The Hudson, from the Wilderness to the Sea
and Mount Washington, within which occurred most of the sanguinary scenes in the capture of Fort Washington by the British and Hessians.
Our rocky observatory, more than a hundred feet above tide-water, overlooking Harlem Plains, is included in the Central Park. Let us descend from it, ride along the verge of the Plain, and go up east of McGowan's Pass at about One Hundred and Ninth Street, where the remains of Forts Fish and Clinton are yet very prominent. These were built on the site of the fortifications of the revolution, during the war of
THE HUDSON.
1812. Here we enter among the hundreds of men employed in fashioning the Central Park. "What a chaos is presented ! Men, teams, barrows, blasting, trenching, tunnelling, bridging, and every variety of labour needful in the transforming process. "We pick our way over an almost impassable road among boulders and blasted rocks, to the great artificial basin of one hundred acres, now nearly completed, which is to be called
i
VIEW IN CENTRAL PAEK.*
the Lake of Man-a-hat-ta. It will really be only an immense tank of Croton water, for the use of the city. "We soon reach the finished portions of the park, and are delighted with the promises of future grandeur and beauty.
Tliis is a view of a portion of the Skating-Pond from a higli point of tlic Ramble.
THE HUDSON.
It is impossible, in the brief space allotted to these sketches, to give even a faint appreciative idea of the ultimate appearance of this park, according to the designs of Messrs. Olmstead and Yaux. "We may only convey a few hints. The park was suggested by the late A. J. Downing, iu 1851, when Kingsland, mayor of the city, gave it his ofiicial recommendation. Within a hundred days the Legislature of the State of New York granted the city permission to lay out a park ; and in February, 1856, 733 acres of land, in the centre of the island, was in possession of the civic authorities for the purpose.