es, and
shrubbery are crumbling away, but are well worth a visit. It is 495
feet above the Hudson. A winding picturesque carriage road leads up
from the plain, and the pedestrian can reach the summit in 20 minutes.
On clear days the Catskill Mountains are visible.

=Fort Clinton=, in the northeast angle of the plain, was built in
1778 under the direction of the Polish soldier, Kosciusko. Sea Coast
Battery is located on the north waterfront, Siege Battery on the slope
of the hill below the Battle Monument. Targets for the guns on both
batteries are on the hillside about a mile distant. Battery Knox,
which overlooks the river, was rebuilt in 1874 on the site of an old
revolutionary redoubt.

* * *

Bright are the moments link'd with thee,
Boast of a glory-hallowed land!
Hope of the valiant and the free,
Home of our youthful soldier band!

_Anonymous._

* * *

While Fort Putnam was being built Washington was advised that Dubois's
regiment was unfit to be ordered on duty, there being "not one blanket
in the regiment. Very few have either a shoe or a shirt, and most of
them have neither stockings, breeches, or overalls. Several companies
of inlisted artificers are in the same situation, and unable to work
in the field."

What privations were here endured to establish our priceless liberty!
It makes better Americans of us all to turn and re-turn the pages of
the real Hudson, the most picturesque volume of the world's history.

West Point during the Revolution was the Gibraltar of the Hudson
and her forts were regarded almost impregnable. Fort Putnam will be
rebuilt as an enduring monument to the bravery of American soldiers.

The best way to study West Point, however, is not in voluminous
histories or in the condensed pages of a guide book, but to visit it
and see its real life, to wander amid its old associations, and
ask, when necessary, intelligent questions, which are everywhere
courteously answered. The view north seen in a summer evening, is one
long to be remembered. In such an hour the writer's idea of the Hudson
as an open book with granite pages and crystal book-mark is most
completely realized as indicated in the Highland section of his poem,
"The Hudson":

On either side these mountain glens
Lie open like a massive book,
Whose words were graved with iron pens,
And lead into the eternal rock:

Which evermore shall here retain
The annals time cannot er