Wey-Gat
frowning behind him, the lofty and blue Catskills beyond, and the
hillsides around covered with lords of the soil exhibiting only less
wonder than friendliness."

If Willis forgot the season of the year and left out the landscape
glow which the voyager saw, Talmage completed the picture in a rainbow
paragraph of color: "Along our river and up and down the sides of the
great hills there was an indescribable mingling of gold, and orange
and crimson and saffron, now sobering into drab and maroon, now
flaring up into solferino and scarlet. Here and there the trees looked
as if their tips had blossomed into fire. In the morning light the
forests seemed as if they had been transfigured and in the evening
hours they looked as if the sunset had burst and dropped upon the
leaves. It seemed as if the sea of divine glory had dashed its surf to
the top of the crags and it had come dripping down to the lowest leaf
and deepest cavern."

* * *

So fair yon haven clasped its isles, in such a sunset gleam,
When Hendrick and his sea-worn tars first sounded up the stream.

_Robert C. Sands._

* * *

On such a day in 1883 it was the privilege of the writer to stand
before 150,000 people at Newburgh on the occasion of the Centennial
Celebration of the Disbanding of the Army under Washington, and, in
his poem entitled "The Long Drama," to portray the great mountain
background bounding the southern horizon with autumnal splendor:

October lifts with colors bright
Her mountain canvas to the sky,
The crimson trees aglow with light
Unto our banners wave reply.

Like Horeb's bush the leaves repeat
From lips of flame with glory crowned:--
"Put off thy shoes from off thy feet,
The place they trod is holy ground."

Such was the vision Hendrick Hudson must have had in those far-off
September and October days, and such the picture which visitors still
compass long distances to behold.

"It is a far cry to Loch Awe" says an old Scottish proverb, and it
is a long step from the sleepy rail of the "Half Moon" to the
roomy-decked floating palaces--the "Hendrick Hudson," the "New York"
and the "Albany." Before beginning our journey let us, therefore,
bridge the distance with a few intermediate facts, from 1609, relating
to the discovery of the river, its early settlement, its old reaches
and other points essential to the fullest enjoyment of our trip, which
in sailor-parlance might be sty