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? From Burnet's Key and the old Albany Wharf and the market dock and fifty points and piers along the river shore they put out with whatever wind Providence might send, be it favourable or unfavourable, for far-off villages along the Tappan Zee and Haver-

The Passing of the White Wings 105

straw Bay, and even beyond the Highlands as far as the navigable water flowed. The names of the old Hudson River captains of sailing craft are not all forgotten. Many an old resident will recall Thomas Brown, Charles and Isaac Depew, the Requas, the Lyons, James B. and John L. Travis, Vermilye, Storm, Conkling, Farrington, and others. Harvey P. Farrington is, at the time of this writing, a hale octogenarian, who graduated from a schooner into the steamboat ranks, from captain became owner, and is now, at a time of life when most men willingly retire from active business, to be found every day during business hours at one of the prominent city banks, of which he is a director.