the foot of the
flagstaff on the lawn is buried the last survivor of
Washington's Life Guard, Ural Knapp, who died in
1856 at the age of ninety-seven. This Guard,
organized in Boston in 1776, continued as his body
guard throughout the war, and was selected from
all the regiments of the army. Knapp was its
sergeant, and at his last public appearance at a
banquet in Newburg, the old man made a brief ad
dress, concluding with an invitation to the entire
NEWBUKG BAY. 171
company to attend his funeral 5 four months later
they did so.
The " Tower of Victory n is a fine monument,
built on the grounds by the Government, and sur
mounted by a statue of Washington in the act of
sheathing his sword. A bronze tablet with the figure
of Peace announces that it was erected "in com
memoration of the disbandment, under proclamation
of the Continental Congress of October 18, 1783, of
the armies by whose patriotic and military virtue our
National independence and sovereignty was estab
lished." It was at Newburg that Washington was
offered the title of King by the officers of the army,
but declined it. Over at Fishkill is the old Ver-
planck House, with its quaint dormer windows, which
was the headquarters of Baron Steuben, and here,
upon the disbandment of the army, was held the
meeting of the officers at which was formed the So
ciety of the Cincinnati, Washington being its first
president. The mountainous region east and south
and the " neutral ground n were the haunts of Enoch
Crosby of Massachusetts, the American spy of the
Revolution, whose exploits all about this locality Feni-
more Cooper wove into his novel The Spy, a Tale of
the Neutral Ground, which made the novelist's earli
est fame. The ancient Wheaton House, around
which much of the tale centred, is still there. The
Murderer's Creek comes down to the Hudson through
Newburg, an attractive stream which deserved a
172 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
better name, but did not get it until N. P. Willis,
who lived at Cornwall, and who converted the Dutch
" Butter Hill " into the Storm King, and " Bull Hill "
into Mount Taurus, tried his persuasive powers at
Newburg and got this stream softened into the pleas
ant Indian name of Moodna. The neighborhood of
Newburg is famous from a scientific standpoint for
the finding of the remains of mastodons. One was
unearthed there in 1899, making the eleventh found
in Orange County, New York, during the past cen
tury, some of them being among the finest specimens
extant.
At the head of Newburg Bay, on the western
shore, is a rocky platform down by the waterside,
known as the "DeviPs Dance Chamber." When
the " Half Moon " came up the river and anchored
for the night, this broad flat rock, now almost hidden
by cedars, was the scene of a wild midnight revel of
the Indians, with all the accessories of song and
dance, fire and war-paint, at which the Dutch sailors
marvelled exceedingly, calling it the " DuyvePs
Dans-Kamer." Here the warlike Minsis of the Quas-
saic, before going on hunting expeditions or the war
path, would paint themselves grotesquely and dance
around a fire with horrible contortions, singing and
yelling under direction of the soothsayers or " medi
cine men." They believed, if this was kept up long
enough, the evil spirit would appear, either as a wild
beast or a harmless animal $ if the former, it fore-
POUGHKEEPSIE AND VASSAR 173
boded ill-fortune and the expedition was abandoned,
while the latter was a good omen. These hideous
performances afterwards scared old Governor Peter
Stuyvesant, according to the veracious Knicker
bocker, when he sailed up the river, for the historian
says, " Even now I have it on the point of my pen
to relate how his crew was most horribly frightened,
on going on shore above the Highlands, by a gang of
merry, roystering devils, frisking and curvetting on
a huge flat rock projecting into the river, and which
is called the DuyveFs Dans-Kamer to this very day."
POUGHKEEPSIE AND VASSAR.
The Hudson River's "Long Reach" stretches
many miles almost due northward, and on it is Pough-
keepsie, with thirty thousand population, midway be
tween New York and Albany. Near here lived stout
Theophilus Anthony the blacksmith, who forged the
great chains stretched across the Hudson in the High
lands, for which the British burnt his house and car
ried him a captive down to the New York prison-
ships. Here, at Locust Grove, a foliage-covered
rocky point protruding into the river, was long the
home of Professor Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor
of the electric telegraph. Poughkeepsie spreads
broadly upon its group of gentle hills, with the great
railway-bridge crossing high overhead, elevated two
hundred feet above the water, and nearly a mile and
a half long. The Poughkeepsie streets, lined with
174 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
fine elms, maples and acacias, rise upon the sloping
banks to a height above the bridge level, the town
being environed by rocky buttresses. The Indians
named the place Apo-keep-sinck, or the "pleasant
and safe harbor," and in it they housed their canoes.
From this was gradually evolved the present name,
through a variety of spellings, of which no less than
forty-two different styles are found in the old records
of the town. The " safe harbor " of the Indians was
between two protruding rocky bluffs, and is now filled
with wharves. The rapid Winnakee Brook leaps
into it, a stream which the Dutch called the Fall
Kill. The northern bordering bluff was their Slange
Klippe, or the " Adder Cliff," infested with venomous
serpents, and the other is the " Call Rock." Tra
dition tells that once a band of Mohican warriors
who had made a foray into New England brought
here some Pequot captives, among them a young
chief who was tied to a tree for a sacrifice, when a
shriek startled them, and a girl, leaping from the
thicket, implored his life. She also was a captive
Pequot and his affianced. As the captors debated,
the warwhoop was suddenly sounded by hostile
Hurons, and they seized their arms for defense. The
maiden released her lover, but in the conflict they
were separated, and a Huron carried her off. The
young chief was almost inconsolable, but he pursued
them beyond the river, and conceived a daring plan
for rescue. He entered the Huron camp disguised
POUGHKEEPSIE AND VASSAR 175
as a wizard, found the maiden ill, and her Huron
captor implored the wizard to save her life. This he
essayed to do, she recognized him, and eluding the
Huron vigilance, they escaped at nightfall. They
made their way to the Hudson, paddled over in a
canoe, and though pursued, he brought her into the
" safe harbor/ 7 concealed her, and then, by the aid
of the friendly Indians he found there, beat off the
Hurons.
The Dutch often sailed by, and cast longing eyes
upon this spot, so favorable for a settlement, but it
was nearly a century after Hudson's exploration
when ,the venerable yet venturesome Baltus Van
Kleek concluded it was about time to take possession.
He landed in the harbor, became the lord of the
manor, and in 1705 built near the Winnakee Brook
a stout fortress-dwelling, which stood until recently.
It was loop-holed for musketry, and in it the New
York Legislature met for two sessions during the
Revolution. Out in front was the "Call Rock,"
where old Baltus and his friends used to stand and
hail the passing Dutch sloops when they wanted to
get the news or journey upon the river. The New
York State Convention met at Poughkeepsie in 1788,
and ratified the Federal Constitution by the small
majority of three, after a protracted debate. From
its many elevations, this leading city of the Hudson
Valley has a superb outlook, only limited by the
Catskills far to the northwest, the Highlands down
176 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
the river, and the dark-blue Shawangunk ridge off
to the westward, where the attractive lakes Mohonk
and Minnewaska, the former at twelve hundred and
the latter at eighteen hundred feet elevation, nestle
high among the mountain peaks, overshadowed by
the bold summits of Paltz Point and Sky Top. Here
flows deep in the valley the pretty Wallkill, out to
the Kondout and the Hudson, giving the railroad a
route into the mountain fastness.
About two miles back from the river, and behind
the city, is Vassar College, the foremost educational
institution for women in the world. The splendid
buildings stand in grounds covering two hundred
acres, attractively laid out, and the main building,
modelled after the Tuileries, with high surmounting
dome, is five hundred feet long. From Sunset Hill,
their highest eminence, there is a panorama of the
Hudson for forty miles. This college was the gift
of Matthew Vassar, a wealthy Poughkeepsie mer
chant and brewer, of English birth, who desired to
make it the most complete foundation of its kind, and
gave and bequeathed $1,000,000 besides the land,
there being over $400,000 expended upon the build
ings. His nephews have since made large additional
gifts. Here is provided a complete mathematical,
classical and English education for several hundred
female students. Its main building is the chief
structure of Poughkeepsie. There are art galleries,
a museum, library and observatory. The museum
CKOM ELBOW TO KINGSTON. 177
of American birds is the most complete existing,
there is a fine gallery of water-colors, and a collec
tion of ancient weapons and armor, including the
halberd of King Francis I. The founder, having an
ample fortune and no children, devoted the closing
years of his life to this beneficent work, the college
being begun in 1861 and opened in 1865. He
labored assiduously at its development and died at
his post of duty. Three years after the opening,
when attending the annual meeting of the trustees,
while reading his address, he was suddenly stricken
with death.
CROM ELBOW TO KINGSTON.
Upon the Hudson River's " Long Reach " is the
favorite locality of the winter " ice-boat races," this
exhilarating sport in boats on runners speeding over
the ice, before the wind, being much enjoyed. A
few miles above Poughkeepsie the reach comes to
an abrupt termination, in the bent and narrow pass,
where the cliffs compress the channel and form the
crooked strait known as the Crom Elbow, the Dutch
and English words having the same meaning. Above,
the western shore for a long distance is lined with
apple orchards and vineyards, while the eastern bank
for over thirty miles is a succession of villas inter
spersed with hamlets. Moving northward, the noble
Catskill range comes into full view, gradually chang
ing from distant gray to nearer blue, and then to
green with the closer approach. Along the river for
VOL. II. 44
178 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
many miles, where these magnificent mountains give
such a grand front outlook, there are a series of old
Knickerbocker estates, many occupied by the de
scendants of the early settlers. Here was the princely
home of the late William B. Dinsmore of Adams
Express Company, a business begun in 1840 with
two men, a wheelbarrow and a boy, Dinsmore being
one of the men and the late John Hoey of Long Branch
the boy. Dinsmore built his gorgeous palace on the
Hudson and died. On the western shore is PelFs
great apple orchard, shipping the fruit from twenty-
five thousand trees all over the world. Some distance
above, the Rondout Creek comes out through a deep
gorge, having the twin cities of Rondout and Kings
ton nestling among its bordering hills. They have
together over twenty-five thousand people. This
was the outlet of the abandoned Delaware and Hud
son Canal. Kingston Point, the mouth of the creek,
was the place of earliest Dutch settlement in this
part of New York, where they called it Wittwyck,
or the " Wild Indian Town," and for defense built a
redoubt, whence come the name of Rondout.
The historic city of Kingston spreads back to
Esopus Creek, a short distance inland, and was the
Esopus town of colonial times, the name coming from
the Indian dwellers here, meaning " the river." The
old " Senate House " of Kingston, built in 1676, was
the first meeting-place of the New York Legislature,
and it now contains a collection of Dutch and other
GEEAT HISTOEIC ESTATES. 179
relics. The Esopus Indians broke up the original
settlements with a terrible massacre, but Huguenot
refugees came and re-peopled the place, and during
the Revolution Esopus was such a " nest of rebels "
that when the British came along in 1777 they burnt
it. This punishment was inflicted because it was
made the capital and the first New York State Con
stitution had been framed here during the preceding
February. The tale is told that the British landing
to burn the town scared a party of Dutch laborers,
who briskly scampered off. One of them stepped on
a hay-rake, and the handle flying up gave him a
sharp rap on the head. Being frightened more than
hurt, and sure that a Britisher closely pursued him,
he fell on his knees, and imploringly exclaimed,
" Mein Gott, I give up ; hooray for King Shorge !"
