He gave what assistance he could to the patriot army, and it may well be believed that a strong and willing arm and a good forge found plenty of occupation; but retribution came when Vaughan's ships passed up the river with the torch. The smithy and mill were among the first places to be laid in ashes, and the smith himself was carried a captive to the most detestable prisonship that history has made a record of -- the filthy and disease-saturated Jersey. Past the middle of the nineteenth century the horse-boats at Milton and Coxsackie ran, the only survivors of an obsolete class. North of Poughkee]3sie the river is spanned by the fragile-looking cantilever bridge, that was commenced in 1873, but abandoned and the work not again resumed till 1886. Three years later it was completed

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by the Union Bridge Comi)any. The bridge is over tweh'e thousand feet long -- about two and a half miles -- and at the centre is one hundred and sixty-five feet clear above the river. Its cost was over three million dollars. The purpose for which the Poughkeepsie Bridge was built, it was understood, was to place Pennsylvania coal in New England by a direct route, and it was owned and controlled by the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad. This arrangement, it was thought, would preclude the possibility of dictation of prices by any intermediate company. But the original purpose was defeated, if not lost sight of, when the ownership of the bridge was acquired by another company. For seven years past the river at Poughkeepsie has been the scene of one of the ga^'cst and most popular of all the great annual features of college athletics. There the regatta of the Intercollegiate Rowing Association isheld every June, and over one of the finest straightaway courses in the world the eager crews from six great universities contend for the championship.