tribes from the whole lower part of
the river; it was like the spring and fall migration of the birds, or
the fleeing of the population of a district before some approaching
danger: vast swarms of cat-fish, white and yellow perch and striped
bass were _en route_ for the fresh water farther north. When the
people along shore made the discovery, they turned out as they do in
the rural districts when the pigeons appear, and, with small gill-nets
let down through holes in the ice, captured them in fabulous numbers.
On the heels of the retreating perch and cat-fish came the denizens of
the salt water, and codfish were taken ninety miles above New York.
When the February thaw came and brought up the volume of fresh water
again, the sea brine was beaten back, and the fish, what were left of
them, resumed their old feeding-grounds.

* * *

Still on the Half-Moon glides: before her rise swarms
of quick water fowl, and from her prow the sturgeon
leaps, and falls with echoing splash.

_Alfred B. Street._

* * *

Beneath--the river with its tranquil flood,
Around--the breezes of the morning, scented
With odors from the wood.

_William Allen Butler._

* * *

"It is this character of the Hudson, this encroachment of the sea upon
it, on account of the subsidence of the Atlantic coast, that led
Professor Newberry to speak of it as a drowned river. We have heard
of drowned lands, but here is a river overflowed and submerged in the
same manner. It is quite certain, however, that this has not always
been the character of the Hudson. Its great trough bears evidence
of having been worn to its present dimensions by much swifter and
stronger currents than those that course through it now. To this
gradual subsidence in connection with the great changes wrought by the
huge glacier that crept down from the north during what is called the
ice period, is owing the character and aspects of the Hudson as we see
and know them. The Mohawk Valley was filled up by the drift, the Great
Lakes scooped out, and an opening for their pent-up waters found
through what is now the St. Lawrence. The trough of the Hudson was
also partially filled and has remained so to the present day. There
is, perhaps, no point in the river where the mud and clay are not from
two to three times as deep as the water. That ancient and grander
Hudson lies back of us several hundred thousand years--perhaps more,
for a millio