John Stevens set afloat between New York and Hoboken in 181 1. Now the huge arks pass and repass, some to the point most nearly opposite, others crossing their course diagonallv, bound for a distant slip, and all engaged in what would seem to be a leviathan performance of Sir Roger de Coverley. The freighters find their way among the throng, some light and riding high, with the rusty red of their under hulls dropping sanguinary reflections on the waves; others ploughing deep. They carry a sordid, toil-worn air, as if to impress one with the fact that they have been buffeted by strange seas and moored beside unclean wharves imder the equator. Among them all is a barkentine, working her way through the press. One look is enough to identify her.

I04 The Hudson River

The long wooden stock of the anchor that is catted at her bow proclaims that she is from Nova Scotia or some of its English neighbours. By her course she is probably bound to Rockland Lake for ice. Beyond an overdecked river side-wheeler that sends a tidal wave to port and starboard as she goes, and sets all the river rocking, there is the trim, black hull of a foreign man-of-war at anchor. She has just arrived, and her spars for the present seem to be converted to laundry uses. A little farther upstream some private yachts glitter with clean paint and resplendent brass. Everywhere there is life, motion, the expression of strength, -- but where is the picture that memory recalls of the old Hudson? Here is power, but at the expense of the romance, the poetry, may we say the l^eauty and grace of an earlier day. What naval spectacle or pageant can compare with the flight of the white wings that once were spread through all the sunUt reaches of the river, enchanted argosies that bore about them, if not the scent of sandal wood and musky odour of spice islands, at least an undefined suggestion of remote wharves and unexplored hamlets?