=Hudson=, 115 miles from New York, was founded in the year 1784, by thirty persons from Providence, R. I., and incorporated as a city in 1785.  The city is situated on a sloping promontory, bounded by the North and South Bays.  Its main streets, Warren, Union and Allen, run east and west a little more than a mile in length, crossed by Front Street, First, Second, Third, etc.  Main Street reaches from Promenade Park to Prospect Hill.  The park is on the bluff just above the steamboat landing; we believe this city is the only one on the Hudson that has a promenade ground overlooking the river.  It commands a fine view of the Catskill Mountains, Mount Merino, and miles of the river scenery.  The city has always enjoyed the reputation of hospitality.  It is the western terminus of the Hudson and Chatham division of the Boston & Albany Railroad, and also of the Kinderhook & Hudson Railway.

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  White fleecy clouds move slowly by. 
    How cool their shadows fall to-day! 
  A moment on the hills they lie
    And then like spirits glide away.

  Henry T. Tuckerman.

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From an old-time English history we read that Hudson grew more rapidly than any other town in America except Baltimore.  Standing at the head of ship navigation it would naturally have become a great port had it not been for the railway and the steamboat which made New York the emporium not only of the Hudson, but also of the continent.

Hudson had also a good sprinkling of Nantucket blood, and visitors from that quaint old town recognize in portico, stoop and window a familiar architecture.

=Columbia Springs=, an old-time resort with pleasant grove and white sulphur water, is four miles northeast of Hudson.  Its medicinal qualities are attested by scores of physicians, and by hundreds who have been benefited and cured.  The drive is pleasant and the return can be made through—­

=Claverack=, three and a half miles east of Hudson, a restful old-fashioned village situated at the crossing of the Old Post Road and the Columbia turnpike and county seat of Columbia in Knickerbocker days.  The court house on its well-shaded street was for many years the home of the late Peter Hoffman.  The Dutch Reformed Church, built of bricks brought from Holland, wears on its brow wrinkles of antiquity, emphasized by the date 1767 on its walls.  It is said that General Washington encamped here, but there is no historical data to confirm the tradition.  Claverack Falls is well worth a visit, which can easily be made in an afternoon stroll.  Copake Lake, to the southeast, can be reached by a drive of about twelve miles, a fine sheet of water ten miles in circumference, with a picturesque island connected to the main land by a causeway.  Forty years ago a romantic ruin of a stone mansion still stood on this island, where the writer, when a boy, used to wander around the deserted rooms looking for ghosts, but the walls were