In ascending the Hudson from New York, there are passed on either hand
the heights which were covered in early Revolutionary days with the
defenses of New York, Fort Washington and Fort Lee, but beyond the
names no trace of either fort remains. The British captured both in
the latter part of 1776, and afterwards held them. Fort Lee is now a
favorite picnic ground. Above it rises the great wall of the
Palisades, the wonderful formation built up of columned trap rock that
extends along the western river bank for twenty miles up to Piermont,
this rocky buttress making the northern limit of New Jersey on the
Hudson River. Occasionally a patch of trees grows upon the tops or
sides of the Palisades, while the broken rocks and _débris_ that have
fallen down make a sloping surface from about half-way up their height
to the water's edge. These columns rise in varying heights from three
to five hundred feet. This grand escarpment of the Palisades is a
giant wall along the river bank, sometimes cut down by deep and narrow
ravines, through which the people behind them get brief peeps at the
picturesque stream far below. Their general surface makes a sort of
long and narrow table-land, barely a half-mile to a mile wide,
dividing the Hudson from the valley of the Hackensack to the westward,
the top being usually quite level, and in most cases having a growth
of trees. These desolate-looking Palisades are a barrier dividing two
sections of country seeming in sharp contrast. To the westward, the
inhabitants lead simple pastoral lives in a region of farm land and
dairies. To the eastward, the opposite shore of the Hudson is a
succession of villas and fashionable summer resorts, whither the New
York people come out, seeking a little rest and freshness after the
season's dissipation. From the tops of the Palisades are admirable
views both east and west, displaying some of the finest sunrises and
sunsets seen along the great river. Extensive blasting operations, to
get the building-stone and paving material for which they form
valuable quarries, are marring the beauty of the Palisades, but legal
arrangements are maturing for their preservation. Their highest
elevation, the Indian Head, not far above Fort Lee, rising five
hundred and ten feet, has been ruined by these blasts, which at times
will break off many thousand tons of rock at a single explosion.
[Illustration: _Palisades of the Hudson_]
The rocky buttress of Piermont, the termination of the Palisades on
the Hudson, gets its name from a pier, a mile long, which is extended
from the shore at the foot of the mountain out to deep water, and a
branch of the Erie railway terminates here. This line runs inland
northwestward through a fine country. Over there is Greenwood Lake,
known as the "miniature Lake George," a beautiful river-like body of
water, ten miles long and a mile wide, almost entirely enclosed in the
mountains, and presenting extremely picturesque scenery. This lake is
at a thousand feet elevation, with clear and deep spring water, and in
the neighborhood are the smaller but as charming Lakes Wawayanda,
Macopin and Sterling. The long look over mountain and vale causing an
expression of surprise in broken English from an Indian gazing upon
the attractive prospect, is said to have named the first of these
pretty little lakes;--"Away, way, yonder," he said, but it sounded
like "Wa-wa-yanda," and the name has since clung to it. Not far away,
among these mountains, is Tuxedo Lake, the fashionable resort of the
Tuxedo Park Association, also reached by the Erie railway. This club
of wealthy New Yorkers has made a paradise among the Allegheny
foothills, with game-preserves, golf-links, club-house, and many
cottages for the members.
Above Spuyten Duyvel Creek the western Hudson River shore presents the
monotonous front of these Palisades, stretching for miles apparently
without a sign of active life; but the eastern bank is a far different
picture of undulating hills, with gentle slopes to the water's edge,
and covered in every eligible position with an endless variety of
villas, presenting every phase of artistic taste and the development
of abundant wealth. These summer homes upon the Hudson are among the
crowning glories of the ever-changing river scene. Here is the famous
Font Hill, now the Convent of Mount St. Vincent. In 1850 the tragedian
Edwin Forrest built it for his home, a mediæval graystone castle, with
moat and drawbridge and six battlemented towers; but he held it only a
few years, when he quarrelled with his wife, and sold the estate for
$100,000 to the Sisters of Charity of the Order of St. Vincent de Paul
for their Mother House, which had to remove from the site of Central
Park in New York. The cross now surmounts the tallest castle tower,
and it is surrounded by noble trees which have grown higher than the
turrets, while on the hill behind, and almost overshadowing the little
castle, is a huge red-brick convent building. Lawns slope down to the
shore, and there are superb river views, with the grand wall of the
Palisades rising high in front.
Yonkers is seventeen miles above New York, a galaxy of castellated and
ornamental mansions fringing the town about, upon the amphitheatre of
hills surrounding the flat depression on which it is mainly built. The
little Neperhan or Sawmill River pours down a series of rapids through
it before reaching the Hudson, with factories bordering the banks,
while the great Vanderbilt railway, the New York Central, with a
half-dozen sets of rails, runs along the front of the town. Here are
now forty thousand people, in sharp contrast with the time when
Hendrick Hudson, exploring the river, anchored in front of the little
Indian village of Napperhamok, or the "Rapid Water." Curiosity brought
them out in canoes to examine his ship, the "Half Moon," and he bought
oysters and beans, saying he found them "a loving people who attained
great age." The Dutch early bought land from these Indians for a
settlement, and it became the domain of Patroon Vanderdonck, who set
the town going under the name of Yonk-heer, or the "young master,"
meaning the heir of the family. Then the English came along and it
became the "Philipse Manor," the old stone manor house built in 1682
being the antiquarian attraction, and used now as a sort of City Hall,
a Soldiers' Monument standing in front. This was a manor of
twenty-four thousand acres stretching along the river from Spuyten
Duyvel up to the Croton. The third of the English lords of the manor
was Fredericke Philipse, who was a shrewd aristocrat, and during the
Revolution tried the difficult political game of a neutral, desirous
of keeping on the winning side. But neither party trusted him, and
although Washington had been his guest in the famous old manor house,
yet he was attainted of treason by the State of New York, his great
manor confiscated, cut up into small tracts and sold. The romance of
Yonkers is the love story of his daughter, Mary Philipse, the "belle
of the Hudson Valley." Tradition tells of her as the first love of
Washington, but he wooed in vain, and she married another. Cooper made
her the heroine of his novel _The Spy_.
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. They show up prettily among the
trees, and some are thrust out upon crags almost overhanging the
river, others nestle far back in clefts, and still others are set high
upon the slopes. Amid the grand display is the villa-environed and
exclusive town of Hastings-on-the-Hudson; and a mile above, and still
in the gilded colony, is the village of Dobbs's Ferry. It got its name
from the venerable John Dobbs, a Swede, who came over from the
Delaware River to run the ferry during the Revolution. Not long ago
some of the modern aristocrats of the place got ashamed of their old
Dobbs heritage and sought to change the name to Paulding. Then came a
sharp controversy, fanned into fever heat by the sensational warriors
of the New York newspapers. Soon, however, the Pauldingites
surrendered, old Dobbs was vindicated, and Dobbs's Ferry the place
remains. 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. On an
eminence near Irvington stood the country house of the wealthiest of
them, loftily situated, a white stone building with a tall tower,
having very attractive surroundings. This was the Paulding Manor of
Lyndehurst, the home of Jay Gould.