Joel Cook

“ This is the Bronx River, coming through a green, well-watered and shaded valley, a half to three-quarters of a mile wide, and a considerable part of this bewitching region makes the Bronx Park,
"Where gentle Bronx, clear, winding, flows
The shadowy banks between;
Where blossomed bell or wilding rose
Adorns the brightest green."
The wildness and seclusion of this place, its natural charms and romantic character, make one almost believe that New York cannot possibly be near such an attractive wilderness. Nature seems to have especially designed it for a park, and art cannot improve it. ”

“ As evening advances, the blaze of electric illumination and brilliancy of fireworks are added, and the music, bustling crowds and general hilarity give the air of a splendid festival. The bathing establishments are crowded, and many go into the surf under the brilliant illumination. Not a tree will grow, so that the view over the sea is unobstructed, and out in front is the pathway of ocean commerce into New York harbor, with the twinkling, guiding lights of Sandy Hook and its attendant lightships beyond. What a guardian to the mariner is the lighthouse ”

“ In the hills behind Point-no-Point, on the western verge of the Tappan Zee, at one hundred and sixty feet elevation, is Rockland Lake, a crystal sheet of water which gives New York much of its ice supply, the blocks being sent from the top of the hill on a long slide to the barges that carry it down the river. As they glide along, they look in the distance, under the sunlight, like a string of diamonds. Hook Mountain, separating the lake from the river, is over six hundred feet high, and out of the lake flows the Hackensack River behind the Palisades, through the Jersey meadows to Newark Bay. ”

“ Far to the eastward, seen across the broad Jamaica Bay, are more low sandy beaches, each with its popular resort, though all pale before the crowning glories of Coney Island. There is Rockaway, with its iron pier and railway connecting with the mainland to the northeast, also Arverne and Edgemere, the distant cottage-studded Long Beach, and the hazy sand-beaches of Far Rockaway. And as we gaze over this wondrous scene down by the water side, the freshening wind gives a pleasant foretaste of old ocean, and recalls the invocation of Barry Cornwall:
"The sea! ”

“ The perpendicular mountain wall brings the valley almost beneath one's feet, the buildings looking like children's toy houses, the trees like dwarfed bushes, and the fields, with their alternating green and brown colors, contrasting as the spaces on a chess-board. Wagons crawl like little ants upon the narrow mud-colored lines representing roads. The broad valley, though its surface is rugged and has high hills surmounted by patches of woodland, is so far below that it appears from above as a flat floor. ”

“ From its many elevations, this leading city of the Hudson Valley has a superb outlook, only limited by the Catskills far to the northwest, the Highlands down 176 the river, and the dark-blue Shawangunk ridge off to the westward, where the attractive lakes Mohonk and Minnewaska, the former at twelve hundred and the latter at eighteen hundred feet elevation, nestle high among the mountain peaks, overshadowed by the bold summits of Paltz Point and Sky Top. Here flows deep in the valley the pretty Wallkill, out to the Rondout and the Hudson, giving the railroad a route into the mountain fastness. ”

“ This aggregation of rocky cliffs and rounded peaks, and the intersecting gorges and smiling verdant valleys, have become a great resort for the summer pleasure-seeker, with myriads of hotels and boarding-places, where it is said that eighty to a hundred thousand people will go in the season. Their eastern verge is drained by the Hudson, while the many brooks and kills flowing out to the westward are gathered into the two branches that form the Delaware River. ”

“ Five miles beyond Newark the diminutive Elizabeth River flows down to the Kills, and here is the city of Elizabeth, with fifty thousand people, noted as one of the handsomest of the Jersey towns. Like Newark and Paterson, it is really an outlying suburb of New York, providing homes for much of the overflow of population, who rush into the metropolis for business every morning, and back again every evening. Under the name of Elizabethport it spreads down to the Arthur Kill, and over there are most of its factories and extensive coal-shipping piers. ”

“ Along the north side of the ravine, upon a beautiful plain, is the manufacturing settlement of about ten thousand people, who use the admirable water-power and get the black marble out of adjacent quarries. Vast numbers of logs coming down the Hudson are gathered in a boom above the town, and sawmills cut them into lumber. Paper-mills cluster about the falls, and marble-saws work up the black rocks. In the centre of the ravine, above the falls, a cavern is hewn where a rocky islet makes a rude abutment for a bridge pier. ”

“ The glitter of diamonds dazzles at every turn as they sparkle under the brilliant electric lights illuminating the evening scene. It was said not long ago, in a description of Saratoga, that if the Grand Union Hotel should ever perish in the height of the season, with all it contains, the future explorer who might delve in its ruins would come upon the rarest diamond mine the world ever knew. ”

“ Prospect Park covers nearly a square mile on an elevated ridge on the edge of Brooklyn, and it has great natural attractions which did not need much change to improve the landscape, while the fine old trees that have been there for centuries are in magnificent maturity. Its woods and meadows, winding roads, lakes and views, combine many charms. ”

“ The attractive rural names of the walks and avenues, the delicious flowers and foliage, the balmy air, the lakes, valleys and points of beautiful outlook giving grand views over New York Bay and the surrounding country, make Greenwood a park as well as a cemetery, and it is generally admitted to be without a peer. Many costly pantheons and chapels cover the remains of well-known people, and one mausoleum is a large marble church. ”

“ Beyond is tranquil Fairfield, embowered in trees and introduced by a rubber-factory, its green-bordered streets lined with cottages, and church-spires rising among the groves, while along the shore it has the finest beach on Long Island Sound. ”

