atskill and two or three similar
tributaries on the east side, and only some twigs remain. There
are some crooked places, it is true, but, on the whole, the Hudson
presents a fine, symmetrical shaft that would be hard to match in any
river in the world. Among our own water-courses it stands preeminent.
The Columbia--called by Major Winthrop the Achilles of rivers--is a
more haughty and impetuous stream; the Mississippi is, of course,
vastly larger and longer; the St. Lawrence would carry the Hudson as
a trophy in his belt and hardly know the difference; yet our river is
doubtless the most beautiful of them all. It pleases like a mountain
lake. It has all the sweetness and placidity that go with such bodies
of water, on the one hand, and all their bold and rugged scenery on
the other. In summer, a passage up or down its course in one of the
day steamers is as near an idyl of travel as can be had, perhaps,
anywhere in the world. Then its permanent and uniform volume, its
fullness and equipoise at all seasons, and its gently-flowing currents
give it further the character of a lake, or of the sea itself. Of
the Hudson it may be said that it is a very large river for its
size,--that is for the quantity of water it discharges into the sea.
Its watershed is comparatively small--less, I think, than that of the
Connecticut. It is a huge trough with a very slight incline, through
which the current moves very slowly, and which would fill from the sea
were its supplies from the mountains cut off. Its fall from Albany to
the bay is only about five feet. Any object upon it, drifting with the
current, progresses southward no more than eight miles in twenty-four
hours. The ebb-tide will carry it about twelve miles and the flood set
it back from seven to nine. A drop of water at Albany, therefore, will
be nearly three weeks in reaching New York, though it will get pretty
well pickled some days earlier. Some rivers by their volume and
impetuosity penetrate the sea, but here the sea is the aggressor, and
sometimes meets the mountain water nearly half way. This fact was
illustrated a couple of years ago, when the basin of the Hudson was
visited by one of the most severe droughts ever known in this part of
the State. In the early winter after the river was frozen over above
Poughkeepsie, it was discovered that immense numbers of fish were
retreating up stream before the slow encroachment of salt water. There
was a general exodus of the finny