The Hudson river tunnels of the Hudson and Manhattan




Great Explorers - Henry Hudson Poster


The Romance of the Hudson, Part I, continued


house of Governor Stuyvesant in the Bowerie, to ask mercy for her people, told him in words of bitterness that her young husband was killed in that night affray, fifty years before.

On one occasion when the Half-Moon was at anchor near Peekskill, an Indian, climbing cautiously up the rudder, stole some clothing, and was shot dead while escaping with his booty. A boat put off from the ship to recover the things which he had left floating on the surface, when another Indian leaped into the water, and swimming up to it, seized it in his hands and attempted to overturn it as he would a canoe. The cook, snatching a sword, with one blow cut off one of his hands, and after a struggle to swim ashore with one hand, the savage sank to the bottom.

Every part of the region through which the Hudson flows, from the wilderness to the sea — the Upper, Middle, and Lower — is clustered with romantic associations. These have found expression in every form of literature and art. Each mountain and hill upon its borders, from the lofty Tahawus and its giant fellows, which stand around its head waters three hundred miles from the ocean, to the Highlands, the Palisades, and Washington Heights, in sight of the sea; every valley, from the Scarron (Schroon), with its beautiful lake and swift streams, to the fertile Hackensack and the Bronx; and every considerable tributary, from the Sacandaga that flows through the ancient domain of the Mohawks to the Croton, which pours untold blessings into the lap of New York — is rich in legends and traditions and the verities of history. The tales of Cooper have thrown a charm over the Upper Hudson, and the genius of Irving has made the Middle and Lower portions of the stream glow with the splendors of romance.

From a morning steamboat plying between New York and Albany may be seen, during a day's voyage, most of the places amid objects on the borders of the river which are embalmed in history amid legend.

The steamboat itself is a romance of the Hudson. Its birth was on its waters, where the rude conceptions of Evans amid Fitch on the Schuylkill and Delaware were perfected by Fulton and his successors. How strange is the story of its advent, growth, and achievements! Living men remember when the idea of steam navigation was ridiculed. They remember, too, that when the Clermont went from New York to Albany without the use of sails, against wind and tide, in thirty-two hours, ridicule was changed into amazement. That voyage did more. It spread terror over the surface of the river, and created wide alarm along its borders. The steamboat was an awful revelation to the fishermen, the farmers, amid the villagers. It came upon them unheralded. It seemed like a weird craft fronm Pluto's realm — a transfiguration of Charon's boat in to a living fiend from the infernal regions. Its huge black pipe vomiting fire and smoke, the hoarse breathing of its engine, amid the great splash of its uncovered paddle-wheels filled the imagination with all the dark pictures of goblins that romancers have invented since the foundation of the world. Some thought it was an unheard-of monster of the sea ravaging the fresh waters; others regarded it as a herald of the final


The Clermont

The "Clermont."



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