* * *

  Let me forget the cares I leave behind,
  And with an humble spirit bow before
  The Maker of these everlasting hills.

  Bayard Taylor.

* * *

=Olive Branch= is the pretty name of the station above West Hurley.  Temple Pond, at the foot of Big Toinge Mountain, covers about one hundred acres, and affords boating and fishing to those visiting the foothills of the Southern Catskills.

=Brown’s Station= is three miles beyond, and near at hand Winchell’s Falls on the Esopus.  The Esopus Creek comes in view near this station for the first time after leaving Kingston.  The route now has pleasant companionship for twenty miles or more with the winding stream.

=Brodhead’s Bridge= is delightfully located on its wooded banks near the base of High Point, and near at hand is a bright cascade known as Bridal Veil Falls.

* * *

  Then climb the Ontioras to behold
    The lordly Hudson marching to the main,
  And say what bard in any land of old
    Had such a river to inspire his strain.

  Thomas William Parsons.

* * *

=Shokan=, 18 miles from Rondout.  Here the road takes a northerly course and we are advised by Mr. Van Loan’s guide to notice on the left “a group of five mountains forming a crescent; the peaks of these mountains are four miles distant;” the right-hand one is the “Wittenberg,” and the next “Mount Cornell.”  Boiceville and Mount Pleasant, 700 feet above the Hudson, are next reached.  We enter the beautiful Shandaken Valley, and three miles of charming mountain scenery bring us to—­

=Phoenicia=, 29 miles from Rondout and 790 feet above the Hudson.  This is one of the central points of the Catskills which the mountain streams (nature’s engineers), indicated several thousand years ago.  Readers of “Hiawatha” will remember that Gitche Manitou, the mighty, traced with his finger the way the streams and rivers should run.  The tourist will be apt to think that he used his thumb in marking out the wild grandeur of Stony Clove.  The Tremper House has a picturesque location in a charming valley, which seems to have been cut to fit, like a beautiful carpet, and tacked down to the edge of these grand old mountains.  A fifteen minutes’ walk up Mount Tremper gives a wide view, from which the Lake Mohonk House is sometimes seen, forty miles away.  Phoenicia is one of the most important stations on the line—­the southern terminus of the Stony Clove and Catskill Mountain division of the Ulster & Delaware system.  Keeping to the main line for the present we pass through Allaben, formerly known as Fox Hollow, and come to—­

=Shandaken=, 35 miles from Rondout and 1,060 feet in altitude, an Indian name signifying “rapid water.”  Here are large hotels and many boarding houses and the town is a central point for many mountain spots and shady retreats in every direction—­all of which are well described in one of the handsomest summer resort guides of the season, the handbook of the Ulster & Delaware Railroad.  Three miles beyond Shandaken we come to a little station whose name reminds one of the plains:  Big Indian, 1,209 feet above the river.