Kingston is a great producer of flagstones and manu
factory of Rosendale cements, made from a fine
grained, hard, dark-blue stone, which is broken,
burnt in kilns with coal, ground, and then prepared
for market. Mixed with clean sharp sand, this
cement becomes in time entirely impervious to water,
and has all the strength of the best natural building
stones.
GKEAT HISTORIC ESTATES.
The solid old German burgher William Beckman
came over from his native Rhine in 1647, and went
sailing up the Hudson, his Fatherland memories
being delighted at the sight of a noble hill on the
180 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
eastern bank, opposite Rondout Creek. He settled
there, building a house, and behind the hill started
the town of Rhinebeck, a combination of his own
name and that of his native river. This well-known
Rhinecliff stands up alongside the Hudson, much
like a vine-clad slope bordering the great German
river, and is adorned with the ancient Beckman
House, a stone structure built for a fort and dwelling.
Famous estates surround Rhinebeck. Here is Ellers-
lie, the summer home of Levi P. Morton, formerly
Vice-President, fronting the river for a long distance.
The Astor estate of Rokeby, which was the home of
William B. Astor and his son William Astor, is north
of Rhinebeck, the house, surmounted by a tower,
standing in a spacious park about a mile back from
the river. Rokeby was a noted place in Revolu
tionary days, the home of General Armstrong, whose
daughter married the elder Astor. Here is the Fleet-
wood estate, with its old house, built in 1700, having
the " cannon-room " in front, with a port-hole facing
the river. Here are Wilderstein and Grasmere, the
home of the Livingston descendants, also Wildercliff,
built by Rev. Freeborn Garrettson, one of the
founders of the Methodist Church in America, its
name signifying the " wild Indian's cliff." Garrett
son was educated in Maryland for the Church of
England. As a matter of conscience he afterwards
espoused the cause of the Methodists, then in their
infancy, entered their ministry, freed his slaves,
GKEAT HISTOKIC ESTATES. 181
and preached the gospel of Methodism everywhere,
declaring his firm faith in a special Providence,
and often proving it in his own person. Once a
mob seized him and was taking him to jail, when
a sudden and overpowering flash of lightning dis
persed them, and he was left unmolested. In 1788
he came to New York in missionary work, and was
made Presiding Elder of the district between Long
Island Sound and Lake Champlain. Coming to
Clermont, among his converts was the sister of
Chancellor Livingston, and he married her in 1793,
shortly afterwards building his house at Wildercliff.
This was long a home for Methodist clergymen, his
daughter continuing his hospitality. Another his
toric estate, just above Rokeby, is Montgomery
Place, the home of another Livingston, the widow
of General Montgomery, who was in the colonial
attack upon Quebec, by Wolfe, and afterwards, in
the early days of the Revolution, led a forlorn hope
against Quebec, and perished as Wolfe had before
him. His young widow lived here a half-century,
and her brother's descendants now possess it.
Krueger's Island, on the eastern shore, discloses in
a grove a picturesque ruin, with broken arches, spe
cially imported from Italy by a former owner of the
island to give it a flavor of antiquity. The Catskills
now rise in grander view, the Plattekill Clove comes
down out of them, and Esopus Creek from the south
flows into the Hudson. The Dutch called this
182 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
Zaeger's Kill, which time corrupted into Saugerties,
a pleasant factory village built behind the flats at the
creek's mouth, and having the Catskills for a splendid
background. Opposite, on the eastern bank, is
Tivoli, and near here is located the parent estate of
these historic homes. Robert Livingston came from
Scotland to America in 1672 and married a member
of the Schuyler family, who was the widow of a Van
Rensselaer. He was a patrician of high degree,
of the family of the Earls of Linlithgow, and seeking
a home in the American wilderness, settled on the
Hudson. He first lived at Albany, and being Secre
tary to the Indian Commissioners, he acquired ex
tensive tracts of land fronting the river, which after
wards became the basis of great wealth. In 1710
these lands were consolidated under one English
patent, giving him a princely domain of one hundred
and sixty-two thousand acres for an " annual rent of
twenty-eight shillings, lawful money of New York,"
equalling about $3.50. This "Livingston Manor"
gave him a seat in the Colonial Legislature, and he
built his manor-house upon a grassy point along the
Hudson River bank, at the mouth of " Roeleffe Jan-
sen's Kill," flowing in a few miles north of Tivoli.
The greater part of the manor descended to his son
Robert, who built a finer mansion there, known as
" Old Clermont," which the British burnt during the
Revolution. In this house was born the grandson,
the famous Chancellor of New York, Robert R. Liv-
GEEAT HISTORIC ESTATES. 183
ingston, who had so much to do with guiding the
course of the State in that momentous era. He built
the present Clermont mansion on the river bank
above Tivoli. It is on a bluff shore, a grand estate
surrounding it, and sloping gradually up to the hill
tops stretching to the horizon behind. This estate
extended back originally to the Berkshire hills. The
full glory of the Catskills is spread out in panorama
before this noted mansion, with the distant hotels
perched on the mountain tops.
Chancellor Livingston was sent Minister to France,
and when he returned he brought over merino sheep,
introducing them into this country. His great honor
as a man of science comes from his connection with
Fulton's steamboat experiments. He met Fulton in
Paris, and was closely connected with the first steam
boat on the Hudson, which in fact could not have
been built without his aid. By the help of Living
ston's money, Fulton in 1807 built this steamboat in
New York, naming her the "Clermont" in his honor.
The experiment was publicly derided as " Fulton's
Folly," but he persevered and succeeded. The "Cler
mont " was one hundred feet long, twelve feet beam
and seven feet depth. In September, 1807, she
made the first successful experimental trip from New
York to Albany in thirty-six hours, charging the
passengers $7.50 fare. She afterwards made regular
trips, and on October 5, 1807, the Albany Gazette
announced : " Mr. Fulton's new steamboat left New
184 AMERICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
York on the 2d, at ten o'clock A.M., against a strong
tide, very rough water, and a violent gale from the
north. She made a headway against the most san
guine expectations and without being rocked by the
waves." Chancellor Livingston in Jefferson's Ad
ministration negotiated the cession of Louisiana by
France to the United States, and ripe with honors,
he died at Clermont in 1813.
THE CATSKILL MOUNTAINS.
Opposite these great estates, the Catskill Moun
tains rise in all their glory, spreading across the
western horizon at a distance of eight to ten miles
from the Hudson River. They stretch for about
fifteen miles, and the range covers some five hun
dred square miles. The most prominent peaks in
the view are Round Top and the High Peak, rising
thirty-seven hundred aud thirty-eight hundred feet,
and in front of them, on lower elevations, are the
summer hotels that have such superb views over the
Hudson River valley. The town of Catskill on the
river a flourishing settlement of five thousand peo
ple is the usual point of entrance, and from it a
railway extends back to the bases of the mountains.
An inclined plane railway over a mile long then
ascends the face of the range, sixteen hundred feet
high, to the hotels. This " Otis Elevating Railway,"
which accomplishes its journey in about ten minutes,
is said to be the greatest inclined road in the world.
THE CATSKILL MOUNTAINS. 185
The Indians knew these grand peaks as the Onti
Ora, or "Mountains of the Sky," thus named be
cause in some conditions of the atmosphere they ap
pear like a heavy cumulus cloud hanging above the
horizon. The weird Indian tradition was that among
these mountains was held the treasury of storms
and sunshine for the Hudson, presided over by the
spirit of an old Indian squaw who dwelt within the
range. She kept the day and the night imprisoned,
letting out one at a time, and made new moons every
month and hung them up in the sky, for they first
appeared among these mountains, and then she cut
up the old moons into stars. The great Manitou
also employed her to manufacture thunder and clouds
for the valley. Sometimes she wove the clouds out
of cobwebs, gossamers and morning dew, and sent
them off, flake by flake, floating in the air, to give
light summer showers. Sometimes she would blow
up black thunder-storms and send down drenching
rains to swell the streams and sweep everything
away. All these storms coming from the west ap
peared to originate in the mountains. The Indians
also told of the imps that haunted their dells, luring
the hunters to places of peril. When the Dutch
colonists came along, they sent expeditions into the
mountains, searching for gold and silver, but chiefly
found wildcats, causing them to be named the Kaats-
bergs, and from this their present title has come to
be, in time, the Kaatskills or the Catskills.
186 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
These attractive mountains are a group of the
Alleghenies, having spurs extending northwest and
west, at right angles to the general trend of the
range, thus giving them quite a different form from
that usual in the Allegheny ridges. They assume
also more of the abrupt and rocky character of the
Alpine peaks, and instead of the usual folds or frag
ments of arches commonly seen elsewhere, the Cats-
kill crags are masses of piled-up strata in the original
horizontal position. They have a most precipitous
declivity facing the east towards the river valley.
Deep ravines, which the Dutch called " Cloves," are
cut into them by the mountain torrents, descending
in places in beautiful cascades, sometimes for hun
dreds of feet. This aggregation of rocky cliffs and
rounded peaks, and the intersecting gorges and smil
ing verdant valleys, have become a great resort for
the summer pleasure-seeker, with myriads of hotels
and boarding-places, where it is said that eighty to
a hundred thousand people will go in the season.
Their eastern verge is drained by the Hudson, while
the many brooks and kills flowing out to the west
ward are gathered into the two branches that form
the Delaware River.
From their eastern front, where the huge hotels,
built at twenty-four hundred feet elevation, are an
chored by ponderous chain cables to keep them from
being overthrown by the wind, there is an unrivalled
view over the valley. The Hudson River stretches
THE CATSKILL MOUNTAINS. 187
a silvery streak across the picture, and can be traced
nearly a hundred miles from West Point up to Al
bany. Its distant diminutive steamboats slowly
move, and like a shining thread, as the western sun
strikes the car-windows and is reflected, a railway
train glides along the bank ten miles away, seen so
well, and yet so small. The perpendicular mountain
wall brings the valley almost beneath one's feet, the
buildings looking like children's toy houses, the trees
like dwarfed bushes, and the fields, with their alter
nating green and brown colors, contrasting as the
spaces on a chess-board. Wagons crawl like little
ants upon the narrow mud-colored lines representing
roads. The broad valley, though its surface is
rugged and has high hills surmounted by patches of
woodland, is so far below that it appears from above
as a flat floor. Thus it stretches off to the river,
with a sparkling pond here and there, and extending
beyond to the eastern horizon the view is enclosed
by the dark-blue Berkshire hills in Massachusetts,
forty miles away. Behind them, on favored days,
rise like a misty haze, off to the northeast, the White
Mountains of New Hampshire. It was in this region
that James Fenimore Cooper located the "Leather
Stocking Tales," for his home at Cooperstown was on
the Catskills 7 western verge. Natty Bumppo climbed
up the mountain to get this wonderful view. " What
see you when you get there ?" asked Edward.
