Upon the gentle slopes a little north of Castle Point there existed only a few years ago a magnificent open forest covering a rich greensward, where now private taste and munificence have planted charming dwelling-places. That spot of wood and greensward was called the Elysian Fields. It was indeed a paradise of beauty and repose. Some of the trees appeared like Anakim of the forest in Kieft's time. They stood in stately ranks from the river's brink back to a thicker wood. Their shadows were sought on summer days by hundreds from the city across the river, and the wood was filled with strollers on moon-lit evenings. The sylvan scene formed a delightful contrast to the fiery streets of the metropolis. These attractions and more may now be found in the Central Park, that wonderfully romantic fairy tale in the history of the city of New York, A sketch from the Elysian Fields looking out upon the moonlit river and the slumbering city beyond it, made thirty years ago, is here given.

A little above the Elysian Fields, at Weehawken, you may see with an opera-glass, in a grassy nook at the foot of the hills near the water's edge, the form of a great arm-chair made of rude stones. There Colonel Burr, then Vice-President of the United States, murdered General Hamilton in a duel seventy-one years ago. Burr lived a dark fugitive from virtuous society more than thirty years afterward, and the wife of his bright victim mourned her loss in widowhood for fifty years. Iconoclasts destroyed the monument erected there to the memory of Hamilton.

Washington Heights, on the eastern shore, form the highest ground on Manhattan Island. At their base maybe seen a little rocky point projecting into the river, on which are small grass-covered mounds shade by cedar-trees. That is Jeffry's Hook of the Revolution; and those hillocks are the remains of a battery placed there to cover chevaux-de-frise and other obstructions which were placed in the river to prevent British ships passing up the stream. These mounds have been well preserved for almost a hundred years.

On the crown of the Heights, then called Mount Washington, the Americans built a fort at the beginning of the old war for independence, with strong outworks, and called it Fort Washington. In the autumn of 1776 it was garrisoned by 1000 men. After the American army had fled across the Hudson into New Jersey, it was invested by British, German, and Tory troops. This movement Washington saw with anguish from Fort Lee on the top of he Palisades opposite. He knew the peril that menaced the post, and contemplated its abandonment. Overruled by a council, he sent re-enforcements. A demand was made for a surrender. Informed of this, the chief crossed the river with Generals Putnam, Greene, and Mercer, and made his way stealthily to the house of Roger Morris, his old companion in arms in Braddock's fight, and one of Braddock's aids, in which he had his head-quarters a few weeks before. Morris, now a loyalist, had fled with his wife, the beautiful Mary Philipse, whose charms had won the heart of Young Washington twenty years before.