Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 221, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 October 1917 — Up the Hudson River [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Up the Hudson River

WHEN you do the seemingly commonplace thing of buying a ticket for a sail up the Hudson, you are embarking on no commonplace thing at all. For rest assured of this: You are •bout to travel the most beautiful waterway in all the civilized world, Zoe Beckley writes in the New York Mail. There are mighty rivers in Africa, they say, that take the breath away for sheer solitary grandeur. And the Amazon, with vast and sinister forests. And Florida streams, mystic and weird. Virginians point with pride to •the broad Potomac with its fine estates and quiet reaches. People in the Northwest challenge the world with their Columbia —mighty .river of commerce and industry—winding almost “endlessly back from the —TPuget sound through ranch lands and slumber lands and towering, glowering mountains. ' Then, of course, the Rhine, glorified -with myth and legend, sung and painted and made a pilgrimage spot by centuries of travelers, but presenting tn fact nothing* save its molderlng castles that permit it to compare scenically with .the river that flows at our door. A Beauty All Its Own. For the beauty of a river is like the beauty of a woman; it doesn’t depend ■upon a single feature. There has got Ito be a certain aliveness to a river that corresponds to intelligence in a face. Your mighty African river of the , solitudes hasn’t that. Nor has your giant stream of the West the charm thrown round the Hudson by centuries of human contact —adventure, struggle, change, adversity, prosperity, peace. Come with me, will you, for a little voyage from Desbrosses street to Albany? And from the economical vantagepoint of a $2, nine-hour trip, let us see some of the things that make this “Empire’’ river so lordly—and so human. At the left hand, as we start north, •re the Hoboken docks, not pretty perhaps, but touched with interest because of the huge interned German ships that had almost taken root at their piers. The sweet green promontory of Stevens Point, where the institute is, sticks out defiantly from between terminals and warehouses that try to choke it Yet the castlelike homestead of the Stevens family manages to keep its,look of aristrocratic serenity, despite the crowdings of comnierdalisrm , At Weehawken, where trolley cars now zigzag so nimbly up the heights, is the spot —then a picturesque and grassy ledge; now merely “opposite West Forty-second street”-—where Hamilton and Burr met on the “field of honor” in 1804.

The boat goes so fast that in a minute it seems we are passing Riverside drive, which some day will be conceded the loveliest street in the world. Now we pass the district of cliff dwellers—thousands of tall houses rising out of the trees, as it seems, from the river. To me these apartment houses, each one homing more families than some small villages, are a feature of thrills and beauty. Cliffs Little Changed. The refil, unspoiled loveliness of the river begins here, where the still rural looking Fort Washington point reaches out toward the magnificent rise of the Palisades at Fort Lee. Barring the few homes that now peep out through the trees at the top of- these 500-foot cliffs, there is not such a precious lot of difference beZ’tween how they look today and how they looked when George Washington and his staff watched from them the destruction of Fort Washington on the eastern heights nearly a century and a half ago and lined out a retreat through the heart of Jersey. These two forts were supposed to guard a barrier of sunken ships and ' logs planted in the river at this point to keep the British back. The appeal of the Phlisades is fresher each time you sail past them. As the steamer purrs along, you need only narrow your eyes a little to shut out things close at hand, and pretend

it is 1609, and that you see Indians lying prone upon the flat rocks high above the river, watching Hendrick Hudson beating northward in his tiny caravel. » Since the Palisades have become part of the state park, New Yorkers are getting better acquainted with them. But until lately hardly one person in a thousand knew the wooded wonders of this 16-mile strip, its primeval ravines, its streams and forests, its wildflowers and the fair fields that sweep back from the little old hamlets at the top. City's Big Playground. Artists hunted them out, and a few hardy campers explored the Wilderness they found. But to this day there is more untouched ground along these Palisades for" New Yorkers to play in than in any other territory within a hundred miles. Under the shaft-like walls, and close to the rim of the river, between Fort Lee and Piermont, is a row of tiny white tents with boats drawn up, gaily painted canoes and little sailboats. Bare-legged kiddies run out hoping for “waves” as our steamer passes, and the campers wave and halloo. On the right, the end of Manhattan island is marked by a high rise of wooded land and that famous creek in which was lost the intrepid Dutchman who tried to swim it “in spuyt den duyvel” to warn the farmers up country that the British had landed on Manhattan isle. Notwithstanding the squealmg railroads that now trestle it wnere it joins the Hudson, Spuyten Duyvel still keeps a good deal the look of a pretty country. Just north of Spuyten Duyvel is a mountainette, which used to be called Tibbet’s hill and had a fortification, now replaced by the tall shaft of the Hendrick Hudson mdnument. The story goes that the little Half MoOn was attacked at this point by Indians. Before the Majestic Palisades. The lovely wooded hillsides we now pass on the east bank are where the rich men of Riverdale have their homes and where the picturesque convent of’ Mount St. Vincent peeps out from the trees. If the day is clear you can glimpse a large castlelike house which was built by Edwin Forrest, famous tragedian of a generation ago. It now forms part of the convent, and Is headquarters for the American branch of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincept. The Palisades now grow more and more majestic, and the east bank of the river is cool-looking and clad with trees through which the houses in the suburbs of Yonkers begin to peep. If you were tired and hot at the beginning of the trip, you are rested by this time despite yourself. There is something in the very widtlf of the Hudson and the calm of the great

to The west trnd - the vast sweep of water as, far ahead, it swells into the Tappan Zee, that blurs remembrance of city cares and makes body and mind relax. The boat puts in at Yonkers and gives you a chance to see a suburb that is a thriving city. You learn that this old Dutch town, only 17 miles from the battery, has 90,000 population and is full of lively business interests. On the Hudson’s west bank nestles the quaint, neat landing of Alpine, beginning at the river’s brim and straggling up the precipitous wooded hill. You can almost smell the_jdamp greenness of the forest, quiet and calm on the weekday, but abloom with picnic parties every Sunday from early morning till way past dark. For this is all state park property now, free to the people and protected from quarrymen. You can’t jjjjite see the village proper from the river, for it is at the top of the cliff, a bit back from the brink, a sweet, rustic hamlet, as remote from the world as though it were indeed an Alpine community. Perched on the green brow of the Palisades at this point are some lovely houses, and two dr three artists' studios clinging to the woodsy walls further down. North of Yonkers and Alpine the country is more beautiful with every

Palisades of the Hudson.