When Hendrick Hudson came up the river he found sand-bars above the
Catskills, and anchored his "Half Moon" near Mount Merino, at what is
now the head of ship navigation upon the Hudson, one hundred and
fifteen miles from New York. Just beyond, a high plateau sloping to
the shore is covered by the city of Hudson, having a green island in
front, 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. A colony of thrifty Quakers from New
England started the settlement, which had many fishermen and whalers,
and a large fleet of ships sailing to Europe and the Indies, fifteen
loaded vessels having cleared from its wharves in a single day. But
Napoleon's wars swept away its fleet and commerce, and the last ship
was sold in 1845, so that its commercial greatness is only a
tradition; although it has become a seat of considerable manufactures.
Its most noted citizen was General Worth, a hero of the Mexican War,
whose monument stands on Fifth Avenue, New York. Both sides of the
river here are inhabited by the Dutch, and in fact theirs is the
universal language of the Hudson from Kingston up to Albany. These
Dutch of New York have given the country some notable men, among them
General Philip Schuyler, Colonel Van Rensselaer, General Stryker and
others of the Revolution, and President Martin Van Buren. They view
with pardonable pride the important share they have had in founding
and building up the Empire State, and Rev. Dr. Henry A. Van Dyke has
poetically and ingeniously described the "Typical Dutchmen" of New
York:
"They sailed from the shores of the Zuyder Zee
Across the stormy ocean,
To build for the world a new country
According to their notion:
A land where thought should be free as air
And speech be free as water;
Where man to man should be just and fair,
And Law be Liberty's daughter.
"When the English fleet sailed up the bay,
The small Dutch town was taken;
But the Dutchmen there had come to stay;
Their hold was never shaken.
They could keep right on, and work and wait
For the freedom of the nation;
And we claim to-day that New York State
Is built on a Dutch foundation."
From the Taghkanic range of the Berkshire hills, behind Hudson City, a
pretty stream comes down in many falls and cascades to the river just
northward, whose charming valley was known among the Dutch as "Het
Klauver Rack," or the "Clover Reach," modernized since, however, into
the Claverack Creek. The Columbia Springs are in this valley, and
farther on is Kinderhook Village, while back on the hills at a
thousand feet elevation above the river, most picturesquely located,
are the Lebanon Springs. Here is the noted Shaker settlement of New
Lebanon, founded by "Mother Ann" in the eighteenth century. The sect
has been declining in recent years, however. This is the governing
Shaker community, and it has been well said, of these celibates, that
"by frugality and industry they give us many useful things, but they
do not produce what the Republic most needs--men and women." They
cultivate large tracts of land, produce and sell quantities of herbs,
seeds and botanic medicines, and make baskets, brooms and sieves. Ann
Lee was the wife of a blacksmith in Manchester, England, and had been
the mother of several children. She had what she claimed as Divine
revelations, and was confined in a lunatic asylum for reviling
matrimony. Being released in 1770, she founded the new sect,
announcing, "I am Ann, the Word," and to escape further persecution
migrated to New York, where she was made its spiritual head.
Converting many, she established at New Lebanon the capital of the
Shaker world, which has been called "the rural Vatican which claims a
more despotic sway over the mind of man than ever the Roman Pontiff
assumed." She claimed her Divine revelation to be that she was the
female manifestation of Christ upon earth, the male manifestation
having been Jesus, and the Deity being considered a duality, composed
of both sexes. The Shakers call themselves the "United Society of
Believers in Christ's Second Appearing." They have entire community of
property, believe idleness to be sinful, and everyone able to work is
employed. In worshipping they "exercise both soul and body," singing
and dancing, and at times of fervent excitement making, with
regularity and perfect rhythm, rapid bodily evolutions. In these they
form in circles around a band of singers, to whose music they "go
forth in the dances of them that make merry." Since the death of
"Mother Ann" the Shaker community has been ruled by what is known as
the "Holy Lead," composed of the first and second elders and
elderesses. A peculiar tenet is that persons may join the sect after
death, and among these posthumous members are Washington, Lafayette,
Pocahontas, Napoleon and Tamerlane; and they hold that woman is
supreme over mankind. Near the village and among the Berkshire hills,
just over the border in Massachusetts, is their "Mount Sinai," where,
according to the tradition, the Shakers hunted Satan throughout a long
summer night, finally killing and burying him. They tell us that
Washington and Lafayette still keep guard over his grave, mounted on
white horses, and can be seen on summer nights by any of the truly
faithful who may pass that way.
The village of Kinderhook is in the Claverack Valley, and out in front
on the Hudson is its port, Stuyvesant Landing, where the testy old
Governor, Peter Stuyvesant the "Headstrong," made his landing when he
came up the river to attack the great Patroon, Killian Van Rensselaer.
Hendrick Hudson is said to have first named Kinderhook, or "Children's
Point," because he saw here a crowd of Indian children watching his
vessel. On the Lindenwold estate at Kinderhook, embowered in linden
trees, lived for many years President Martin Van Buren, a descendant
of the early Dutch settlers, and the shrewdest New York politician of
his time. Over on the western bank is the Chaney Tinker Lighthouse,
mounted on a crag a hundred feet high, and the distant horizon is
bounded by the Helderbergs, a long range of peaks, lower, however,
than the Catskills. Above, at Schodack Landing on the eastern shore,
was the seat of the council-fire of the Mohicans, called by the French
the _Loups_ or Wolves. The word "Is-cho-da" in their language means
the "fireplace," and from this has come the name. When Hudson ascended
the river, he found the Mohicans occupying its shores for a hundred
miles above Rondout Creek, but the race dwindled, until it became the
handful to whom the noted Jonathan Edwards ministered in the
eighteenth century, at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Hudson passed a day
with them at Schodack, was treated hospitably, and wrote that their
land was "the finest for cultivation he ever set foot on." Two
centuries later, Cooper lamented the _Last of the Mohicans_.