The Hudson | Page 6

through the Highlands the "Half Moon" was becalmed near Stony Point and the "people of the Mountains" came on board and marvelled at the ship and its equipment. One canoe kept hanging under the stern and an Indian pilfered a pillow and two shirts from the cabin windows. The mate shot him in the breast and killed him. A boat was lowered to recover the articles "when one of them in the water seized hold of it to overthrow it, but the cook seized a sword and cut off one of his hands and he was drowned." At the head of Manhattan Island the vessel was again attacked. Arrows were shot and two more Indians were killed, then the attack was renewed and two more were slain.
It might also be stated that soon after the arrival of Hendrick Hudson at the mouth of the river one of the English soldiers, John Coleman, was killed by an arrow shot in the throat. "He was buried," according to Ruttenber, "upon the adjacent beach, the first European victim of an Indian weapon on the Mahicanituk. Coleman's point is the monument to this occurrence."
The "Half Moon" never returned and it will be remembered that Hudson never again saw the river that he discovered. He was to leave his name however as a monument to further adventure and hardihood in Hudson's Bay, where he was cruelly set adrift by a mutinous crew in a little boat to perish in the midsummer of 1611.
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The sea just peering the headlands through Where the sky is lost in deeper blue.
Charles Fenno Hoffman.
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=Names of the Hudson.=--The Iroquois called the river the "Cohatatea." The Mahicans and Lenapes the "Mahicanituk," or "the ever-flowing waters." Verrazano in 1524 styled it Rio de Montaigne. Gomez in 1525 Rio San Antonio. Hudson styled it the "Manhattes" from the tribe at its mouth. The Dutch named it the "Mauritius," in 1611, in honor of Prince Maurice of Nassau, and afterwards "the Great River." It has also been referred to as the "Shatemuck" in verse. It was called "Hudson's River" not by the Dutch, as generally stated, but by the English, as Hudson was an Englishman, although he sailed from a Dutch port, with a Dutch crew, and a Dutch vessel. It was also called the "North River," to distinguish it from the Delaware, the South River. It is still frequently so styled, and the East River almost "boxes the compass" as applied to Long Island Sound.
=Height of Hills and Mountains.=--It is interesting to hear the opinions of different people journeying up and down the Hudson as to the height of mountains along the river. The Palisades are almost always under-estimated, probably on account of their distance from the steamer. It is only when we consider the size of a house at their base, or the mast of a sloop anchored near the shore, that we can fairly judge of their magnitude. Various guides, put together in a day or a month, by writers who have made a single journey, or by persons who have never consulted an authority, have gone on multiplying blunder upon blunder, but the United States Geological Survey furnishes reliable information. According to their maps the Palisades are from 300 to 500 feet in height, the Highlands from 785 to 1625, and the Catskills from 3000 to 3885 feet.
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Beneath the cliffs the river steals In darksome eddies to the shore, But midway every sail reveals Reflected on its crystal floor.
Henry T. Tuckerman.
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THE PALISADES.
At Fort Lee 300 feet. Opposite Mt. St. Vincent 400 " Opposite Hastings 500 "
THE HIGHLANDS.
Sugar Loaf 785 feet. Dunderberg 865 " Anthony's Nose 900 " Storm King 1368 " Old Cro' Nest 1405 " Bull Hill 1425 " South Beacon 1625 "
THE CATSKILLS.
North Mountain 3000 feet. Plaaterkill 3135 " Outlook 3150 " Stoppel Point 3426 " Round Top 3470 " High Peak 3660 " Sugar Loaf 3782 " Plateau 3855 "
=Sources of the Hudson.=--The Hudson rises in the Adirondacks, and is formed by two short branches. The northern branch (17 miles in length), has its source in Indian Pass, at the base of Mount McIntyre; the eastern branch, in a little lake poetically called the "Tear of the Clouds," 4,321 feet above the sea under the summit of Tahawus, the noblest mountain of the Adirondacks, 5,344 feet in height. About thirty miles below the junction it takes the waters of Boreas River, and in the southern part of Warren County, nine miles east of Lake George, the tribute of the Schroon. About fifteen miles north of Saratoga it receives the waters of the Sacandaga, then the streams of the Battenkill and the Walloomsac; and a short distance above Troy its largest tributary, the Mohawk. The tide rises six inches at Troy