d left a veiled and humid sky
overhead, that gave a charming softness to the scene on which their eyes
fell when they came out of the saloon again, and took their places with
a largely increased companionship on the deck.

They had already reached that part of the river where the uplands begin,
and their course was between stately walls of rocky steepness, or wooded
slopes, or grassy hollows, the scene forever losing and taking grand
and lovely shape. Wreaths of mist hung about the tops of the loftier
headlands, and long shadows draped their sides. As the night grew,
lights twinkled from a lonely house here and there in the valleys; a
swarm of lamps showed a town where it lay upon the lap or at the foot of
the hills. Behind them stretched the great gray river, haunted with many
sails; now a group of canal-boats grappled together, and having an air
of coziness in their adventure upon this strange current out of their
own sluggish waters, drifted out of sight; and now a smaller and
slower steamer, making a laborious show of keeping up was passed, and
reluctantly fell behind; along the water's edge rattled and hooted the
frequent trains. They could not tell at any time what part of the river
they were on, and they could not, if they would, have made its beauty a
matter of conscientious observation; but all the more, therefore, they
deeply enjoyed it without reference to time or place. They felt some
natural pain when they thought that they might unwittingly pass the
scenes that Irving has made part of the common dream-land, and they
would fair have seen the lighted windows of the house out of which
a cheerful ray has penetrated to so many hearts; but being sure of
nothing, as they were, they had the comfort of finding the Tappan Zee
in every expanse of the river, and of discovering Sunny-Side on every
pleasant slope. By virtue of this helplessness, the Hudson, without
ceasing to be the Hudson, became from moment to moment all fair and
stately streams upon which they had voyaged or read of voyaging, from
the Nile to the Mississippi. There is no other travel like river travel;
it is the perfection of movement, and one might well desire never to
arrive at one's destination. The abundance of room, the free, pure air,
the constant delight of the eyes in the changing landscape, the soft
tremor of the boat, so steady upon her keel, the variety of the little
world on board,--all form a charm which no good heart in a sound body
can