There, on a warm summer afternoon [wrote Lossing], or on a moonlit evening, might be seen scores of both sexes strolling upon the soft grass, or sitting upon the green sward, recalling to memory many beautiful sketches of life in the earlier periods of the world, given in the volumes of the old poets.

Castle Point, the promontory from which the Dutch drove the Indians mercilessly into the river, was at the southern end of the Elysian Fields, and underneath it there used to be a grotto called the Sibyl's Cave, which

On the Jersey Shore

cnntaincd a sj^riiig of clear water that was in great repute. But there was a mysteriDus tragedy connected with the Elysian Fields, and the gifted pen of Edgar Allan Poe has given it lasting celebrity. Briefly the story ma\' be epitomised here. Mary Rogers was a beautiful girl employed by a well-known tobacco dealer in New- York. Her admirers were man\", so that the store where she worked became a popular resort for the young men of the town. Suddenly she disappeared, and after a while it began to be whis- V pered that she had been foully dealt with. The news- HE SYBIL S CAVE, IlUliUKEN

papers took up the matter, and the fate of Mary Rogers became the leading toipic of the dav. Clue after clue was followed, and all led to the conclusion that a murder had been

8o The Hudson River

committed, and that the scene of the atrocity was the Elysian Fields. But there the poHce and the papers aHke stopped, baffled. Then Poe, changing the scene from the Hudson to the Seine, and hiding the name of Mary Rogers under a transparent French equivalent, wrote one of his most marvellous tales, the Mystery of Marie Roget. One by one he took up the clues; with an astuteness that seemed almost inspired he worked out the history of the murder.