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So Robert Fulton had several predecessors in
the idea of applying steam to navigation—John Fitch in 1785,
William Symington in 1788 and many others who likewise
coasted along the shore and indenture of a great idea,
marked by continual failure and final abandonment. It was
reserved for Fulton to complete and stamp upon his labor the
seal of service and success, and to stand, therefore, its
accepted inventor.
In addition to the invention of Fulton who has contributed
so much to the business and brotherhood of mankind, the
telegraph of Morse occupies a prominent page of our Hudson
history, and it is said that Morse left unfinished a novel,
the incidents of which were associated with the Highlands,
in order to work out his idea which gave the Hudson a
grander chapter.
Fulton's and Morse's inventions are also happily associated
in this, that the steamboat was necessary before the
Atlantic cable, born of Morse's invention, could be laid,
and, singularly enough, the laying of the cable, largely
promoted by Hudson River genius and capital, by Field,
Cooper, Morse and others on August 5, 1857, marks the very
middle of the centennial which we are now observing.
Among all the rivers of the world the Hudson
is acknowledged queen, decked with romance,
jeweled with poetry, clad with history, and
crowned with beauty. More than this, the
Hudson is a noble threshold to a great
continent and New York Bay a fitting portal.
The traveler who enters the Narrows for the
first time is impressed with wonder, and the
charm abides even with those who pass daily
to and fro amid her beauties. No other river
approaches the Hudson in varied grandeur and
sublimity, and no other city has so grand
and commodious a harbor as New York. It has
been the privilege of the writer of this
handbook to see again and again most of the
streams of the old world "renowned in song
and story," to behold sunrise on the Bay of
Naples and sunset at the Golden Gate of San
Francisco, but the spell of the Hudson
remains unbroken, and the bright bay at her
mouth reflects the noontide without a rival.
To pass a day in her company, rich with the
story and glory of three hundred years, is
worth a trip across a continent, and it is
no wonder that the European traveler says
again and again: "to see the Hudson alone,
is worth a voyage across the Atlantic."
How like a great volume of history romance
and poetry seem her bright illumined pages
with the broad river lying as a crystal
book-mark between her open leaves! And how
real this idea becomes to the Day Line
tourist, with the record of Washington and
Hamilton for its opening sentence, as he
leaves the Up-Town landing, and catches
messages from Fort Washington and Fort Lee.
What Indian legends cluster about the brow
of Indian Head blending with the love story
of Mary Phillipse at the Manor House of
Yonkers. How Irving's vision of Katrina and
Sleepy Hollow become woven with the courage
of Paulding and the capture of Andre at
Tarrytown. How the Southern Portal of the
Highlands stands sentineled by Stony Point,
a 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!
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."
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."
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 the
Palisades or at the great mountains of the
Highlands; what dreams of success,
apparently within reach, were his, when
night came down in those deep forest
solitudes under the shadowy base of Old Cro'
Nest and Klinkerberg Mountain, where his
little craft seemed a lone cradle of
civilization; and then, when at last, with
immediate purpose foiled, he turned his boat
southward, having discovered, but without
knowing it, something infinitely more
valuable to future history than his
long-sought "Northwestern Passage to China,"
how he must have gazed with blended wonder
and awe at the distant Catskills as their
sharp lines came out, as we have seen them
many a September morning, bold and clear
along the horizon, and learned in gentle
reveries the poetic meaning of the blue
Ontioras or "Mountains of the Sky." How
fondly he must have gazed on the picturesque
hills above Apokeepsing and listened to the
murmuring music of Winnikee Creek, when the
air was clear as crystal and the banks
seemed to be brought nearer, perfectly
reflected in the glassy surface, while here
and there his eye wandered over grassy
uplands, and rested on hills of maize in
shock, looking for all the world like mimic
encampments of Indian wigwams! Then as
October came with tints which no European
eye had ever seen, and sprinkled the
hill-tops with gold and russet, he must
indeed have felt that he was living an
enchanted life, or journeying in a fairy
land!
How graphically the poet Willis has put the
picture in musical prose: "Fancy the bold
Englishman, as the Dutch called Hendrick
Hudson, steering his little yacht the 'Haalve
Maan,' for the first time through the
Highlands. Imagine his anxiety for the
channel forgotten, as he gazed up at the
towering rocks, and round the green shores,
and onward past point and opening bend,
miles away into the heart of the country;
yet with no lessening of the glorious stream
before him and no decrease of promise in the
bold and luxuriant shores. Picture him lying
at anchor below Newburgh with the dark pass
of the Wey-Gat frowning behind him, the
lofty and blue Catskills beyond, and the
hillsides around covered with lords of the
soil exhibiting only less wonder than
friendliness."
If Willis forgot the season of the year and
left out the landscape glow which the
voyager saw, Talmage completed the picture
in a rainbow paragraph of color: "Along our
river and up and down the sides of the great
hills there was an indescribable mingling of
gold, and orange and crimson and saffron,
now sobering into drab and maroon, now
flaring up into solferino and scarlet. Here
and there the trees looked as if their tips
had blossomed into fire. In the morning
light the forests seemed as if they had been
transfigured and in the evening hours they
looked as if the sunset had burst and
dropped upon the leaves. It seemed as if the
sea of divine glory had dashed its surf to
the top of the crags and it had come
dripping down to the lowest leaf and deepest
cavern."
