THE gki;at boom.

booms, assorted by the owners according to their private murks, and seut down to Glen's Falls, Sandy Hill, or Fort Edward, to be sawed into boards at the former places, or made into rafts at the latter, for a voyage down the river. Heavy rains and melting snows filled the river to overflowing. The great boom snapped asunder, and the half million of logs went rushing down the stream, defying every barrier. The country below was flooded by the swollen river ; and we saw thousands of the logs scattered over the valley of the Hudson from Fort Edward to Troy, a distance of about forty miles.

THE HUDSON. 67

We have taken leave of the wilderness. Henceforth our path will he where the Hudson flows through cultivated plains, along the margins of gentle slopes, of rocky headlands, and of lofty hills ; hy the cottages of the humble, and the mansions of the wealthy ; by pleasant hamlets, through thriving villages, ambitious cities, and the marts of trade and commei'ce.

Unlike the rivers of the elder world, famous in the history of men, the Hudson presents no grey and crumbling monuments of the ruder civilisations of the past, or even of the barbaric life so recently dwelling upon its borders. It can boast of no rude tower or mouldering wall, clustered with historical associations that have been gathering around them for centuries. It has no fine old castles, in glory or in ruins, with visions of romance pictured in their dim shadows ; no splendid abbeys or cathedrals, in grandeur or decay, from which emanate an aura of religious memories. Nor can it boast of mansions or ancestral halls wherein a line of heroes have been born, or illustrious families have lived and died, generation after generation.