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.

Samuel Requa, -- "Captain Sam," -- who with his father vised to own and run sailing vessels, and who afterwards took to steamboating, is now an honoured and substantial citizen of Tarry town. "Commodore" Vanderbilt once sailed a boat regularly between New York and Peekskill. Before the days of the railroad, and even for a number of years after that destroyer of pristine conditions had been established, there was hardly a village on the Hudson that did not own a fleet of from five or six to fifty or sixty sail. Even now nearly half of the old men in many a town along shore answer to the title of captain, the explanation in each case being that " He used to follow the river. " Even the phrase has an oldtime sound. Once it was an acknowledged and even

io6 The Hudson River

a proud profession to "follow the river." He who made the best runs and carried the biggest freights without loss of either deckload or time was counted a man among his fellow-men. There are a few of them left, -- grizzled, keen-eyed, hard-fisted, broad shouldered, -- a race by themselves, unhappily passing away, -- the men who followed the river. They were in many cases the sons and grandsons of sires who had browned in the sun and wind and shed the blood from their cracked fingers on the frozen sails and sheets of their craft long before Fort Washington had a name or Newburgh was anything more than a place that shipped excellent butter.