" Creation," said Natty, sweeping one hand around
188 AMEKICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
him in a circle, " all creation, lad," and then he con
tinued, " If being the best part of a mile in the air,
and having men's farms at your feet, with rivers
looking like ribands, x and mountains bigger than the
1 Vision ? seeming to be haystacks of green grass
under you, give any satisfaction to a man, I can
recommend the spot."
RIP VAN WINKLE AND THE KAATERSKILL.
These Catskill Mountains were purchased from
the Indians on July 8, 1678, by a company of Dutch
and English gentlemen, who took their title at a
solemn conclave held at the Stadt Huis in Albany,
where the Indian chief Mahak-Neminea attended
with six representatives of his tribe. The Indians
seem to have soon disappeared, and the region for a
century or more remained mythical and almost unex
plored, thus contributing to the many fairy tales that
have got mixed up with its history. It was among
these wonderful mountains that Washington Irving
was thus enabled to discover Rip Van Winkle.
Down on the mountain side, upon the margin of a
deep dark glen leading up from Catskill Village,
stands Rip Van Winkle's ancient little cabin. It is
within the vast amphitheatre where Hendrick Hud
son's ghostly crew held their revels and beguiled him
to drink from the flagon which put him into his sleep
of twenty years. It was a curious revel, for with the
gravest faces, and in mysterious silence, they rolled
BIP VAN WINKLE AND THE KAATEKSKILL. 189
their nine-pin balls, which echoed along the moun
tains like rumbling peals of thunder. The huge
cliffs overhanging the dark glen were evidently put
there for just such a ghostly scene, and even now the
old denizens of the Catskills are said to never hear a
summer thunder-storm reverberating among these
mountains without concluding that the Dutch ship's
company from the " Half Moon " are again playing
at their game of nine-pins. There is still pointed
out the slab of rock on which Rip took his long sleep,
and until recently there is said to have lived in the
old cabin an alleged " Van Winkle " who made a
pretence to be a descendant of the original Rip, and
dispensed to the weary traveller liquids fully as sul
phurous as those in the flagon of the ghostly crew.
Among these mountains originated many of the
quaint Dutch legends that have got so interwoven
into the early history of New York that it is hard to
separate the fact from the fiction.
It was not until 1823 that the first summer hotel
was built in the Catskills, a rude little structure
standing where is now the Mountain House, near the
summit of the inclined plane railway. The highest
peak of the range is Slide Mountain, in the western
Catskills, at the head of the Big Indian Valley, rising
forty-two hundred and five feet. A large portion of
this mountain, including the crest, is a New York
State reservation, and from its top six States are in
view. These Catskill peaks are built up of huge and
190 AMEEICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCEIPTIVE.
jagged piles of crags and broken stone, through
which the torrents have carved the " Cloves." The
stratified rocks are easily split into layers, and they
furnish the towns along the Hudson with much of the
flagging used for footwalks. Enormous boulders,
some as big as a house, are liberally strewn about,
where they were dropped by the great glacier.
Among the grandest of the gorges, which the torrents
have cleft, is the Kaaterskill Clove, its stream, after
various windings, finally flowing eastward towards
the Hudson. As the name Kaatskill comes from the
cat, so the Kaaterskill is regarded as derived from an
animal of most complete feline development, the
" gentleman cat." The steep borders of this Kaaters
kill Clove, a wonderful canyon, down in the bottom
of which ice and snow remain during the summer,
furnish many points of remarkable outlook, giving a
startling realization of the vast scale of these moun
tains. The stream bubbles far below, heard but not
seen, and the mountain peaks above are occasionally
obscured by passing clouds. Adjoining this canyon
is an immense gorge carved out of the hills, into
which pours the majestic Kaaterskill Falls, plunging
down an abyss of two hundred and sixty feet in two
leaps, respectively of one hundred and eighty and
eighty feet. The stream is dammed above the cata
ract, so that in times of drouth the water may be re
tained and the falls thus be exhibited at intervals by
turning on the water, as is the case with various
EIP VAN WINKLE AND THE KAATEBSKILL. 191
cataracts in Switzerland. Few waterfalls have had
more praises sung than this ribbon of spray, which
was a favorite both of Cooper and Bryant. An in
scription on the rock at the foot preserves the memory
of a faithful dog, who once jumped down to follow a
stone, because he thought it his master's bidding.
The unique description of the Kaaterskill Falls by
Cooper's Leather Stocking is interesting. He says,
" The water comes crooking and winding among the
rocks, first so slow that a trout might swim in it, and
then starting and running just like any creature that
wanted to make a far spring, till it gets to where the
mountain divides like the cleft hoof of a deer, leaving
a deep hollow for the brook to tumble into. The
first pitch is nigh two hundred feet, and the water
looks like flakes of driven snow afore it touches the
bottom ; and then the stream gathers itself together
again for a new start, and may be flutters over fifty
feet of flat rock before it falls >for another hundred,
where it jumps about from shelf to shelf, first turning
this a-way, and then turning that a-way, striving to
get out of the hollow, till it finally comes to the plain.
To my judgment, it's the best piece of work I've met
with in the woods, and none know how often the hand
of God is seen in the wilderness but them that rove
it for a man's life." William Cullen Bryant thus
sings the praises of the Kaaterskill Falls :
" 'Midst greens and shades the Kaaterskill leaps
From cliffs where the wood-flower clings ;
192 AMEEICA, PICTUBESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
All summer he moistens his verdant steeps
With the sweet, light spray of the mountain springs ;
And he shakes the woods on the mountain side,
When they drip with the rains of autumn tide.
" But when in the forest bare and old,
The blast of December calls,
He builds, in the star-light clear and cold,
A palace of ice where his torrent falls,
With turret, and arch, and fret-work fair,
And pillars blue as the summer air."
At the head of the Kaaterskill Clove are Haines's
Falls in a picturesque environment, the stream mak
ing two main leaps of one hundred and fifty and
eighty feet, and other plunges lower down, descend
ing in all four hundred and seventy-five feet, within
the distance of a quarter of a mile. The water here
is also dammed to make a better exhibition. A main
railway route into the Catskills is from Kingston up
the valley of Esopus Creek, gradually ascending to
its sources in the southwestern part of the range.
This leads past the highest peak, Slide Mountain,
past Shandaken or " the rapid water," and up the
Big Indian Valley, at the head of which the summit
is crossed between the waters of the Hudson and the
Delaware. The "Big Indian" whose memory is
thus preserved was Winnisook, a savage seven feet
high. He fell in love with a white maiden of the
lowlands, who, however, married one Joe Bundy in
stead, but got along so unhappily that she finally ran
away to her dusky lover. Winnisook on one occa-
THE DUTCH AND THE SHAKEKS. 193
sion came down to the lowlands with his tribe on a
cattle-stealing expedition, and Joe Bundy shot and
mortally wounded him, saying, " The best way to
civilize the yellow serpent is to let daylight into his
black heart." The Big Indian was afterwards found
dead standing upright in the hollow of a large pine
tree. The inconsolable maiden, overwhelmed with
grief, is said to have spent the rest of her life near
Winnisook's grave, while the stump of the pine was
preserved until the railroad came along and covered
it with an embankment. The whole Catskill region
is full of charming places, and the vast summer
crowds who visit it never tire of the bracing atmos
phere, and the magnificent and ever-changing pano
rama of cloud and sunshine and diversified landscape,
exhibited from its magnificent mountain tops.
"'Tis here the eastern sunbeams gild
The hills which rise on either hand ;
Till showers of purple mist are spilled
In glittering dewdrops o'er the land."
THE DUTCH AND THE SHAKERS.
When Hendrick Hudson came up the river he
found sand-bars above the Catskills, and anchored
his " Half Moon " near Mount Merino, at what is now
the head of ship navigation upon the Hudson, .one
hundred and fifteen miles from New York. Just be
yond, a high plateau sloping to the shore is covered
by the city of Hudson, having a green island in front,
VOL. II. 45
194 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
and over opposite the little town of Athens, with a
lighthouse in midstream between them. Hudson has
ten thousand people, a picturesque city sloping up
Prospect Hill, which rises five hundred feet for a
noble background, and it once had more ships and
commerce than the city of New York. A colony of
thrifty Quakers from New England started the set
tlement, which had many fishermen and whalers, and
a large fleet of ships sailing to Europe and the Indies,
fifteen loaded vessels having cleared from its wharves
in a single day. But Napoleon's wars swept away its
fleet and commerce, and the last ship was sold in
1845, so that its commercial greatness is only a tra
dition ; although it has become a seat of considerable
manufactures. Its most noted citizen was General
Worth, a hero of the Mexican War, whose monu
ment stands on Fifth Avenue, New York. Both
sides of the river here are inhabited by the Dutch,
and in fact theirs is the universal language of the
Hudson from Kingston up to Albany. These Dutch
of New York have given the country some notable
men, among them General Philip Schuyler, Colonel
Van Rensselaer, General Stryker and others of the
Revolution, and President Martin Van Buren. They
view with pardonable pride the important share they
have had in founding and building up the Empire
State, and Rev. Dr. Henry A. Van Dyke has poeti
cally and ingeniously described the " Typical Dutch
men " of New York :
THE DUTCH AND THE SHAKEKS. 195
" They sailed from the shores of the Zuyder Zee
Across the stormy ocean,
To build for the world a new country
According to their notion :
A land where thought should be free as air
And speech be free as water ;
Where man to man should be just and fair,
And Law be Liberty's daughter.
" When the English fleet sailed up the bay,
The small Dutch town was taken ;
But the Dutchmen there had come to stay ;
Their hold was never shaken.
They could keep right on, and work and wait
For the freedom of the nation ;
And we claim to-day that New York State
Is built on a Dutch foundation."
From the Taghkanic range of the Berkshire hills,
behind Hudson City, a pretty stream comes down in
many falls and cascades to the river just northward,
whose charming valley was known among the Dutch
as "Het Klauver Rack," or the "Clover Reach,"
modernized since, however, into the Claverack Creek.
The Columbia Springs are in this valley, and farther
on is Kinderhook Village, while back on the hills at
a thousand feet elevation above the river, most pic
turesquely located, are the Lebanon Springs. Here
is the noted Shaker settlement of New Lebanon,
founded by " Mother Ann " in the eighteenth century.
The sect has been declining in recent years, however.
