ing whistles every few minutes to let people know that the pilot was
not sleeping at the wheel. There was a grand clearing up at noon; and as
the sun broke through the mist, the beautiful shores came into view like
a vivid flame of scarlet, yellow, brown, and green. It was the
death-song of summer, and her dying notes the tinted leaves, each one
giving to the wind a sad strain as it softly dropped to the earth, or
was quickly hurled into space.

A few miles south of Hudson City, on the west bank, the Catskill stream
enters the river. From this point the traveller may penetrate the
picturesque country of the Appalachian range, where its wild elevations
were called _Onti Ora_, or "mountains of the sky," by the aborigines.

Rondout, on the right bank of the Hudson, is the terminus of the
Delaware and Hudson Canal, which connects it with Port Jervis on the
Delaware, a distance of fifty-four miles. This town, the outlet of the
coal regions, I passed after meridian. As I left Hudson on the first of
the flood-tide, I had to combat it for several hours; but I easily
reached Hyde Park Landing (which is on the left bank of the stream and,
by local authority, thirty-five miles from Hudson City) at five o'clock
P. M. The wharf-house sheltered the canoe, and a hotel in the village,
half a mile distant on the high plains, its owner. I was upon the river
by seven o'clock the next morning. The day was varied by strong gusts of
wind succeeded by calms. Six miles south of Hyde Park is the beautiful
city of Poughkeepsie with its eighteen thousand inhabitants, and the
celebrated Vassar Female College. Eight miles down the river, and on the
same side, is a small village called New Hamburg. The rocky promontory
at the foot of which the town is built is covered with the finest arbor
vitae forest probably in existence. Six miles below, on the west bank, is
the important city of Newburg, one of the termini of the New York and
Erie Railroad. Four miles below, the river narrows and presents a grand
view of the north entrance of the Highlands, with the Storm King
Mountain rising fully one thousand five hundred feet above the tide.
The early Dutch navigators gave to this peak the name of _Boter-burg_
(Butter-Hill), but it was rechristened Storm King by the author
N. P. Willis, whose late residence, Idlewild, commands a fine view of
Newburg Bay.

When past the Storm King, the Crow-Nest and the almost perpendicular
front of Kidd's Plug Cliff tower