“ Villages dot the shores, and fertile fields stretch up on either hand, while hung in mid air, far away across the water, is the distant, slender, spider-like span of the high railway bridge at Poughkeepsie, the route by the "back door" into New England, which has gone through such serious throes of reconstruction. Upon the left hand the Catskills, and upon the right hand the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts, bound 165 the distant horizon. ”

“ Upon the Parade Ground is the Battle Monument, erected in 1894, a column seventy-eight feet high, surmounted by a statue of Victory. Down along the most beautiful part of the shore at the Point, and leading to Kosciusko's Garden, a favorite resort of the Polish officer, is the secluded path which generations of impulsive young cadets have known as the "Flirtation Walk." Beginning at the roadway, high on the bluff, overlooking the river, it winds with devious turns down the declivity, and after curving around the promontory near the water's edge, sweeps grandly up the incline again. ”

“ Embowered in trees, handsome churches and residences border it, and Pierrepont, Remsen, Montague and other noted streets extend at right angles from it to the edge of the bluff, where the Heights fall sharply off to the river. Here, at seventy feet elevation, and overlooking the lower level of buildings and piers at the water's edge, are the terraces where the finest residences are located, having a magnificent outlook upon the harbor and New York City beyond. The ships land their cargoes within almost a stone's throw of the palaces. ”

“ Until recently, so little was actually known of these Block Island folk, who were nearly all born there, and relatives, that a strong belief was prevalent on the adjacent mainland that the genuine native Block Islanders had only one eye apiece. They are strange and antiquated, and many of the old people have never been off the island. Some of them recall as a wonderful journey taken years ago, in early youth, how they ventured so far away from home as to sail "across to the Continent," as they call the remainder of the United States. ”

“ Following the curving Hudson River bank around to the westward, another series of rapids and cascades is ascended to the thriving manufacturing town of Glen's Falls. This magnificent cataract pours through a wild ravine having over seventy feet descent, the water flowing upon rough masses of black marble composing the rocky terraces the stream has broken down. The Mohicans had significant names for this famous cataract. One was Kayandorossa, meaning the "long deep hole," applied to the ravine; and another, Che-pon-tuc, or "hard climbing; a difficult place to get around." ”

“ The lands of this manor are among the most prized locations on the Hudson. Magnificent estates cover the sloping eastern bank, with hundreds of villas of all kinds and styles, fortunes being expended upon their elaborate decoration. Highly ornamental grounds upon the hillsides and terraces surround costly houses, built to reproduce palaces, churches, castles, baronial halls and old manors, with some sombre buildings not unlike tombs. There is every conceivable structure the florid imagination of an architect can fashion into a dwelling, some being of great size. ”

“ But however that may be, its wonderful development as a summer resort has only come since the Civil War. It has a hard and gently-sloping beach facing the Atlantic, and can be so easily and cheaply reached, by so many routes on land and water, that it is no wonder, on hot afternoons and holidays, the people of New York and Brooklyn go down there by the hundreds of thousands. Coney Island is about five miles long, and from a quarter-mile to a mile in width, being separated from the adjacent low-lying mainland only by a little crooked creek and some lagoons. ”

“ It was here in the Livingston Mansion, in 1783, that Generals Washington, Carleton and Clinton met to finally settle the terms of English recognition of American independence. Two miles above is Irvington, with more elaborate villas. This favored region of the Hudson is the choicest abiding-place of the New York multi-millionaires, and a newspaper scribe on one occasion counted in the space of six miles above Hastings the rural homes of sixty-three men whose aggregate wealth was estimated at more than $500,000,000. The single million fellow no longer cuts a figure in such a galaxy. ”

“ The shores of Newburg Bay seem low, as they are dwarfed by the mountains, and on the western slope an elevated bench of table-land in terraces stretches back to the distant hills. The town of Newburg, which has about twenty-five thousand people, spreads up these terraces, and in front there are storehouses, mills and railway terminals. When Hendrick Hudson sailed his ship "Half Moon" through the Highlands, he was attracted by the site of Newburg, and wrote: "It is as beautiful a land as one can tread upon; a very pleasant place to build a town on." ”

“ While spreading over much surface, yet it presents little attraction beyond the enormous railway terminals and factories. The traveller rarely stops there, but rushes through to get into or out of New York. To the northward is Hoboken, with sixty thousand people, including many Germans, and it has large silk factories. Here, in strange contrast with the commercial aspect of everything around, the river front rises in a bluff shore, crowned by a grove of trees and running up into a low mound, whereon is the "Stevens Castle." ”

“ Just beyond, a high plateau sloping to the shore is covered by the city of Hudson, having a green island in front, 194 and over opposite the little town of Athens, with a lighthouse in midstream between them. Hudson has ten thousand people, a picturesque city sloping up Prospect Hill, which rises five hundred feet for a noble background, and it once had more ships and commerce than the city of New York. ”

“ Connecticut gets more patents proportionately than any other State, one to eight hundred inhabitants being annually granted; it makes clocks for all the world, and leads in india-rubber and elastic goods, in hardware and myriads of "Yankee notions," besides being well in the front for sewing-machines, arms and war material. It is named after the chief New England river, and its rugged surface is diversified by long ridges of hills and deep valleys, running generally from north to south, being the prolongation of mountain ranges and intervales that are beyond the northern border. ”

“ He says, "The water comes crooking and winding among the rocks, first so slow that a trout might swim in it, and then starting and running just like any creature that wanted to make a far spring, till it gets to where the mountain divides like the cleft hoof of a deer, leaving a deep hollow for the brook to tumble into. ”