This is the governing Shaker community, and it has
been well said, of these celibates, that " by frugality
196 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
and industry they give us many useful things, but
they do not produce what the Republic most needs
men and women." They cultivate large tracts of
land, produce and sell quantities of herbs, seeds and
botanic medicines, and make baskets, brooms and
sieves. Ann Lee was the wife of a blacksmith in
Manchester, England, and had been the mother of
several children. She had what she claimed as
Divine revelations, and was confined in a lunatic
asylum for reviling matrimony. Being released in
1770, she founded the new sect, announcing, "I am
Ann, the Word," and to escape further persecution
migrated to New York, where she was made its
spiritual head. Converting many, she established at
New Lebanon the capital of the Shaker world, which
has been called " the rural Vatican which claims a
more despotic sway over the mind of man than ever
the Roman Pontiff assumed." She claimed her Di
vine revelation to be that she was the female mani
festation of Christ upon earth, the male manifestation
having been Jesus, and the Deity being considered
a duality, composed of both sexes. The Shakers call
themselves the "United Society of Believers in
Christ's Second Appearing." They have entire com
munity of property, believe idleness to be sinful, and
everyone able to work is employed. In worshipping
they "exercise both soul and body," singing and
dancing, and at times of fervent excitement making,
with regularity and perfect rhythm, rapid bodily evo-
THE DUTCH AND THE SHAKERS. 197
lutions. In these they form in circles around a band
of singers, to whose music they "go forth in the
dances of them that make merry." Since the death
of " Mother Ann " the Shaker community has been
ruled by what is known as the " Holy Lead," com
posed of the first and second elders and elderesses.
A peculiar tenet is that persons may join the sect
after death, and among these posthumous members
are Washington, Lafayette, Pocahontas, Napoleon
and Tamerlane ; and they hold that woman is supreme
over mankind. Near the village and among the Berk
shire hills, just over the border in Massachusetts, is
their " Mount Sinai," where, according to the tra
dition, the Shakers hunted Satan throughout a long
summer night, finally killing and burying him. They
tell us that Washington and Lafayette still keep
guard over his grave, mounted on white horses, and
can be seen on summer nights by any of the truly
faithful who may pass that way.
The village of Kinderhook is in the Claverack
Valley, and out in front on the Hudson is its port,
Stuyvesant Landing, where the testy old Governor,
Peter Stuyvesant the " Headstrong," made his land
ing when he came up the river to attack the great
Patroon, Killian Van Rensselaer. Hendrick Hudson
is said to have first named Kinderhook, or " Children's
Point," because he saw here a crowd of Indian
children watching his vessel. On the Lindenwold
estate at Kinderhook, embowered in linden trees,
198 AMEKICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
lived for many years President Martin Van Buren, a
descendant of the early Dutch settlers, and the
shrewdest New York politician of his time. Over
on the western bank is the Chaney Tinker Light
house, mounted on a crag a hundred f et high, and
the distant horizon is bounded by the Helderbergs, a
long range of peaks, lower, however, than the Cats-
kills. Above, at Schodack Landing on the eastern
shore, was the seat of the council-fire of the Mohicans,
called by the French the Loups or Wolves. The
word " Is-cho-da " in their language means the " fire
place," and from this has come the name. When
Hudson ascended the river, he found the Mohicans
occupying its shores for a hundred miles above Ron-
dout Creek, but the race dwindled, until it became
the handful to whom the noted Jonathan Edwards
ministered in the eighteenth century, at Stockbridge,
Massachusetts. Hudson passed a day with them at
Schodack, was treated hospitably, and wrote that
their land was " the finest for cultivation he ever set
foot on." Two centuries later, Cooper lamented the
Last of the Mohicans.
THE LAND OF THE PATROONS.
We have now come to the high and rocky Bear or
Beeren Island, which in New York's early days was
the southern boundary on the river of the domain of
the great Patroon, Killian Van Rensselaer. It marks
the limit of two counties on either bank, Greene and
THE LAND OF THE PATEOONS. 199
Columbia below, joining Albany and Rensselaer above.
Here stood the proud castle of Rensselaerstein, can
noned and fortified, where the Patroon's agent, the
bold and doughty Nicolas Kroon, compelled all the
Dutch sloops coming up from New Amsterdam to
dip their colors in token of his sovereignty, and pay
tribute for the privilege of entering the sacred do
main. We are told that all passing craft yielded
homage excepting two large whales, which in 1647
swam by and went up to the Mohawk, greatly terri
fying the honest Albany burghers. Above the island,
the Normanskill and other streams come down from
the Helderbergs, making the shoals of the " Over
slaugh," which the Government has improved by an
extensive dyke system to deepen the river channel
up to Albany. There are long and narrow alluvial
islands on these flats, among which tows of Erie
Canal barges thread their careful way ; and ahead,
the city of Albany comes into view with its bridges
in front, and the grand new Capitol building elevated
high on the hill above the town, its red-topped pyra
midal roofs seen from afar.
We are now at the domain of the great Patroon,
the region around Albany and Troy. When Hudson
anchored his ship below the shoals, he came with five
of his sailors up to Albany in a row-boat and exam
ined the location. The result was that from his re
port Albany was actually settled, five years later, in
1614, by the " United Nieu Nederlandts Company/'
200 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
who built a trading-post, thus making Albany, after
Jamestown in Virginia, the oldest European settle
ment in the original thirteen colonies. The post was
located on an island just below the city, near which
the Normanskill flowed out through the forest on the
western bank the Indian Tawasentha, or " place of
many dead." This island was called the " Kasteel,"
and in the le castle " a garrison of about a dozen
Dutchmen conducted a profitable fur-trade with the
Mohicans. Ultimately a freshet drove them to the
mainland and they built a fort at the mouth of the
Normanskill, and in 1623 a stockade was constructed
above, at Albany, named Fort Orange in honor of
the Prince of the Netherlands. In 1629 colonists
were sent out from Holland, and the patroon system
established. The Dutch West India Company made
arrangements for extensively colonizing the New
Netherlands, and passed a charter of exemptions and
privileges to encourage patroons (or patrons) to make
settlements. Every patroon establishing a colony
was to have there within four years, as permanent
residents, at least fifty persons, over fifteen years of
age, of whom one-fourth were to arrive the first year.
A director of the company, Killian Van Rensselaer,
a pearl merchant of Amsterdam, was granted a
patroonship, and got the officials at Fort Orange to
buy extensive tracts from the Indians. He thus,
with three others, acquired a manor extending
twenty-four miles along the Hudson, from Beeren
THE ANTI-RENT WAK. 201
Island up to the Mohawk River, and this manor,
which afterwards became the sole property of his
family, was subsequently enlarged to extend twenty-
four miles back from the Hudson in both directions,
and contained over seven hundred thousand acres.
The Patroon was a feudal lord, possessing absolute
title to the soil, with power to administer civil and
criminal justice, and enjoying other rights that re
duced his colonists to a condition little better than
serfs. His son Johannes inherited this patroonship
from Killian, and it went by entail through five
generations, when the United States laws barred
further succession. The last Patroon, General
Stephen Van Rensselaer, died in 1839, and his son
Stephen, the sixth of the line, still styled by courtesy
"the Patroon," died in 1868, aged eighty years.
The original settlement of Fort Orange in the manor
of Rensselaerwyck, as it was called, became a centre
of the fur-trade, and a town quickly grew around the
fort, which the English, upon their occupation in
1664, named Albany.
THE ANTI-RENT WAR.
As population increased on the adjacent lands, they
began taking leases from the Patroon, paying rent
for their farms, and this produced one of the bitterest
conflicts known in American politics, the New York
"Anti-Rent War." After the Revolution the in
habitants increased rapidly, and General Stephen
202 AMEKICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCKIPTIVE.
Van Rensselaer, then the Patroon, leased farms in
perpetuity, upon the nominal consideration for eight
years of " a peppercorn a year," and at the expira
tion of this time these leases drew a rent estimated
at six per cent, interest on the land value, about $5
per acre, payable in the produce of the soil, fowls, and
days' service with wagons and horses, the latter de
signed to secure road-making. When the old Gen
eral died in 1839, the entail being abolished, he
divided the manor between his two sons, Stephen
getting Albany County on the west bank, and Wil
liam, Rensselaer County on the east bank, including
Troy. He had been a lenient landlord, but the ten
ants became anxious, especially about what was
known as the " quarter sales clause " in their leases,
giving the landlord the right to claim one-fourth the
purchase money whenever the land passed by pur
chase, this condition being really inserted to prevent
alienation, as it did not become operative when the
land was sold or descended to one of the original ten
ant's family. The tenants proposed that the landlord
should sell the reservations, releasing them from the
rentals and making them owners in fee, but this was
declined. The tenants then employed counsel, who
advised that the landlord's right was absolute, but
suggested, while there was no legal remedy, that it
would be good policy to make the rent collections so
difficult, the landlord would be willing to come to
terms ; that they band together and give each other
THE ANTI-BENT WAR 203
notice of the approach of bailiffs, so the service of
legal process would be troublesome. William H.
Seward, Governor of New York, espoused their
cause, and to this advice, he being a candidate for
re-election in 1840, he added the recommendation
that the " anti-renters " should organize and send to
the Legislature men who would hold the balance of
power between the great parties, thus forcing the
passage of laws relieving them.
Then began the " anti-rent " conflicts convulsing
New York politics for years. They formed an active
and powerful political party, and created other or
ganizations, disguised as Indians, who attacked the
law officers. These supposed red men killed a man
at Grafton in Kensselaer County, and all legal efforts
failed to discover the culprits. Other similar manors
existed in different parts of New York State where
payment of rents of much the same character was re
sisted, and these regions also were excited. Out
breaks continued several years, until in 1845 Gov
ernor Silas Wright issued a proclamation declaring
Delaware County, on the western verge of the Cats-
kills, in a state of insurrection. This caused addi
tional trouble, but the "anti-renters" disposed of
Wright by defeating him for re-election in 1846, and
he died soon afterwards. They elected their own
candidate for Governor, John Young, who pardoned
out of jail nearly everybody imprisoned for " anti-
rent" crimes. The disputes finally got into the
204 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
courts, and the Van Rensselaers, fatigued with the
controversy, sold all their rights to a Colonel Church.
He was sustained by legal decisions, and then adopted
a compromising policy, which quieted the agitation.
He released the rentals and gave fee-simple titles, so
that at least three-fourths of the old manor became
without rental. His method of compromise was
based on a scale : for a farm of one hundred and
sixty acres where the annual rent was twenty-two
and one-half bushels of wheat, four fat fowls and one
day's service, the value was fixed at $26, being six
per cent, interest on $433, and by paying this the
tenant got his fee-simple title. Thus the harassing
conflict which frequently required troops to be called
out at Albany and elsewhere was finally adjusted.
THE CITY OP ALBANY.
Albany, the New York State Capital, has over one
hundred thousand people. The city rises from the
strip of level land along the river bank, in a series
of terraces, to a height of nearly two hundred feet,
the top being surmounted by the Capitol Building in
a spacious park, back of which the surface extends
westward in a sandy, almost level plain. The city
spreads broadly along the river, where there are
wharves, foundries, railway stations, mills, store
houses and lumber yards. Deep ravines are scarred
into the hill behind them, and rows of fine old Knick
erbocker houses line the hilly streets, with frequent
,\ .W ,v.
The State Capitol, Albany, N. Y.
