Knowing how boisterous and blustering this first spring month generally is, I took advantage of the fine weather, and crossed Tappan Bay to Rockland Lake village (formerly Slaughter's Landing), opposite Sing Sing, the most extensive ice-station on the river. After considerable delay, I procured a boat and oarsman -- the former very leaky, and the latter very accommodating. The bay is here between two and three miles wide. We passed a few masses of floating ice and some

THE HUDSON.

sailing vessels, and at little past noon landed at Eockland, where the Knickerbocker Ice Company had a wharf and barges, and a large inclinedplane railway, down which ice, brought from the adjacent lake, was sent to the vessels in the river.

It was a weary way up the steep shore to the village and the lake, on the borders of a high and well-cultivated valley, half a mile from the river. This is the famous Rockland Lake, whose congealed waters have been so

THE HUDSON.

long familiar to the thirsty dwellers ia the metropolis. It is a lovely sheet of water, one hundred and fifty feet above the river. On its southeastern borders, excep ting where the village and ice-houses skirt it, are steep, rugged shores, "Westward, a fertile country stretches away many a niilc to rough hills and blue mountains. The lake is an ii-regular ellipse in form, half a mile in length, and three-fourths of a mile at its greatest width, and covers about five hundred acres. It is supplied by springs in its own bosom, and clear mountain brooks, and forms the head waters of the Hackensack river, which flows through New Jersey, and reaches the