Within a few years ignorant and credulous persons, misled by pretended seers in the clairvoyant condition, have dug in search of those treasures in several places near West Point ; and some, it is said, have been ignorant and credulous enough to believe that the almost

mythical buccaneer had, by some supernatural power, mounted these rocks to the point where the projection is seen, discovered there an excavation, deposited vast treasures within it, and secured them by inserting the enormous stone plug seen from the waters below. It is plainly visible from vessels passing near the western shore.

Kidd's Plug Cliff is a part of the group of hills which form Cro' Nest (the abbreviation of Crow's Is^est), a name given to a huge hollow among

THE HUDSON. 219

the summits of these hills. They are rocky heights, covered witli trees and shrubbery, and, by their grouping, seen from particiilar points of view, suggest the idea of an enormous crow's nest. By some the signal high summit above the Plug Cliff is called Cro' Nest ; and it is in allusion to that lofty hill that Morris, its "neighbour over the way," wrote --

" Where Hudson's waves o'er silvery sancla "Winds through the hills afar, And Cro' Nest like a monarch stands, Crowned with a single star."

'^^^^^

,3^S we passed the foot of Cro' Nest, wo caught pleasant glimpses of West Point, where the government of the United States has a military school, and in a few moments the whole outline of the promontory and the grand ranges of hills around and beyond it, was in full view. We landed in a sheltered cove a little above Camp Town, the station of United States troops and other residents at the Point, and climbed a very steep hill to the Cemetery upon its broad and level summit, more than a hundred feet above the river.