THE CITY OF ALBANY. 205
church towers and spires rising above them. The
main street, just back from the river, is Broadway,
of varying width, but of the first commercial import
ance. At right angles to it, leading up the hill, is
State Street, a noble avenue, one hundred and fifty
feet wide, the front approach to the Capitol. This is
the finest building in New York State, was thirty
years in construction, and has cost $25,000,000. It
is a quadrangle three hundred feet wide and four
hundred feet deep, with an unfinished central tower,
intended to be three hundred feet high, and Louvre
pavilion towers at the angles. It is built in the
French Renaissance, of a light-colored granite, pleas
antly contrasting with the red-tiled roofs. Few of
the pretentious buildings of the world occupy a more
commanding situation, standing aloft like the Capitol
at Washington, and, seen from afar, a complete old-
time French chateau. Mr. E. A. Freeman has
written of it, " If anyone had come up to me and told
me in French, old or new, that the new Capitol was
*Le Chateau de Monseigneur le due d ? Albanie, ? I
could almost have believed him. 77 Its architecture
combines features adapted from the Louvre and Hotel
de Ville of Paris and the Lyons Maison de Commerce.
It stands in Capitol Square, a park of about eight
acres, of which it covers three acres. The finest
halls are the Senate and Assembly Chambers, to
which grand stairways lead, and the interior is dec
orated with rich carvings, rare marbles and em-
206 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
Hematic frescoes. The New York State Library, of
nearly two hundred thousand volumes, is in the build
ing. Upon the six dormer windows opening in the
interior court are emblazoned the heraldic insignia
of six noted families distinguished in New York his
tory Stuy vesant, Schuyler, Livingston, Jay, Clinton
and Tompkins.
Southward from the Capitol Square is the spacious
and comfortable Executive Mansion, with an exten
sive lawn, on Eagle Street. On the same street, to
the northeast of the Square, is the City Hall, a fine
Gothic building with an elaborate bell tower. Also
on Eagle Street is the Albany Medical College, hav
ing one of the finest Medical Museums in the coun
try. Among its curios is the embalmed body of Cal
vin Edson, the "walking skeleton." This curious
man came to Albany in 1830, being then forty-two
years old and five feet two inches high, yet weighing
only sixty pounds. He exhibited himself, and ap
peared in a play as Jeremiah Thin. He had a good
appetite, but the more he ate the thinner he grew,
until in 1833, the food ceasing to nourish him, he
literally starved to death amid plenty, and when the
end came, weighed but forty-five pounds. His widow
sold his body to the college, and he now stands in a
glass case, preserved with the skin on, labelled " No.
1," and excepting discoloration is said to appear not
very different from when living. On the northern
side of the Square is the Albany Academy, one of the
INTEEESTING BUILDINGS. 207
chief city schools, where Professor Joseph Henry was
for several years an instructor, and noted as the place
where he first demonstrated the theory of the mag
netic telegraph by ringing a bell by an electric spark
transmitted through a mile of wire strung around the
room. The Dudley Astronomical Observatory is a
small but imposing building upon an eminence ovei>
looking the Hudson, having a munificent endowment
begun by Mrs. Blandina Dudley in memory of her
husband, a wealthy Albany merchant. A charming
spot is Washington Park, westward from the Capitol,
an enclosure of eighty-one acres, surrounded by or
namental villas, with magnificent views and most
tastefully arranged. Part of this Park is land given
the city by King James II.
INTERESTING BUILDINGS.
The most noted old Albany building is at the north
ern end of Broadway, in grounds extending to the
river, and surrounded by fine trees, the ancient
Van Rensselaer Mansion, commonly called the " Pa-
troon's," a broad house with porch and wide central
hall. This occupies the site of the first mansion,
which was covered with a roof of reeds. Over on
the opposite side of the river at Greenbush, the
" Greene Bosch n or " pine woods " of the original
settlers, is the Patroon's other residence, built of
bricks from Holland, by the second Patroon Johannes.
Port-holes were cut in the walls for the musketeers,
208 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
it having been a fort in the Indian forays. The
family burial-ground adjoins the mansion. State
Street, at the corner of Pearl, which is parallel with
Broadway, is the most interesting historic locality of
ancient Albany. Here stood that elaborate dwelling
of the Knickerbockers, regarded as the best speci
men of old Dutch architecture in New York State,
the " Vanderheyden Palace," an extensive building
with two tall gables facing the street. One of the
old burghers, Johannes Beekman, built it in 1725,
and during the Revolution Jacob Vanderheyden of
Troy bought it, and lived there many years in the
almost regal state of the Dutch aristocracy. Wash
ington Irving tells of it in the story of Dolph Hey-
liger, in Bracebridge Hall, as the residence of " Herr
Anthony Vanderheyden," and when Irving trans
formed Van TasseFs old farmhouse into his villa at
Sunnyside he made a gable in imitation of one of
these, and also captured the old weather-vane of the
" Palace " a horse going at full speed to mount on
top of it. Upon the opposite corner was the quaint
" Lydius House," the home of Rev. John Lydius, the
owner of a great manor at Fort Edward, farther up
the Hudson, and in front of it stood the crooked elm,
giving the locality the name of the " Old Elm Tree
Corner." This tree is said to have been planted by
Philip Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of In
dependence, who lived in an adjoining house. The
" Lydius House " had been built as a parsonage for
INTEKESTING BUILDINGS. 209
the clergyman sent out to the old Dutch church,
Rev. Gideon Schaats, the bricks, tiles, iron and
woodwork, together with the church bell and pulpit,
all coming from Holland in 1657, in the same ship.
During many years its only occupant was Balthazar
Lydius, an eccentric bachelor, a tall, spare, morose
and irritable Dutchman, fond of bottle and pipe, and
having a round bullet head thinly sprinkled with
white hair. He gloried in his celibacy until the in
firmities of age came upon him, when it is said he
gave a pint of gin for an Indian squaw, called her his
wife, and they lived contentedly together until he
died. This was the oldest brick building in the
United States ; its partitions were made of mahogany
and the exposed beams were richly carved.
The antique pulpit, which came across in the ship
with the materials of the " Lydius House," has done
duty from then until now in various Dutch churches
of Albany. It is of carved oak, octagonal in form.
The original church stood in the middle of State
Street, a low building with a tall pyramidal roof and
little steeple, since removed to widen the street. The
church gallery was quite low, while the huge stove
warming the building was put upon a platform so
high that the sexton had to step on it from the gal
lery when he wanted to kindle the fire. The astute
Albany philosophers of those days believed heat de
scended from above. The bell-rope hung from the
little steeple down into the centre of the church, and
VOL. II. 46
210 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCKIPTTVE.
here, at eight o'clock at night, was rung the " sup-
pawn bell," a signal to the obedient people to eat
their " suppawn " or hasty pudding, and go to bed.
Albany in the olden time had a quaint aspect because
of the predominance of steep-roofed houses, witn
their terraced gables, but many of them have given
way for modern improvements. Upon State Street, at
the corner of James, lived in one of these the famous
Anneke Jans Bogardus, who died there in 1663, the
owner of the lands in New York city now partly held
by Trinity Church, which her heirs have acquired so
much notoriety in trying to recover. A bank now
occupies the site. Albany has had some interesting
history. In 1754 the Congress met here which was
the first colonial organization, and finally developed
into the Continental Congress. Seven colonies, north
of Maryland, sent twenty-five Commissioners, who
made a treaty with the Iroquois, the Indian league
of the " Six Nations." Afterwards, under the guid
ance of Benjamin Franklin, a plan was adopted for a
union of the colonies, its provisions being much
similar to the United States Constitution of 1787.
Thus the germ of the American Union was first de
veloped at Albany. Her influences have been power
ful in politics. For many years the " Albany Re
gency" controlled the old Democratic party, this
name having been given by Thurlow Weed, then
editor of the Albany Evening Journal, to a junta of
politicians usually assembling there, headed by Martin
INTERESTING BUILDINGS. 211
Van Buren. Subsequently, another combination at
Albany was potential in ruling the Whigs and in
controlling the Republican party the political firm
of " Seward, Weed and Greeley." Albany manoeu
vres managed to control the preliminaries that twice
made Grover Cleveland President ; and in both
parties the Albany political " patroons n are still in
dustriously at work.
Among the finest Albany buildings is the mag
nificent new Episcopal Cathedral of All Saints, an
English Gothic structure, as yet incomplete, which
will be one of the most beautiful churches in America.
In the southern part of the city is the Schuyler Man
sion, built in 1760, a brick house with a broad front,
having a closed octagonal porch over the doorway
and spacious apartments 5 its lawns in the olden time
reaching to the Hudson, where now the city is densely
built. Peter Schuyler was the first Mayor of Albany,
and his descendant, General Philip Schuyler of the
Revolution, occupied a large space in New York his
tory. In this house Alexander Hamilton was mar
ried to Elizabeth Schuyler, and a subsequent owner,
Mrs. Mclntosh, was made the wife of Millard Fill-
more, President of the United States. General
Schuyler and his family always dispensed a princely
hospitality in this mansion. In 1781, towards the
close of the Revolution, it was the scene of a stirring
event. The British, discovering that Schuyler was
at home, tried to capture him. The house was then
212 AMEEICA, PICTUKESQUE AND DESCKIPTIVE.
distant from the small town and surrounded by forests.
A party of Canadians and Indians prowled for several
days in the woods, and capturing a laborer, learnt
that the General was in the house with a bodyguard
of six men. The laborer escaped afterwards and
notified the General. Upon a sultry day in August,
when three of the guards were asleep in the basement
and the other three lying on the grass in front of the
house, a servant announced that a stranger at the
back gate wished to speak with the General. The
errand being apprehended, the doors and windows
were barred, the family collected up stairs, and the
General hastened to his bedchamber for his arms.
From the window he saw the place surrounded by
armed men, and fired a pistol to arouse the guards
on the grass and alarm the town. At this moment
the enemy burst open the doors, when Mrs. Schuyler
suddenly discovered she had left her infant in the
cradle in the hall below. She rushed to the rescue,
but the General stopped her. One of her daughters
then quickly ran down stairs, and carried the infant
up in safety. An Indian who had entered hurled a
tomahawk, as she rushed up the stairs, which cut her
dress within a few inches of the baby's head, and
striking the hand-rail made a deep scar. As she ran
up stairs, the Tory commander, thinking her a ser
vant, called out, a Wench, where is your master ?"
With great presence of mind she quickly replied,
" Gone to alarm the town." General Schuyler heard
THE MODERN TKOY. 213
her, and taking advantage, threw up a window, cry
ing out loudly, as if to a multitude, " Come on, my
brave fellows, surround the house and secure the vil
lains !" The marauders, who were then plundering
the plate in the dining-room, becoming frightened,
beat a hasty retreat, taking prisoners the three guards
who were in the house. The brave daughter, who
made the gallant rescue, afterwards became the wife
of the last Patroon Van Rensselaer, while the infant
she saved lived until 1857, and was Schuyler's last
surviving child, Mrs. Catharine Cochran of Oswego,
New York. General Schuyler is buried in the beau
tiful Albany Rural Cemetery, north of the city, and
nearby is Palmer's famous figure of the " Angel at
the Sepulchre." Here is also the tomb of President
Chester A. Arthur, who died in 1886.
THE MODERN TROY.
