The Hudson | Page 7

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 and two feet at Albany, and
from Troy to New York, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, the
river is navigable by large steamboats.
* * *
Of grottoes in the far dim woods, Of pools moss-rimmed and deep,
From whose embrace the little rills In daring venture creep.
E.A. Lente.
* * *
The principal streams which flow into the Hudson between Albany and
New York are the Norman's Kill, on west bank, two miles south of
Albany; the Mourdener's Kill, at Castleton, eight miles below Albany,
on the east bank; Coxsackie Creek, on west bank, seventeen miles
below Albany; Kinderhook Creek, six miles north of Hudson; Catskill
Creek, six miles south of Hudson; Roeliffe Jansen's Creek, on east bank,
seven miles south of Hudson; the Esopus Creek, which empties at
Saugerties; the Rondout Creek, at Rondout; the Wappingers, at New
Hamburgh; the Fishkill, at Matteawan, opposite Newburgh; the
Peekskill Creek, and Croton River. The course of the river is nearly
north and south, and drains a comparatively narrow valley.
It is emphatically the "River of the Mountains," as it rises in the
Adirondacks, flows seaward east of the Helderbergs, the Catskills, the
Shawangunks, through twenty miles of the Highlands and along the
base of the Palisades. More than any other river it preserves the
character of its origin, and the following apostrophe from the writer's
poem, "The Hudson," condenses its continuous
"mountain-and-lake-like" quality:
O Hudson, mountain-born and free, Thy youth a deep impression takes,
For, mountain-guarded to the sea, Thy course is but a chain of lakes.

=The First Settlement of the Hudson.=--In 1610 a Dutch ship visited
Manhattan to trade with the Indians and was soon followed by others
on like enterprise. In 1613 Adrian Block came with a few comrades and
remained the winter. In 1614 the merchants of North Holland organized
a company and obtained from the States General a charter to trade in
the New Netherlands, and soon after a colony built a few houses and a
fort near the Battery. The entire island was purchased from the Indians
in 1624 for the sum of sixty guilders or about twenty-four dollars. A
fort was built at Albany in 1623 and known as Fort Aurania or Fort
Orange. From Wassenaer's "Historie van Europa," 1621-1632, as
translated in the 3d volume of the Documentary History of New York,
a castle--Fort Nassau--was built in 1624, on an island on the north side
of the River Montagne, now called Mauritius. "But as the natives there
were somewhat discontented, and not easily managed, the projectors
abandoned it, intending now to plant a colony among the Maikans
(Mahicans), a nation lying twenty-five miles (American measure
seventy-five miles) on both sides of the river, upwards." In another
document we learn that "The West India Company being chartered, a
vessel of 130 lasts, called the 'New Netherland' (whereof Cornelius
Jacobs, of Hoorn, was skipper), with thirty families, mostly Walloons,
was equipped in the spring of 1623."
* * *
Where Manhattan reigned of old Long before the age of gold In the fair
encircled isle Formed for beauty's warmest smile.
William Crow
* * *
In the beginning of May they entered the Hudson, found a
"Frenchman" lying in the mouth of the river, who would erect the arms
of the King of France there, but the Hollanders would not permit him,
opposing it by commission from the Lord's States General and the
Directors of the West India Company, and "in order not to be frustrated
therein, they convoyed the Frenchman out of the rivers." This having
been done, they sailed up the Maikans, 140 miles, near which they built

and completed a fort, named "Orange," with four bastions, on an island,
by them called "Castle Island." This was probably the island below
Castleton, now known as Baern Island, where the first white child was
born on the Hudson.
In another volume we read that "a colony was planted in 1625 on the
Manhetes Island, where a fort was staked out by Master Kryn
Fredericke, an