Home / Bolton, Robert Jr. The History of the Several Towns, Manors, and Patents of the County of Westchester, from its First Settlement to the Present Time, Vol. I. New York: Charles F. Roper, 1881. Revised posthumous edition. / Passage

The History of the Several Towns, Manors, and Patents of the County of Westchester (1881 revised edition, Vol. I)

Bolton, Robert Jr. The History of the Several Towns, Manors, and Patents of the County of Westchester, from its First Settlement to the Present Time, Vol. I. New York: Charles F. Roper, 1881. Revised posthumous edition. 305 words

On the left he had the sublime prospect of the pallisade rocks, whose dark columnar front, like a towering battlement, with here and there a projection like tne salient angle of a bastion, presented perpendicular elevations from three to five hundred feet, and, ranging more than thirty miles uninterrupted, (except by the valley of the Nyack.) it at last exhibited an altitude of nearly seven hundred feet." and then vanished from his sight on the remote, but still more elevated range of the High Tourn and Tourn mountains. On the right he beheld a comparatively low but undulating border, which, in the luxuriance of autumnal foliage, afforded a striking contrast and a pleasing relief as he turned from the sublimity and barrenness of the opposite cliffs. Onward he perceived the river in its first course of thirty miles, very gradually widening until it suddenly presented the broad expanse of a bay (' Tappaanse Zee.') Then as he passed into another, (Haverstraw,) and viewed the insuperable barriers of mountains that lay before him, he considered his discovery terminated ; until, in searching for a passage, he found one which proved to be the continuation of a river, now serpentining in its course, deepening and narrowing, until it brought him to ' where the land grew very high and mountainous.' Here he anchored for the ensuing night. This was directly opposite West Point. "<*

"The Dundcr Berg (Thunder Mountain), that rises so grandly at the turn of the river opposite Pcekskill village, was so named because of the frequent thunder-storms that gather around its summit in summer. ' The captains of the river-craft,' says Irving, in his legend of the Storm-ship, "talk of a little bulbous-bottomed Dutch goblin, in trunkhose and sugar-loaf hat. with a speaking trumpet in his hand, which, they say, keeps the Dunder Berg.