Opposite these great estates, the Catskill Mountains rise in all their
glory, spreading across the western horizon at a distance of eight to
ten miles from the Hudson River. They stretch for about fifteen miles,
and the range covers some five hundred square miles. The most
prominent peaks in the view are Round Top and the High Peak, rising
thirty-seven hundred and thirty-eight hundred feet, and in front of
them, on lower elevations, are the summer hotels that have such superb
views over the Hudson River valley. The town of Catskill on the
river--a flourishing settlement of five thousand people--is the usual
point of entrance, and from it a railway extends back to the bases of
the mountains. An inclined plane railway over a mile long then ascends
the face of the range, sixteen hundred feet high, to the hotels. This
"Otis Elevating Railway," which accomplishes its journey in about ten
minutes, is said to be the greatest inclined road in the world. The
Indians knew these grand peaks as the Onti Ora, or "Mountains of the
Sky," thus named because in some conditions of the atmosphere they
appear like a heavy cumulus cloud hanging above the horizon. The weird
Indian tradition was that among these mountains was held the treasury
of storms and sunshine for the Hudson, presided over by the spirit of
an old Indian squaw who dwelt within the range. She kept the day and
the night imprisoned, letting out one at a time, and made new moons
every month and hung them up in the sky, for they first appeared among
these mountains, and then she cut up the old moons into stars. The
great Manitou also employed her to manufacture thunder and clouds for
the valley. Sometimes she wove the clouds out of cobwebs, gossamers
and morning dew, and sent them off, flake by flake, floating in the
air, to give light summer showers. Sometimes she would blow up black
thunder-storms and send down drenching rains to swell the streams and
sweep everything away. All these storms coming from the west appeared
to originate in the mountains. The Indians also told of the imps that
haunted their dells, luring the hunters to places of peril. When the
Dutch colonists came along, they sent expeditions into the mountains,
searching for gold and silver, but chiefly found wildcats, causing
them to be named the Kaatsbergs, and from this their present title has
come to be, in time, the Kaatskills or the Catskills.
These attractive mountains are a group of the Alleghenies, having
spurs extending northwest and west, at right angles to the general
trend of the range, thus giving them quite a different form from that
usual in the Allegheny ridges. They assume also more of the abrupt and
rocky character of the Alpine peaks, and instead of the usual folds or
fragments of arches commonly seen elsewhere, the Catskill crags are
masses of piled-up strata in the original horizontal position. They
have a most precipitous declivity facing the east towards the river
valley. Deep ravines, which the Dutch called "Cloves," are cut into
them by the mountain torrents, descending in places in beautiful
cascades, sometimes for hundreds of feet. 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.
From their eastern front, where the huge hotels, built at twenty-four
hundred feet elevation, are anchored by ponderous chain cables to keep
them from being overthrown by the wind, there is an unrivalled view
over the valley. The Hudson River stretches a silvery streak across
the picture, and can be traced nearly a hundred miles from West Point
up to Albany. Its distant diminutive steamboats slowly move, and like
a shining thread, as the western sun strikes the car-windows and is
reflected, a railway train glides along the bank ten miles away, seen
so well, and yet so small. 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.
Thus it stretches off to the river, with a sparkling pond here and
there, and extending beyond to the eastern horizon the view is
enclosed by the dark-blue Berkshire hills in Massachusetts, forty
miles away. Behind them, on favored days, rise like a misty haze, off
to the northeast, the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It was in this
region that James Fenimore Cooper located the "Leather Stocking
Tales," for his home at Cooperstown was on the Catskills' western
verge. Natty Bumppo climbed up the mountain to get this wonderful
view. "What see you when you get there?" asked Edward. "Creation,"
said Natty, sweeping one hand around him in a circle, "all creation,
lad," and then he continued, "If being the best part of a mile in the
air, and having men's farms at your feet, with rivers looking like
ribands, and mountains bigger than the 'Vision' seeming to be
haystacks of green grass under you, give any satisfaction to a man, I
can recommend the spot."