Travelling northward along the Hudson, the broad
basin where the Erie Canal comes out to the river is
passed, being shielded by a pier eighty feet wide and
nearly a mile long. Here is the vast storehouse for
Canadian and Adirondack lumber brought by the
canals, a leading Albany industry, there being ten
miles of dockage within this basin for the lumber
barges. The Erie Canal from the west, and also the
Champlain Canal from the north, here have their out
lets into the Hudson. Both sides of the river are
lined with villages between Albany and Troy there
214 AMEEICA, PICTUEESQUE AND DESCEIPTIVE.
being Greenbush, East Albany, Bath, Troy and West
Troy, and beyond, Lansingburgh and Waterford at
the confluence of the Mohawk. This series of cities
and towns stretching for ten miles along the shores,
with intervals of farm land, have an aggregate popu
lation exceeding three hundred thousand, with large
manufactures and commerce. There are extensive
iron mills on the river and upon Green Island in
front of Troy, where General Gates had the camp for
his Eevolutionary army which fought Burgoyne at
Saratoga. Upon the western bank is the Watervliet
Arsenal, where the government manufactures army
supplies, an enclosure of over a hundred acres. Troy
is a fringe of city extending along the eastern bank
and up the steep ridge behind, crowned by the im
posing Byzantine buildings and spires of St. Joseph's
Theological Seminary. This high ridge, bordering
the alluvial flat on which the modern Troy is built,
thoroughly carries out the Grecian idea which was
adopted to supersede the original Dutch name of
Vanderheyden which was given the town. From
the northeast Mount Olympus and from the east
Mount Ida frown upon Troy, and this modern Mount
Ida does not hesitate at times to hurl down Jove's
thunderbolts in the form of destructive landslips.
Derick Vanderheyden leased this estate from the
Patroon in 1720, and it slept in Dutch peacefulness
until after the Revolution, when in 1789 it had
twelve dwellings and the freeholders adopted the
THE DEFEAT OF BUEGOYNE. 215
present name. Just before this, Jacob Vanderheyden
had removed to Albany to occupy his "Palace."
The opening of the Erie Canal gave Troy great pros
perity. It has fine water-power, and thus became a
busy manufacturing centre. Here are the great Al
bany and Rensselaer Iron Works, which were famous
makers of armor plates and cannon in the Civil War,
and the Berdan Horseshoe Mill, the largest in the
country, which has the biggest water-wheel, eighty
feet in diameter, turned by one of the kills coming
down from the mountain behind the town. It was
here that John Ericsson built the little "Monitor"
ironclad which defeated the " Merrimac " at Fortress
Monroe in 1862. There are also great textile mills
and a vast laundry. Its famous Polytechnic Insti
tute is an endowment of the last Patroon, Stephen
Van Rensselaer, who was Troy's steady benefactor.
THE DEFEAT OF BURGOYNE.
The Mohawk, its principal tributary, flows into
the Hudson just above Troy, and each, being a moun
tain torrent, has brought down large alluvial deposits
making extensive flats between the hills, so that their
junction is marked by fertile islands and low shores,
backed by picturesque ridges bordering broad val
leys. Here are Green Island, Adam's Island and
Van Schaick's Island, making an extensive delta.
The Mohawk, after flowing from central New York
nearly one hundred and forty miles in a rich agri-
216 AMEEICA, PICTUKESQUE AND DESCKIPTIVE.
cultural section, pours down the falls at Cohoes, and
enters the Hudson through four separate channels
formed by these islands. The Mohawk Valley is
largely a pastoral region, its dairies and cheeses hav
ing much fame, and in the lower valley hop-growing
and broom-making are important industries, chiefly
controlled by the Shakers. At one of their settle
ments, about six miles northwest of Albany, their
foundress, "Mother Ann," who died in 1784, is
buried. The Hudson flows to its confluence with the
Mohawk, with generally rapid current, bordered by
rich plains, as it is ascended to Stillwater, and thir
teen miles beyond, to Schuylerville, where Fish Creek
comes in, the outlet of Saratoga Lake.
Here is a region of great historic interest, for
through it marched Sir John Burgoyne's army in
1777 to disastrous defeat. At and above Stillwater,
and Bemis's Heights beyond, was the scene of his
closing conflict, while Schuylerville stands upon the
site of his camp at the time of his final surrender.
General Schuyler, from whom the village is named,
was then the owner of the entire domain of Saratoga.
Burgoyne had come south from Canada to meet an
other British force thought to be advancing up the
Hudson from New York, the design being to cut the
rebellious colonies in two and defeat them in detail.
The rebels hung upon Burgoyne's flanks, and at Ben-
nington, Vermont, Stark's bold movement in August
captured a large force of Hessians. Schuyler sent
THE DEFEAT OF BURGOYNE. 217
Arnold up the Mohawk, who cut off another detach
ment under St. Leger, who had come over from Os-
wego, intending to make a detour to Albany. In
September, Burgoyne came to Saratoga, and had his
first contest south of the springs, with the Americans
under Gates. Afterwards, each army encamped
within cannon-shot of the other until October 7th,
Burgoyne all the while hoping for some diversion
from the lower Hudson. The British camp was on
the river below Schuylerville, and on that day they
marched out to give battle, Burgoyne's chief lieuten
ant, General Fraser, directing the movements. Fraser
was in full uniform, mounted upon an iron-gray steed,
and became a most conspicuous object. Colonel Mor
gan, who had a force of Virginia sharpshooters, per
ceived this, and calling a number of his best men
around him, pointed to the British right wing, which
was making a victorious advance under Fraser's in
spiration, and said : " That gallant officer is General
Fraser ; I admire and honor him, but it is necessary
he should die ; victory for the enemy depends on
him $ take your stations in that clump of bushes and
do your duty." Within five minutes afterwards he
was mortally wounded. His aid, recognizing that he
was a conspicuous mark, had just observed : " Would
it not be prudent for you to retire from this place f "
and he had scarcely got the reply out of his mouth,
" My duty forbids me to fly from danger," when he
was shot. He survived throughout the night, and
218 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
asked to be buried in a redoubt he had built on a hill
near the Hudson. He died next day, and at sunset
a funeral procession moved towards the redoubt.
The Americans saw it, and, ignorant of what it meant,
cannonaded, but desisted on learning the mournful
object ; and then a single cannon, fired at intervals,
reverberated along the Hudson ; an American minute-
gun in memory of a brave soldier.
Fraser's fall caused the British defeat, and they
afterwards abandoned guns and baggage trains and
retreated north to Schuylerville. Burgoyne's pro
visions gave out, many auxiliaries deserted him, the
camp was incessantly cannonaded, and finally, with
his forces reduced below six thousand men, on Oc
tober 17th, he surrendered. It was said at the time,
in the British Parliament, that the campaign thus
ended " had left the country stripped of nearly every
evidence of civilized occupation," and in its result it
was declared to be " one of the fifteen decisive battles
of the world." There were six members of Parlia
ment among the captive officers, and Burgoyne gave
up forty-two brass cannon. His army was held in
captivity nearly five years, till the end of the war, at
first near Boston, and later in Virginia. This victory
was the turning-point of the Revolution. Among its
results were, an appreciation of twenty per cent, in
Continental money ; the bold stand of Lord Chatham
and Edmund Burke in Parliament, denouncing the
method of conducting the war j the sending of cheer-
SAEATOGA. 219
ing words to the struggling colonies by Spain, Hol
land, Russia and the Vatican ; and the paving of the
way for France to acknowledge the independence of
the United States all the result, under Providence, of
Fraser's indiscreet devotion to duty. In the neighbor
hood is the great Methodist camp-meeting ground of
Round Lake, and farther on Ballston Spa, where the
Kayaderosseras Creek winds through a beautifully
shaded valley and flows into Saratoga Lake. In the
early part of the nineteenth century this was the great
est watering-place in America, its waters being chemi
cally similar to those of Saratoga. Its Sans Souci
Hotel, opened in 1804, was then the grandest in the
country, and here were hatched most of the political
schemes of the days of Presidents Madison, Monroe
and Jackson, the " Albany Regency " in its palmiest
days flourishing throughout the summer time on its
lawns and porches. But much of Ballston's glory has
departed, eclipsed by the newer radiance of its great
neighbor, six miles away. The Saratoga Lake is
three miles east of Ballston, an oval-shaped lake eight
miles long, from which Fish Creek meanders off to
the Hudson at Schuylerville. As the fishes thus
ascended from the river into the lake, the Indians
named it Saraghoga, or " the place of the herrings."
SAKATOGA.
The famous watering-place, Saratoga, is a compar
atively small town upon a level and somewhat barren
220 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
plateau. A short distance north of Saratoga Lake,
with a boulevard and electric road connecting them,
is the shallow valley wherein are the famous mineral
springs. Their virtues were long known to the Iro-
quois, and when the renowned French explorer
Jacques Cartier ascended the St. Lawrence in 1535,
searching for the "northwest passage," the Indians
on the river bank told him about these springs and
their wonderful cures. The Mohawks, who had these
waters in their special keeping, regarded them with
veneration. In August, 1767, their great English
friend and adopted sachem, Sir William Johnson, who
is said to have been the father of a hundred children,
was suffering from re-opened wounds received in bat
tle, and the tribe held a solemn council and deter
mined to take him to this " medicine spring of the
Great Spirit." They carried him on a litter many
miles to the " High Eock Spring," and he was the
first white man who saw it. His strength was re
gained in four days, and he wrote General Schuyler,
" I have just returned from a most amazing spring
which almost effected my cure." This spring, com
ing out of its conical rock reservoir, much like a
diminutive geyser, and then called the " Round Rock
Spring," was the first one known. There were oc
casional visitors during the Revolution, and the cut
ting of a road some time afterwards from the Mo
hawk through the forests to reach it, opened the
place to the public. To-day, Saratoga is an aggre-
SAEATOGA. 221
gation of some of the greatest hotels in the world,
with many smaller ones and numerous cottages.
There is a permanent population of about twelve
thousand, often swollen to fifty thousand in August
and September, the " season." A shallow valley
contains most of the springs, around which the
town clusters, with extensive suburbs of wooden
houses, groves and gardens. The valley is crossed
by the chief street, Broadway, a magnificent avenue,
one hundred and fifty feet wide, with spacious side
walks shaded by rows of grand old elms and, in the
centre of the settlement, bordered by enormous
hotels. The greatest of these is the famous Grand
Union, a vast structure of iron and brick, fronting
eight hundred feet on Broadway, and having over
two thousand beds, the largest watering-place hotel
in the world. A garden and park are enclosed by
its spacious wings, and here fountains plash and
bands play, while the visitors promenade or sit and
gossip upon the extensive piazzas. Its front piazza,
spreading along Broadway, is eight hundred feet long
and three stories high. Its dining-hall is two hun
dred and seventy-five feet long and sixty feet wide,
the largest in existence, and seats seventeen hundred
people at table. The United States Hotel, north of
the Grand Union, and Congress Hall, across Broad
way, are also enormous caravansaries, and in busy
times these three hotels will accommodate over six
thousand guests, the cost of running each of them for
222 AMEKICA, PICTUKESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
one day being $7500 to $10,000. Everything in
these gigantic hotels is arranged upon a scale of
splendor and immensity almost requiring a railway
train to take the visitor about them.
