between the httle centres of po])ulation there are fragrant miles of tree-shaded banks where the violets and anemones nod in the spring and the scarlet spires of the cardinal flower hide in August by the watercourses. Half a century ago Alfred B. Street wrote a characteristic description of the woodland scenery which in his day formed so striking a feature of the Hudson, and which even now in many places challenges the admiration of the observer.

Here the Spruce thrusts in Its bristhng plume, tipped with its pale green points The scallop'd beech leaf and the birch's, cut Into fine ragged edges, interlace: While here and there, through clefts, the laurel lifts Its snowy chalices, half brimmed with dew.

Chapter XIV Spectres of the Tappan Zee

THE httle sea that expands between Haverstraw and the Palisades is a rare cruising place for ghosts and goblins. There is not a shadowy hall that rounds Piermont or tacks across from the Slaperig Hafen to the Hoeck but is freighted deep with legends. How briefly told, yet how suggestive, is the melancholy history of Ramxbout Van Dam, the unresting oarsman that some witchery compels to never-ending labour upon the tides of the Tappan Zee ! He was one of those uneasy Dutch blades that counted neither distance nor labour as of any moment w^hen a pleasure was in view. There had been some notice or rumour of a frolic at Kakiat, a secluded hamlet hidden away among the hills of Rockland County, and Van Dam on hearing the news rowed from his home at Spuyten Duyvil the whole length of the Tappan Zee and the Palisades to boot in order to be there. Most modern yotmgsters would be conscious of some slight fatigue after such a ])ull, but not so delicate were the Dutchmen of that earlv dav.