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  The majestic Hudson is on my left,
    The Catskills rise in my dream;
  The cataracts leap from the mountain cleft
    And the brooks in the sunlight gleam.

  Minot F. Savage.

* * *

Between Old Cro’ Nest and Cold Spring the water will be syphoned under the Hudson through a concrete tube six hundred feet below the surface of the river.

The Croton Water Works, at a cost of about $14,000,000, completed in 1842, were regarded the greatest undertaking since the Roman Aqueduct.  Many improvements to meet increased demand have been made since that time.  Fifty years from now it is quite possible that the Catskill System will seem like the Croton of to-day, as a small matter, and our next step will be “An Adirondack System,” making the successive steps of our water supply the Croton, the Catskills and the Adirondacks.

It is fortunate that our city destined to be the world’s emporium, has everything at hand needed for comfort and safety.

John Bigelow, the literary and political link of the century, born at Malden-on-the-Hudson, in 1817, was present at the inauguration of the work at Cold Spring, June, 1907.  It was the writer’s privilege to meet him often on the Hudson River steamers in the decade of 1870, and to receive from him many graphic descriptions of the early life and customs of the Hudson.  What memories must have thronged upon him as he contrasted the life of three generations!

=The Clover Reach.=—­We are now in what is known as The Clover Reach of the Hudson which extends to the Backerack near Athens.  One mile above Germantown Dock stood Nine Mile Tree, a landmark among old river pilots so named on account of its marking a point nine miles from Hudson.  Above this the Roeliffe Jansen’s Kill flows into the river, known by the Indians as Saupenak, rising in Hillsdale within a few feet of Greenriver Creek, immortal in Bryant’s verse.  The Greenriver flows east into the Housatonic, the Jansen south into Dutchess County, whence it takes a northerly course until it joins the Hudson.  The Burden iron furnaces above the mouth of the stream form an ugly feature in the landscape.  This is the southern boundary of the Herman Livingston estate, whose house is one mile and a half further up the river, near Livingston Dock, beneath Oak Hill.  Greenville station is now seen on the east bank, directly opposite Catskill Landing, which the steamer is now approaching.

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    The fields and waters seem to us this Sabbath morning
    from the summit of the Catskills, no more truly
    property than the skies that shine upon them.

    Harriet Martineau.

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