The Hudson. Wallace Bruce

Sources of the Hudson.—The Hudson rises in the Adirondacks, and is formed by two short branches. The northern branch (17 miles in length), has its source in Indian Pass, at the base of Mount McIntyre; the eastern branch, in a little lake poetically called the "Tear of the Clouds," 4,321 feet above the sea under the summit of Tahawus, the noblest mountain of the Adirondacks, 5,344 feet in height. About thirty miles below the junction it takes the waters of Boreas River, and in the southern part of Warren County, nine miles east of Lake George, the tribute of the Schroon. About fifteen miles north of Saratoga it receives the waters of the Sacandaga, then the streams of the Battenkill and the Walloomsac; and a short distance above Troy its largest tributary, the Mohawk. The tide rises six inches at Troy and two feet at Albany, and from Troy to New York, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, the river is navigable by large steamboats.

      Of grottoes in the far dim woods,

      Of pools moss-rimmed and deep,

      From whose embrace the little rills

      In daring venture creep.

      E.A. Lente.

[page 20]

      The principal streams which flow into the Hudson between Albany and New York are the Norman's Kill, on west bank, two miles south of Albany; the Mourdener's Kill, at Castleton, eight miles below Albany, on the east bank; Coxsackie Creek, on west bank, seventeen miles below Albany; Kinderhook Creek, six miles north of Hudson; Catskill Creek, six miles south of Hudson; Roeliffe Jansen's Creek, on east bank, seven miles south of Hudson; the Esopus Creek, which empties at Saugerties; the Rondout Creek, at Rondout; the Wappingers, at New Hamburgh; the Fishkill, at Matteawan, opposite Newburgh; the Peekskill Creek, and Croton River. The course of the river is nearly north and south, and drains a comparatively narrow valley.

      It is emphatically the "River of the Mountains," as it rises in the Adirondacks, flows seaward east of the Helderbergs, the Catskills, the Shawangunks, through twenty miles of the Highlands and along the base of the Palisades. More than any other river it preserves the character of its origin, and the following apostrophe from the writer's poem, "The Hudson," condenses its continuous "mountain-and-lake-like" quality:

      O Hudson, mountain-born and free,

      Thy youth a deep impression takes,

      For, mountain-guarded to the sea,

      Thy course is but a chain of lakes.

The First Settlement of the Hudson.—In 1610 a Dutch ship visited Manhattan to trade with the Indians and was soon followed by others on like enterprise. In 1613 Adrian Block came with a few comrades and remained the winter. In 1614 the merchants of North Holland organized a company and obtained from the States General a charter to trade in the New Netherlands, and soon after a colony built a few houses and a fort near the Battery. The entire island was purchased from the Indians in 1624 for the sum of sixty guilders or about[page 21] twenty-four dollars. A fort was built at Albany in 1623 and known as Fort Aurania or Fort Orange. From Wassenaer's "Historie van Europa," 1621–1632, as translated in the 3d volume of the Documentary History of New York, a castle—Fort Nassau—was built in 1624, on an island on the north side of the River Montagne, now called Mauritius. "But as the natives there were somewhat discontented, and not easily managed, the projectors abandoned it, intending now to plant a colony among the Maikans (Mahicans), a nation lying twenty-five miles (American measure seventy-five miles) on both sides of the river, upwards." In another document we learn that "The West India Company being chartered, a vessel of 130 lasts, called the 'New Netherland' (whereof Cornelius Jacobs, of Hoorn, was skipper), with thirty families, mostly Walloons, was equipped in the spring of 1623."

      Where Manhattan reigned of old

      Long before the age of gold

      In the fair encircled isle

      Formed for beauty's warmest smile.

      William Crow

      In the beginning of May they entered the Hudson, found a "Frenchman" lying in the mouth of the river, who would erect the arms of the King of France there, but the Hollanders would not permit him, opposing it by commission from the Lord's States General and the Directors of the West India Company, and "in order not to be frustrated therein, they convoyed the Frenchman out of the rivers." This having been done, they sailed up the Maikans, 140 miles, near which they built and completed a fort, named "Orange," with four bastions, on an island, by them called "Castle Island." This was probably the island below Castleton, now known as Baern Island, where the first white child was born on the Hudson.

      In another volume we read that "a colony was planted in 1625 on the Manhetes Island, where a fort was staked out by Master Kryn Fredericke, an engineer. The counting-house is kept in a stone building thatched with reed; the other houses are of the bark of trees. There are thirty ordinary houses on the east side of the river, which runs nearly north and south." This is the description of New York City when Charles the First was King.

      Behold the natural advantages of our State; the situation

      of our principal seaport; the facility that the

      Sound affords for an intercourse with the East, and the

      noble Hudson which bears upon its bosom the wealth

      of the remotest part of the State.

      Robert R. Livingston.

      [page 22]

Moreover, we should not forget that Communipaw outranks New York in antiquity, and, according to Knickerbocker, whose quiet humor is always read and re-read with pleasure, might justly be considered the Mother Colony. For lo! the sage Oloffe Van Kortlandt dreamed a dream, and the good St. Nicholas came riding over the tops of the trees, and descended upon the island of Manhattan and sat himself down and smoked, "and the smoke ascended in the sky, and formed a cloud overhead; and Oloffe bethought him, and he hastened and climbed up to the top of one of the tallest trees, and saw that the smoke spread over a great extent of country; and, as he considered it more attentively, he fancied that the great volume assumed a variety of marvelous forms, where, in dim obscurity, he saw shadowed out palaces and domes and lofty spires, all of which lasted but a moment, and then passed away." So New York, like Alba Longa and Rome, and other cities of antiquity, was[page 23] under the immediate care of its tutelar saint. Its destiny was foreshadowed, for now the palaces and domes and lofty spires are real and genuine, and something more than dreams are made of.

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