"Mountains that like giants standTo sentinel enchanted land."
"Mountains that like giants standTo sentinel enchanted land."
"Mountains that like giants standTo sentinel enchanted land."
"Mountains that like giants stand
To sentinel enchanted land."
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 Kosciusko's Garden, a favorite resort of the Polish officer, is the secluded path which generations of impulsive young cadets 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 meditative 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 noisyand 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 sandsWinds through the hills afar,Old Cro' Nest like a monarch standsCrowned with a single star."
"Where Hudson's wave o'er silvery sandsWinds through the hills afar,Old Cro' Nest like a monarch standsCrowned with a single star."
"Where Hudson's wave o'er silvery sandsWinds through the hills afar,Old Cro' Nest like a monarch standsCrowned with a single star."
"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."
Up the Hudson from the Water Battery, West Point
Up the Hudson from the Water Battery, West Point
The northern portal of the Highlands is guarded on either hand by the Storm King, rising fifteen hundred 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 northeast, 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 originally, but has since been more classically transformed into Mount Taurus. The ancient Knickerbockerlegend 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" 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, boundthe distant horizon. Behind, and to the southward, the river can be traced as it winds through the Highlands 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 delicious dell. In this picturesque nook among the mountains is laid the scene of Joseph Rodman Drake's charming poem of "The Culprit Fay":
"'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 highBut 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 throwIn 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 darkGlimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark,Like starry twinkles that momently breakThrough the rifts of the gathering tempest's rack."
"'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 highBut 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 throwIn 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 darkGlimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark,Like starry twinkles that momently breakThrough the rifts of the gathering tempest's rack."
"'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 highBut 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 throwIn 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 darkGlimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark,Like starry twinkles that momently breakThrough the rifts of the gathering tempest's rack."
"'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."
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 Highlands. His companions got into a discussion, holding that our American rivers gave no such rare opportunities for poetic fancy as the streams of older lands. Drake disputed this, and, to prove the contrary, 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 sentence 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."
"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."
"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."
"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 Cro' Nest fairies are a dainty race. Owlet's eyes are their lanterns; they repose in cobweb hammocks swung on tufted spears of grass and rocked by midsummer night zephyrs; some lie on beds oflichen, with pillows of the breast-plumes of the humming-bird; 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 journey, 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 handsand 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; his bow of vine-twig strung with corn-silk; 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; his career is resumed, his flame-wood lamp rekindled, and before 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."
"Green be the turf above thee,Friend of my better days!None knew thee but to love thee,Nor named thee but to praise."
"Green be the turf above thee,Friend of my better days!None knew thee but to love thee,Nor named thee but to praise."
"Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise."
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 terminals. 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; 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 "PalatineParish of Quassaic." They did not flourish, and ultimately some Scots arrived from the Tay, and seeing 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 chimneys 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 Revolution. 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 bodyguard 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 address, concluding with an invitation to the entirecompany to attend his funeral; four months later they did so.
The "Tower of Victory" is a fine monument, built on the grounds by the Government, and surmounted 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 commemoration 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 established." 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 Verplanck 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 Society of the Cincinnati, Washington being its first president. The mountainous region east and south and the "neutral ground" were the haunts of Enoch Crosby of Massachusetts, the American spy of the Revolution, whose exploits all about this locality Fenimore Cooper wove into his novelThe Spy, a Tale of the Neutral Ground, which made the novelist's earliest 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 abetter 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 pleasant 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 century, 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 "Devil's 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 "Duyvel's Dans-Kamer." Here the warlike Minsis of the Quassaic, before going on hunting expeditions or the warpath, would paint themselves grotesquely and dance around a fire with horrible contortions, singing and yelling under direction of the soothsayers or "medicine 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 forebodedill-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 Knickerbocker, 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 Duyvel's 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 Poughkeepsie, with thirty thousand population, midway between New York and Albany. Near here lived stout Theophilus Anthony the blacksmith, who forged the great chains stretched across the Hudson in the Highlands, for which the British burnt his house and carried 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 withfine 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." Tradition 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 disguisedas 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," 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 downthe 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 Rondout 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 merchant 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 buildings. 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 museumof American birds is the most complete existing, there is a fine gallery of water-colors, and a collection 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 interspersed with hamlets. Moving northward, the noble Catskill range comes into full view, gradually changing from distant gray to nearer blue, and then to green with the closer approach. Along the river formany miles, where these magnificent mountains give such a grand front outlook, there are a series of old Knickerbocker estates, many occupied by the descendants 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 Pell's 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 Kingston nestling among its bordering hills. They have together over twenty-five thousand people. This was the outlet of the abandoned Delaware and Hudson 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 otherrelics. 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 Constitution 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 manufactory 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.