Many of the twenty-eight mineral springs of Sara
toga border Broadway or are near it, and the most
noted, the " Congress " and the " Hathorn," are on
either side of Congress Hall, thus being easy of ac
cess. The geologists say these springs rise from a
line of " fault," which brings the slaty formations of
the Hudson River against the sandstones and lime
stones that are above. They are generally muriated
saline springs of about 50 temperature, the Con
gress Spring having about the strength of Kissingen
Racoczy, but a milder taste, while the Hathorn
Spring, its great rival, contains more chloride of
sodium and iron. Some of the springs are chalyb
eate, others sulphurous or iodinous, and all are
highly charged with carbonic acid gas. The Sara
toga Seltzer resembles the seltzer of Germany, and
the Geyser Spring is so highly charged that when
drawn from a faucet it foams like soda water. The
waters are both tonic and cathartic. The "High
Rock Spring " bubbles up through an aperture in a
conical rock composed of calcareous tufa, which has
been formed by the deposits from the waters. This
rock is four feet high, with a rounded top, in the
centre of which is a circular opening a foot in diam
eter. The depth of the spring from the present top
SARATOGA. 223
of the rock is thirty-two feet. The waters used to
overflow occasionally and increase the size of the
rock by the deposits, but a tree was blown down and
cracked the rock, since which the waters will only
rise to about six inches below the top. A pagoda
covers it, beneath which water is ladled out to the
thirsty. The Congress Spring is in a tasteful park,
having this and the Columbian Spring under an
elaborate pavilion. This Congress Spring was found
by a hunting party who went through the valley in
1792, and named it in honor of a member of Con
gress who was with them. To this park go the
crowds in the morning before breakfast to drink the
waters, which are freely furnished either cold or hot,
and music plays while the people drink glass after
glass. Each pint of Congress water contains about
seventy-five grains of mineral constituents and forty-
nine cubic inches of carbonic acid gas. It is cathartic
and alterative. The Columbian Spring has much
more iron, and is a tonic and diuretic. The Hathorn
Spring is in a large building adjoining Broadway, and
was found when digging for the foundations of a new
house. It is a powerful cathartic, containing nearly
ninety-four grains of mineral constituents and forty-
seven cubic inches of carbonic acid gas in each pint,
and it is also a tonic and diuretic. The chief medicinal
rivalries of Saratoga have been based upon the re
spective merits of the Congress and Hathorn waters,
and great controversy has at times been thus inspired.
224 AMEEICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
There are other noted springs the Hamilton, a
mild cathartic 5 the Putnam, chalybeate, and having
a bathing establishment j the Pavilion, a cathartic j
the United States, a mild, agreeable tonic ; and the
Seltzer, rising through a tube several feet high, over
the rim of which it flows, a sparkling and invigorating
drink. The Empire closely resembles Congress water j
the Red Spring is charged with much iron j and the
Saratoga "A" Spring is a mild cathartic. Then
there are the Saratoga Vichy, Saratoga Kissingen,
Carlsbad, Magnetic, Imperial, Royal, Star, Excelsior,
Eureka, White Sulphur and Geyser Springs, most of
them in the outskirts. The Geyser spouts twenty-
five feet high, is deliciously cold, and exhilarates like
champagne. The Glacier Spring nearby was found
by sinking an artesian well three hundred feet j its
waters spout high above the tube, and are powerfully
cathartic. There are six spouting springs, the Gey
ser being the best known ; but of all the springs of
Saratoga, the waters of barely a half-dozen are much
used. The Congress, Empire and Hathorn Springs
send their bottled waters all over the world. The
springs are all wonderfully clear and sparkling, most
of the waters pleasant to drink, and it is such a Sara
toga fashion to go about imbibing and tasting these
waters of rival virtues, that the visitors sometimes
get into a plethoric condition that becomes uncom
fortable if not dangerous. But the springs are not
the chief attraction of Saratoga, and in fact the vet-
SAEATOGA. 225
eran visitors do not partake of them at all, but freely
confess that they come not to drink the waters, but
to see the life and be " in the swim," for in the sea
son the crowd at Saratoga, unlike anywhere else,
includes the leaders of all sets. The proximity of
the Adirondacks gives the bracing ozone of mountain
air, and in the cosmopolitan throng is generally in
cluded the best the country can show of fashion and
wealth. It is a great place for holding all kinds of
conventions, and many are the political, corporation
and stock-jobbing schemes hatched on the great hotel
piazzas. It is also famous for dresses and diamonds,
and wonderful is the elaborateness of millinery, gowns
and jewels. The glitter of diamonds dazzles at every
turn as they sparkle under the brilliant electric lights
illuminating the evening scene. It was said not long
ago, in a description of Saratoga, that if the Grand
Union Hotel should ever perish in the height of the
season, with all it contains, the future explorer who
might delve in its ruins would come upon the rarest
diamond mine the world ever knew.
Upon Saratoga Lake is the famous restaurant
where " Saratoga chips " were invented and are
served, this route being a favorite drive for the peo
ple who attend the numerous conventions, for whose
use an elaborate Convention Hall has been erected
on Broadway, seating five thousand persons. On the
western shore of the lake, just where the Kayaderos-
seras River flows in from Ballston, is pointed out the
VOL. II. 47
226 AMEKICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
battlefield on which the legend says that in the days
of the warlike Mohawks and fierce Mohicans they
had a deadly combat, a thousand warriors being en
gaged, when suddenly the Great Spirit sent a miracu
lous white dove over the lake and battlefield, having
such an effect that the conflict ceased, their toma
hawks fell useless at their feet, and they smoked the
calumet of peace. To the northward of Saratoga is
the extensive Woodlawn Park, the home of the late
Judge Henry Hilton. Ten miles northward is Mount
McGregor, rising twelve hundred feet and giving a
magnificent view. It was here that General Grant
was taken in his last illness in 1885, and the cottage
in which he died is now the property of New York
State and open to the public.
FORT EDWARD.
The upper Hudson River has various falls provid
ing good water-power, which are largely availed of
by paper-mills. The famous Fort Edward, one of
these noted paper-making towns, is but a short dis
tance from Saratoga. The railroad, leading from
Saratoga and the south to Lake Champlain and the
north, here crosses the Hudson in a region of great
historic interest. This was the beginning of the
portage in early times between the river and the
lake, the railway route following the ancient Indian
trail. The two waters are actually connected by the
Champlain Canal, and, curiously enough, this makes
FORT EDWAKD. 227
New England an island, thus realizing the belief of
the original explorers. Rev. Robert Cushman, who
preached the first sermon before the Massachusetts
Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1621, afterwards published
it with an introduction describing New England, in
which he says : " So far as we can find, it is an island,
and near about the quantity of England, being cut
out from the mainland in America, as England is
from the main of Europe, by a great arm of the sea
(Hudson's River) which entereth in forty degrees
and runneth up northwest and by west, and goeth
out either into the South Sea (Pacific Ocean) or else
into the Bay of Canada (Gulf of St. Lawrence)."
There can still be seen at Fort Edward traces of the
ramparts of the old fort commanding the portage,
which was held and fought for in the eighteenth cen
tury. Originally a noble domain around it of one
thousand square miles was granted to "our loving
subject, the Reverend Godfridius Dellius, Minister of
the Gospell att our city of Albany," for " the annual
rent of one Raccoon Skin." The old gentleman,
however, fell from grace, and the domain was taken
away from him and the New York Legislature sus
pended him from the ministry for "deluding the
Mohawk Indians, and illegal and surreptitious obtain
ing of said grant." Then it went to his successor,
Rev. John Lydius, who lived in the quaint " Lydius
House " in Albany. The first fort was built soon
after Lydius took possession, and in 1744 he estab-
228 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
lished a fur-trading station. A military road was
then constructed from Saratoga to Whitehall on Lake
Champlain, here crossing the river, and it was com
manded by three forts, one at this crossing. The
French destroyed the first fort, but Sir William John
son made a successful expedition into the Lake Cham-
plain district in 1755, and built here the strong post
of Fort Edward. It was an important work during
the whole French and Indian War, lasting seven
years, and it was here that Lord Amherst organized
the army which conquered Canada in 1759.
At Fort Edward first appeared as a British soldier
one of the greatest heroes of the Revolution, Israel
Putnam. He had joined Sir William Johnson's ex
pedition as captain in a Connecticut regiment. He
performed here a daring exploit ; the wooden bar
racks had caught fire and the garrison vainly tried
to subdue the flames, which approached the powder
magazine, and the danger was frightful. The water-
gate was opened, and the soldiers in line passed
buckets of water up from the river, when Putnam
mounted the roof of the next building to the maga
zine and threw the water on the fire. The com
mander, fearing for his life, ordered him to desist, but
he would not leave until he felt the roof giving away.
Then he got alongside the magazine, its timbers
already charred, and hurled bucket after bucket upon
it, with final success, the magazine being saved and
an explosion prevented. The fire was quenched, but
FOKT EDWAKD. 229
the burnt and blistered hero was for a month a suf
ferer in the hospital. Putnam had an adventure at
the rapids a few miles below Fort Edward, where he
was out with a scouting party, and being alongside
the bank alone in his boat, was surprised by the In
dians. He could not cross the river above the rapids
quickly enough to elude their muskets, and the only
escape was down the cataract. Without hesitation,
to the astonishment of the savages, his boat shot
directly down the foaming, whirling current, amid
eddies and over rugged rocks, and in a few moments
he had escaped them, and was floating on the tran
quil river below. Believing him to be protected by
the Great Spirit, they dared not follow. Shortly after
wards, returning from a scout on Lake Champlain,
Putnam's party was surprised, and the Indians cap
tured and bound him to a tree. While thus situated,
a battle between his friends and the enemy raged for
an hour around the tree, he being under the hottest
fire, but he was unscathed. The Indians were beaten
and had to retreat, but they took their captive along,
determined to have vengeance by roasting him alive.
He was again tied to a tree, and the fire had been
kindled and was blazing when the French commander,
Molang, discovered and rescued him. Thus was Put
nam seasoned for his great work in the Revolution.
The tragic murder of poor Jenny McCrea is also
associated with Fort Edward. This post in the Revo
lution was held in 1777 by an American garrison,
230 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
who retired before the advance of Burgoyne's army
southward. Jenny McCrea, the graceful and win
ning daughter of a Presbyterian clergyman, who was
betrothed to an officer in Burgoyne's army, was visit
ing a widow lady at Fort Edward. In order to secure
Indian co-operation, Burgoyne had offered bounties
for prisoners and scalps, at the same time forbidding
the killing of unarmed persons. He found it diffi
cult, however, to restrain the savages, who went
about in small bodies seeking captives, and one of
these parties, prowling around Fort Edward, entered
the house where Jenny was staying and carried off
Jenny and her friend. An alarm was given, and
troops sent after them. The Indians had caught
two horses, on one of which Jenny was mounted,
when the pursuers assailed them with a volley of bul
lets. The Indians were unhurt, but the fair captive
was mortally wounded and fell, and, as tradition re
lates, expired at the foot of a huge pine tree, which
remained a memorial of the tragedy for nearly a cen
tury. The savages thus lost their prisoner, but they
quickly scalped her, and taking her long black tresses,
bathed in blood, to Burgoyne's camp, they claimed
reward. They were accused of her murder, but de
nied it, and the horrid tale, magnified by repetition,
caused the greatest indignation. General Gates
issued an address, charging Burgoyne with hiring
savages to scalp Europeans and their descendants,
and describing Jenny as having been " dressed to
BAKER'S FALLS AND GLEN'S FALLS. 231
meet her promised husband, but met her murderers."