On
such a day in 1883 it was the privilege of
the writer to stand before 150,000 people at
Newburgh on the occasion of the Centennial
Celebration of the Disbanding of the Army
under Washington, and, in his poem entitled
"The Long Drama," to portray the great
mountain background bounding the southern
horizon with autumnal splendor:
October lifts with colors bright
Her mountain canvas to the sky,
The crimson trees aglow with light
Unto our banners wave reply.
Like Horeb's bush the leaves repeat
From lips of flame with glory crowned:—
"Put off thy shoes from off thy feet,
The place they trod is holy ground."
Such was the vision Hendrick Hudson must
have had in those far off September and
October days, and such the picture which
visitors still compass long distances to
behold.
"It is a far cry to Loch Awe" says an old
Scottish proverb, and it is a long step from
the sleepy rail of the "Half Moon" to the
roomy-decked floating palaces—the "Hendrick
Hudson," the "New York" and the "Albany."
Before beginning our journey let us,
therefore, bridge the distance with a few
intermediate facts, from 1609, relating to
the discovery of the river, its early
settlement, its old reaches and other points
essential to the fullest enjoyment of our
trip, which in sailor-parlance might be
styled "a gang-plank of history," reaching
as it does from the old-time yacht to the
modern steamer, and spanning three hundred
years.
Its Discovery.—In the year 1524, thirty-two
years after the discovery of America, the
navigator Verrazano, a French officer,
anchored off the island of Manhattan and
proceeded a short distance up the river. The
following year, Gomez, a Portuguese in the
employ of Spain, coasted along the continent
and entered the Narrows. Several sea-rovers
also visited our noble bay about 1598, but
it was reserved for Hendrick Hudson, with a
mixed crew of eighteen or twenty men in the
"Half Moon," to explore the river from Sandy
Hook to Albany, and carry back to Europe a
description of its beauty. He had previously
made two fruitless voyages for the Muscovy
Company—an English corporation—in quest of a
passage to China, via the North Pole and
Nova Zembla.
In the autumn of 1608 he was called to
Amsterdam, and sailed from Texel, April 5,
1609, in the service of the Dutch East India
Company. Reaching Greenland he coasted
southward, arriving at Cape Cod August 6th,
Chesapeake Bay August 28th, and then sailed
north to Sandy Hook. He entered the Bay of
New York September the 3d, passed through
the Narrows, and anchored in what is now
called Newark Bay; on the 12th resumed his
voyage, and, drifting with the tide,
remained over night on the 13th about three
miles above the northern end of Manhattan
Island; on the 14th sailed through what is
now known as Tappan Zee and Haverstraw Bay,
entered the Highlands and anchored for the
night near the present dock of West Point.
On the morning of the 15th beheld Newburgh
Bay, reached Catskill on the 16th, Athens on
the 17th, Castleton and Albany on the 18th,
and sent out an exploring boat as far as
Waterford. He became thoroughly satisfied
that this route did not lead to China—a
conclusion in harmony with that of
Champlain, who, the same summer, had been
making his way south, through Lake Champlain
and Lake George, in quest of the South Sea.
There
is something humorous in the idea of these
old mariners attempting to sail through a
continent 3,000 miles wide, seamed with
mountain chains from 2,000 to 15,000 feet in
height. Hudson's return voyage began
September 23d. He anchored again in Newburgh
Bay the 25th, arrived at Stony Point October
1st, reached Sandy Hook the 4th, and
returned to Europe.
First
Description of the Hudson.—The official
record of the voyage was kept by Robert Juet,
mate of the "Half Moon," and his journal
abounds with graphic and pleasing incidents
as to the people and their customs. At the
Narrows the Indians visited the vessel,
"clothed in mantles of feathers and robes of
fur, the women clothed in hemp; red copper
tobacco pipes, and other things of copper,
they did wear about their necks." At Yonkers
they came on board in great numbers. Two
were detained and dressed in red coats, but
they sprang overboard and swam away. At
Catskill they found "a very loving people,
and very old men. They brought to the ship
Indian corn, pumpkins and tobaccos." Near
Schodack the "Master's mate went on land
with an old savage, governor of the country,
who carried him to his house and made him
good cheer." "I sailed to the shore," he
writes, "in one of their canoes, with an old
man, who was chief of a tribe, consisting of
forty men and seventeen women. These I saw
there in a house well constructed of oak
bark, and circular in shape, so that it has
the appearance of being built with an arched
roof. It contained a large quantity of corn
and beans of last year's growth, and there
lay near the house, for the purpose of
drying, enough to load three ships, besides
what was growing in the fields. On our
coming to the house two mats were spread out
to sit upon, and some food was immediately
served in well-made wooden bowls."
"Two men were also dispatched at once, with
bows and arrows in quest of game, who soon
brought in a pair of pigeons, which they had
shot. They likewise killed a fat dog,
(probably a black bear), and skinned it in
great haste, with shells which they had got
out of the water."
The well-known
hospitality of the Hudson River valley has,
therefore, "high antiquity" in this record
of the garrulous writer. At Albany the
Indians flocked to the vessel, and Hudson
determined to try the chiefs to see "whether
they had any treachery in them." "So they
took them down into the cabin, and gave them
so much wine and aqua vitae that they were
all merry. In the end one of them was drunk,
and they could not tell how to take it." The
old chief, who took the aqua vitae, was so
grateful when he awoke the next day, that he
showed them all the country, and gave them
venison.
Passing down through the Highlands the "Half
Moon" was becalmed near Stony Point and the
"people of the Mountains" came on board and
marveled 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
