Stevens, as elsewhere noted, bnilt and operated the first steam ferryboats that were ever used, and they ran Ijetween Manhattan Island and Hoboken. One cannot realise the primitive Hoboken of that day in the place of many wharves, where the ocean liners lie at their piers, or move niajesticalh' out into the stream. Among the |:)rincipal steamers that make a landing at Hoboken are those of the North German Lloyd, Hamburg, and Wilson lines. The river front is uniriviting -- a region of coal-sheds, of depots, and elaborate complications of rails. Between Hoboken and Fort Lee are the points that Benson J. Lossing described as "the little villages of Pleasant Valley, Bull's Ferry, and Weehawk." Bull's Ferrv, now Shadvside, is distant from Fort Lee about

82 The Hudson River

three miles. It was for many years a favourite resort for working-men from New York, and pictures made along that shore thirty years ago show an inviting pros- ])ect of green slopes and wooded cliffs. At ])resent the favourite objective point of the crowds that cross the river to escape the rigours of a " dry Sunday ' ' in the metropolis are the gro\'es and public houses of Fort Lee. But Shady side may claim a more romantic celebrity. There was in 1 7S0 a blockhouse near the ferry, and for a time it was garrisoned by a British picket, whose duty it was to protect the loyalists of the neighbourhood. A numl3er of cattle and horses belonging to Americans had strayed on to Bergen's Neck, and offered a tempting bait for Tory marauders from Paulus Hook. From his headquarters near the Ramapo Hills, Washington dispatched Wayne -- "Mad Anthony," as his contemporaries sometimes called him -- to attack the blockhouse and drive away the British garrison, and also to secure the cattle for their owners.