For this crime, it was added, Burgoyne had " paid
the price of blood." Poor Jenny's murder, with Bur-
goyne's defeat, was employed most effectively by the
opposition in the British House of Commons, Chatham
and Burke eloquently denouncing the barbarity and
merciless cruelties of his unfortunate campaign. Her
lover declined longer to stay in Burgoyne's army, but
retired to Canada, living there till old age. Jenny's
remains are interred in the beautiful cemetery over
looking the Hudson above Fort Edward, marked by
a monument recording her murder by a band of In
dians at the age of seventeen, and reciting that the
memorial was erected " To record one of the most
thrilling incidents in the annals of the American
Revolution ; to do justice to the fame of the gallant
British officer to whom she was affianced ; and as a
simple tribute to the memory of the departed." This
gentle maiden's sacrifice was of priceless value in pro
ducing the revulsion of sentiment in Europe that had
so much to do with the final success of the Revo
lution.
BAKER'S FALLS AND GLEN'S FALLS.
In coming to Fort Edward, the Hudson River
sweeps around a grand curve from the west towards
the south, much of its course over cascades and down
rapids that are lined with mills. In a mile it de
scends eighty feet, these rapids being known as
Baker's Falls, and just above is the village of Sandy
232 AMERICA, PICTUBESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
Hill, having in its centre a pleasant elm-shaded green.
Here was enacted a tragedy, in some respects rival
ling the tale of Pocahontas. A party of sixteen, car
rying supplies to Lake George, was surprised and
captured by Indians, and taken to the trunk of a
fallen tree on the spot where is now the village green,
bound by hickory withes and seated in a row. The
savages then began at the end of the row and toma
hawked them one after another until only two re
mained, Lieutenant McGinnis commanding the party
and a young teamster named Quackenboss. The
tomahawk was brandished over the former, when he
threw himself backward and tried to break his bonds.
A dozen tomahawks instantly gleamed over him, and
lying on his back he defended himself with his heels,
but he was soon hacked to death. Quackenboss alone
remained, and the deadly hatchet was raised over his
head, when suddenly the arm of the savage was
seized by a squaw, who cried, " You shall not kill
him j he no fighter j he my dog." They spared him
to become a beast of burden. Staggering under a
pack of plunder almost too heavy to carry, they
marched him towards Canada, the Indians bearing
his companions* scalps as trophies. They sailed
along Lake Champlain in canoes, and at the first In
dian village at which they halted he was compelled to
" run the gauntlet." He ran between rows of sav
ages armed with heavy clubs, who beat him, an ordeal
in which he was severely injured. The Indian woman,
BAKEK'S FALLS AND GLEN'S FALLS. 233
however, took him to her wigwam, bound up his
wounds, and carefully nursed him until he recovered.
He was ultimately ransomed, obtaining employment
in Montreal. Finally returning to his home, he lived
to a ripe old age, telling of his adventures until he
died in 1820.
Following the curving Hudson River bank around
to the westward, another series of rapids and cascades
is ascended to the thriving manufacturing town of
Glen's Falls. This magnificent cataract pours
through a wild ravine having over seventy feet de
scent, the water flowing upon rough masses of black
marble composing the rocky terraces the stream has
broken down. The Mohicans had significant names
for this famous cataract. One was Kayandorossa,
meaning the " long deep hole," applied to the ravine j
and another, Che-pon-tuc, or " hard climbing ; a dif
ficult place to get around." Along the north side of
the ravine, upon a beautiful plain, is the manufactur
ing settlement of about ten thousand people, who use
the admirable water-power and get the black marble
out of adjacent quarries. Vast numbers of logs com
ing down the Hudson are gathered in a boom above
the town, and sawmills cut them into lumber. Paper-
mills cluster about the falls, and marble-saws work up
the black rocks. In the centre of the ravine, above
the falls, a cavern is hewn where a rocky islet makes
a rude abutment for a bridge pier. Father Jogues,
who came over from Lake George in 1645, was the
234 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
first white man who saw this attractive region, and
he wrote that the Indians then called the Hudson
" Oi-o-gue " or " the beautiful river/ 7 while the Hol
landers, settled on it farther down, had named it the
" river Van Maurice." When the Dutch made their
first explorations they found that the lower Mohawk
and the upper valley of the Hudson, with the country
northward extending into the Adirondacks, was the
home of the Mohicans, an Algonquin tribe, and always
at war with the Mohawks, their western neighbors
higher up that valley. It was thought probable that
with a view of securing assistance in this inveterate
feud, the Mohicans received the Dutch settlers so
amicably and gave them lands.
James Fenimore Cooper located around Glen's
Falls the scene of his novel, the Last of the Mohicans,
in which Hawkeye, looking out of the cavern in the
ravine, gives his admirable description of the cataract
as it appeared in the French and Indian War, before
the millwright had come along to disturb the scenery.
" Ay," he said, " there are the falls on two sides of
us, and the river above and below. If you had day
light it would be worth the trouble to step up on the
height of this rock and look at the perversity of the
water. It falls by no rule at all j sometimes it leaps,
sometimes it tumbles j there it skips ; here it shoots j
in one place 'tis as white as snow, and in another 'tis
as green as grass ; hereabouts it pitches into deep
hollows that rumble and quake the 'arth, and there-
SOUBCES OF THE HUDSON. 235
away it ripples and sings like a brook, fashioning
whirlpools and gullies in the old stone as if 'twere no
harder than trodden clay. The whole design of the
river seems disconnected. First it runs smoothly as
if meaning to go down the descent as things were
ordered ; then it angles about and faces the shores ;
nor are there places wanting where it looks back
ward, as if unwilling to leave the wilderness to
mingle with the salt !"
SOURCES OF THE HUDSON.
The noble Hudson Kiver, which we have ascended
to Glen's Falls, flows out of the great Adirondack
wilderness of Northern New York, the headwaters
draining its extensive southern declivity. Among
these virgin Adirondack woods and mountains, near
the Long Lake, is the remote source of the western
branch of the Hudson, the "Hendrick Spring."
Surrounded by forest and swamp, this cool and shal
low pool, about five feet in diameter, fringed by deli
cate ferns, and overhung with vines and shrubbery,
is the beginning of the great river, and named in
honor of its discoverer and first explorer :
" Far up in the dim mountain glade,
Wrapped in the myst'ry of its shade,
On a cold rock, a dewdrop fell,
And slumbered in its stony shell,
Till brewed within its rocky bed,
There trickled out a silver thread,
A little, shy, lost waterling,
That marks the cradled mountain spring.'*
236 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
The Hendrick Spring is within a half-mile of Long
Lake and upon the same summit, the latter discharg
ing its waters northward into the St. Lawrence. The
little stream from this source gathers force, and flows
through a chain of brooks and ponds to the lovely
Catlin Lake. High peaks environ them, and their
swelling waters make much of the river on coming
to the confluence with the northern branch of the
Hudson at the outlet of Harris Lake. Here there
blooms, all about, the splendid cardinal plant, its
showy flower glowing like a flame.
The most elevated fountain head of the Hudson is
upon the northern branch. Within the inmost re
cesses of the mountain wilderness, in a ravine be
tween two of the highest peaks, the river has its
spring nearest the sky, known as " The Tear of the
Clouds," a lofty pool, adjacent to one of the noted
Adirondack portages, the Indian Pass, at about forty-
three hundred feet elevation above the sea. From
this pool the water flows out through the Feldspar
Brook into the Opalescent River, which does not go
far before it tumbles down the picturesque cascade
of the Hanging Spear, leaping fifty feet into a nar
row abyss between perpendicular walls, and emerg
ing among a mass of huge boulders. Ah 1 these rocks,
like the greater part of the Aganus-chion, or Black
Mountains, as the Indians often called the Adiron-
dacks, are composed largely of the labradorite or
opalescent feldspar, which fills the stream-bed with
SOUECES OF THE HUDSON. 237
beautiful pebbles of blue or green or gold, many of
them having all the colors. Thus glittering with the
splendors of its rich coloring under the sunlight, the
Opalescent Kiver falls into Sandford Lake. A visitor
to the Indian Pass says the explorers entered the
rocky gorge between the steep slopes of Mount
Mclntyre and the cliffs of Wallface Mountain to the
westward. Clambering high above the bottom of the
canyon, they could see the famous Indian Pass be
tween these mountains in all its wild grandeur.
Before them rose a perpendicular cliff nearly twelve
hundred feet from base to summit, its face being ap
parently as raw as if only just cleft. Above sloped
Mount Mclntyre, still more lofty than the cliff of
Wallface, and in the gorge between lay piles of
rocks, grand in dimensions and awful in aspect, as if
hurled there by some terrible convulsion. Through
these came the little stream going to the Hudson,
bubbling along from its source close by a fountain of
the Ausable. In spring freshets their waters com
mingle, part finding their way to the ocean at New
York and part at Newfoundland.
Still another spring of clear cold water is a source
of the Hudson, sending down the mountain side a
vigorous rivulet, falling into the Opalescent. This
fountain bubbles from a mass of loose rocks, some
weighing a thousand tons apiece, about a hundred
feet from the summit of the noble Mount Marcy,
which the Indians called Tahawus, the " Sky-piercer."
238 AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
From these sources among the Adirondacks flows the
most important river of New York, uniting the
waters of myriads of lakes and springs to form the
noble stream which is picturesque and attractive
throughout the whole of its course of three hundred
miles to the sea. The main branches of the upper
Hudson unite almost under the shadow of Tahawus,
and flowing a tortuous course, it receives the outlet
of Schroon Lake, the largest in the Adirondacks,
covering about twenty square miles, the junction-
point being but a short distance west of Lake George.
Then flowing southward and turning eastward, it
emerges from the mountain wilderness, and in about
a hundred miles reaches its great cataract at Glen's
Falls. Sweeping around the grand bend below, and
tumbling down Baker's Falls, past Fort Edward and
the rapids of Fort Miller, it receives the largest tribu
tary from the eastward, the Battenkill, a rapid shal
low stream flowing from the Green Mountains of
Vermont. Thence its course is southward, every
mile from the wilderness to the sea being replete
with historic and scenic attractions :
" Queen of all lovely rivers, lustrous queen
Of flowing waters in our sweet new lands,
Rippling through sunlight to the ocean sands,
Within a smiling valley, and between
Romantic shores of silvery summer green ;
Memorial of wild days and savage bands,
Singing the patient deeds of patriot hands,
Crooning of golden glorious years foreseen."
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