Along the River beloiv Troy . 532 Looking doivn River, near Troy 540 On the Hudson above Troy . 555 From an ohl print.

Congress Spring in 1820 559 550 The Rapids below Glens Falls 552

xii Illustrations Page

On the River between Glens [''alls and Sandy Hill I'l-oni a draicnii^ by \V . 7. Wilson.

The Bridge at (ilens Falls . . . . . j6q A Logjam on the Upper Hudson . . . jyo Sectional Map of the Hudson River In separate pocket

THE HUDSON RIVER FROM OCEAN TO SOURCE

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The Hudson River

Chapter I Introductory

and a IN a document that for nearly two centuries half has lain safely tucked away among the royal archives of The Hague, there is what the directors of the West India Company called " a brief and clear account of the situation of New Netherland." "This district or country [we read], which is right fruitful and salubrious, was first discovered and found in the year 1609, by the Netherlanders, as its name implies, at their own cost, by means of one Hendrick Hudson, skipper and merchant, in the ship Halve Macnc sailing in the service of the incorporated East India Company; for the natives or Indians, on his first coming there, regarded the ship with mighty won-

2 The Hudson River

der and looked upon it as a sea monster, declaring that such a ship or people had never before been there." In writing a book upon the Hudson River, it is hardly possible to avoid a repetition of historic statements already more or less familiar to the reader. The vovage of Henry Hudson, English navigator in the service of the Dutch East India Company, to find a passage through polar seas to the shores of farthest Ind; the happy accident which led him into the mouth of the river that was afterwards to bear his name and to perpetuate his memory; and the wonder of the Indians of Manhattan when the Half Moon anchored at last, are the details of a more than thrice-told tale.