The Hudson | Page 3

humble crag
converted by the courage of Anthony Wayne into a mountain peak of

Liberty.
How North and South Beacon again summon the Hudson yeomen from
harvest fields to the defense of country, while Fort Putnam, still
eloquent in her ruins, looks down upon the best drilled boys in the
world at West Point. Further on Newburgh, Poughkeepsie and
Kingston shake fraternal hands in the abiding trinity of Washington,
Hamilton and Clinton, while northward rise the Ontioras where Rip
Van Winkle slept, and woke to wonder at the happenings of twenty
years.
What stories of silent valleys told by murmuring streams from the
Berkshire Hills and far away fields where Stark and Ethan Allen
triumphed. What tales of Cooper, where the Mohawk entwines her
fingers with those of the Susquehanna, and poems of Longfellow,
Bryant and Holmes, of Dwight, of Halleck and of Drake; ay, and of
Yankee Doodle too, written at the Old Van Rensselaer House almost
within a pebble-throw of the steamer as it approaches Albany. What a
wonderful book of history and beauty, all to be read in one day's
journey!
* * *
Roll on! Roll on! Thou river of the North! Tell thou to all The isles, tell
thou to all the Continents The grandeur of my land.
William Wallace.
* * *
The Hudson has often been styled "The Rhine of America." There is,
however, little of similarity and much of contrast. The Rhine from
Dusseldorf to Manheim is only twelve hundred to fifteen hundred feet
in breadth. The Hudson from New York to Albany averages more than
five thousand feet from bank to bank. At Tappan Zee the Hudson is ten
times as wide as the Rhine at any point above Cologne. At Bonn the
Rhine is barely one-third of a mile, whereas the Hudson at Haverstraw
Bay is over four miles in width. The average breadth of the Hudson

from New York to Poughkeepsie is almost eight thousand feet.
The mountains of the Rhine also lack the imposing character of the
Highlands. The far-famed Drachenfels, the Landskron, and the
Stenzleburg are only seven hundred and fifty feet above the river; the
Alteberg eight hundred, the Rosenau nine hundred, and the great
Oelberg thirteen hundred and sixty-two. According to the latest United
States Geological Survey the entire group of mountains at the northern
gate of the Highlands is from fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred and
twenty-five feet in height, not to speak of the Catskills from three
thousand to almost four thousand feet in altitude.
It is not the fault of the Rhine with its nine hundred miles of rapid flow
that it looks tame compared with the Hudson. Even the Mississippi,
draining a valley three thousand miles in extent, looks insignificant at
St. Louis or New Orleans contrasted with the Hudson at Tarrytown.
The Hudson is in fact a vast estuary of the sea; the tide rises two feet at
Albany and six inches at Troy. A professor of the Berlin University
says: "You lack our castles but the Hudson is infinitely grander."
Thackeray, in "The Virginians," gives the Hudson the verdict of beauty;
and George William Curtis, comparing the Hudson with the rivers of
the Old World, has gracefully said: "The Danube has in part glimpses
of such grandeur, the Elbe has sometimes such delicately penciled
effects, but no European river is so lordly in its bearing, none flows in
such state to the sea."
* * *
I have been up and down the Hudson by water. The entire river is pretty,
but the glory of the Hudson is at West Point.
Anthony Trollope.
* * *
Baedeker, a high and just authority, in his recent Guide to the United
States says: "The Hudson has sometimes been called the American
Rhine, but that title perhaps does injustice to both rivers. The Hudson,

through a great part of its extent, is three or four times as wide as the
Rhine, and its scenery is grander and more inspiring; while, though it
lacks the ruined castles and ancient towns of the German river, it is by
no means devoid of historical associations of a more recent character.
The vine-clad slopes of the Rhine have, too, no ineffective substitute in
the brilliant autumn coloring of the timbered hillsides of the Hudson."
* * *
A stately stream around which as around The German Rhine hover
mystic shapes
Richard Burton
* * *
What must have been the sensation of those early voyagers, coasting a
new continent, as they halted at the noble gateway of the river and
gazed northward along the green fringed Palisades; or of Hendrick
Hudson, who first traversed its waters from Manhattan to the Mohawk,
as he looked up from the chubby bow of his "Half Moon" at the
massive columnar formation of