Travelling northward along the Hudson, the broad basin where the Erie
Canal comes out to the river is passed, being shielded by a pier
eighty feet wide and nearly a mile long. Here is the vast storehouse
for Canadian and Adirondack lumber brought by the canals, a leading
Albany industry, there being ten miles of dockage within this basin
for the lumber barges. The Erie Canal from the west, and also the
Champlain Canal from the north, here have their outlets into the
Hudson. Both sides of the river are lined with villages between Albany
and Troy--there being Greenbush, East Albany, Bath, Troy and West
Troy, and beyond, Lansingburgh and Waterford at the confluence of the
Mohawk. This series of cities and towns stretching for ten miles along
the shores, with intervals of farm land, have an aggregate population
exceeding three hundred thousand, with large manufactures and
commerce. There are extensive iron mills on the river and upon Green
Island in front of Troy, where General Gates had the camp for his
Revolutionary army which fought Burgoyne at Saratoga. Upon the western
bank is the Watervliet Arsenal, where the government manufactures army
supplies, an enclosure of over a hundred acres. Troy is a fringe of
city extending along the eastern bank and up the steep ridge behind,
crowned by the imposing Byzantine buildings and spires of St. Joseph's
Theological Seminary. This high ridge, bordering the alluvial flat on
which the modern Troy is built, thoroughly carries out the Grecian
idea which was adopted to supersede the original Dutch name of
Vanderheyden which was given the town. From the northeast Mount
Olympus and from the east Mount Ida frown upon Troy, and this modern
Mount Ida does not hesitate at times to hurl down Jove's thunderbolts
in the form of destructive landslips. Derick Vanderheyden leased this
estate from the Patroon in 1720, and it slept in Dutch peacefulness
until after the Revolution, when in 1789 it had twelve dwellings and
the freeholders adopted the present name. Just before this, Jacob
Vanderheyden had removed to Albany to occupy his "Palace." The opening
of the Erie Canal gave Troy great prosperity. It has fine water-power,
and thus became a busy manufacturing centre. Here are the great Albany
and Rensselaer Iron Works, which were famous makers of armor plates
and cannon in the Civil War, and the Berdan Horseshoe Mill, the
largest in the country, which has the biggest water-wheel, eighty feet
in diameter, turned by one of the kills coming down from the mountain
behind the town. It was here that John Ericsson built the little
"Monitor" ironclad which defeated the "Merrimac" at Fortress Monroe in
1862. There are also great textile mills and a vast laundry. Its
famous Polytechnic Institute is an endowment of the last Patroon,
Stephen Van Rensselaer, who was Troy's steady benefactor.