GREAT 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 theeastern 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 Ellerslie, 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 Revolutionary days, the home of General Armstrong, whose daughter married the elder Astor. Here is the Fleetwood 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." Garrettson 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,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 dispersed 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 historic 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, specially 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 thisZaeger'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 Secretary to the Indian Commissioners, he acquired extensive tracts of land fronting the river, which afterwards 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 Jansen'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. Livingston,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 steamboat on the Hudson, which in fact could not have been built without his aid. By the help of Livingston'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 "Clermont" 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, theAlbany Gazetteannounced: "Mr. Fulton's new steamboat left NewYork on the 2d, at ten o'clockA.M., against a strong tide, very rough water, and a violent gale from the north. She made a headway against the most sanguine expectations and without being rocked by the waves." Chancellor Livingston in Jefferson's Administration 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 Mountains 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 hundred square miles. The most prominent peaks in the view are Round Top and the High Peak, rising thirty-seven hundred and 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 people—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 Indians knew these grand peaks as the Onti Ora, or "Mountains of the Sky," thus named because in some conditions of the atmosphere they appear 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 appeared 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 Kaatsbergs, and from this their present title has come to be, in time, the Kaatskills or the Catskills.
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 fragments of arches commonly seen elsewhere, the Catskill 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 hundreds of feet. This aggregation of rocky cliffs and rounded peaks, and the intersecting gorges and smiling 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 westward 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 anchored by ponderous chain cables to keep them from being overthrown by the wind, there is an unrivalled view over the valley. The Hudson River stretchesa silvery streak across the picture, and can be traced nearly a hundred miles from West Point up to Albany. 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 alternating 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' 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 aroundhim in a circle, "all creation, lad," and then he continued, "If being the best part of a mile in the air, and having men's farms at your feet, with rivers looking like ribands, and mountains bigger than the '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 unexplored, 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 Hudson'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 rolledtheir nine-pin balls, which echoed along the mountains 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 sulphurous 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 andjagged 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 Kaaterskill 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 mountains. 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 cataract, so that in times of drouth the water may be retained and the falls thus be exhibited at intervals by turning on the water, as is the case with variouscataracts in Switzerland. Few waterfalls have had more praises sung than this ribbon of spray, which was a favorite both of Cooper and Bryant. An inscription 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 leapsFrom cliffs where the wood-flower clings;All summer he moistens his verdant steepsWith 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."
"'Midst greens and shades the Kaaterskill leapsFrom cliffs where the wood-flower clings;All summer he moistens his verdant steepsWith 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."
"'Midst greens and shades the Kaaterskill leapsFrom cliffs where the wood-flower clings;All summer he moistens his verdant steepsWith 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.
"'Midst greens and shades the Kaaterskill leaps
From cliffs where the wood-flower clings;
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."
"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 making two main leaps of one hundred and fifty and eighty feet, and other plunges lower down, descending 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 instead, but got along so unhappily that she finally ran away to her dusky lover. Winnisook on one occasioncame 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 atmosphere, and the magnificent and ever-changing panorama of cloud and sunshine and diversified landscape, exhibited from its magnificent mountain tops.