Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 236, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 October 1917 — Up the Hudson River [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Up the Hudson River

WHEN yon 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 about to travel the most beautiful waterway in all the civilized world, Zoe 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 estatesand quiet reaches. People in the Northwest challenge the world with their Columbia —mighty river of commerce and industry—winding almost endlessly back from the 'Puget sound through ranch lands and lumber lands and towering, glowering •mountains. ‘ Then, of course, Hie Rhine, glorified with myth and legend, sung and painted and made a pilgrimage spot by centuries of travelers, but presenting In fact nothing save its moldering 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 1 to 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 centurias 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 vantage point of a $2, nine-hour trip, let us see some of the things that make this “Empire” river so lordly—■andsohuman.

At the left hand, as we start north, are 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 aristrocratlc serenity, despite the crowdings of commercialism. _ - 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 Riverslde 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. Cliff* Little Changed. The real, unspoiled loveliness of the river begins here, where the still rural looking Fort Washington point reaches ?ut towaid the magnificent rise of the hlisades at Fort Lee. , „ ■ Barring the tovi bomOsL that 'ndw peep out through the trees at the top of these 500-foot cliffs, there Is not such a precious lot of difference between bow they look today tyid 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 Palisades is fresher each time you sail past them. As the steamer purrs along, you need only narrow your eyes a little to shut out tilings dose 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 shaftdike waHs, and dose to the rim of the Hven'herweehTort 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 “waxes" 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 was lost the intrepid Dutchman jkvho tried to swim it "in spuyt den duyvel” to warn tlie farmers up country that the British had landed on Manhattan isle.

Notwithstanding the squealing railroads that now trestle it where 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 monument. The story goes that the little Half Moon was attacked Ht 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. Vincent. 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 width of fte Hudson and the calm of the great cliffs to thezwest and the vast sweep of water as, far ahead, it swells into The Tappan Zee. that blurs remem-" brance 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 damp greenness of the fprest, 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 how, free to the people and protected from quarrymen. You can’t quite 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 or 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.