The Adirondacks, childhood’s glee;
    The Catskills, youth with dreams o’ercast;
  The Highlands, manhood bold and free;
    The Tappan Zee, age come at last.

This was the spot that Irving loved; we linger by his grave at Sleepy Hollow with devotion; we sit upon his porch at Sunnyside with reverence: 

  Thrice blest and happy Tappan Zee,
    Whose banks along thy glistening tide
  Have legend, truth, and poetry
    Sweetly expressed in Sunnyside!

* * *

   Whose golden fancy wove a spell
    As lasting as the scene is fair
  And made the mountain stream and dell
    His own dream-life forever share.

  Henry T. Tuckerman.

* * *

=Nyack=, on the west side, 27 miles from New York.  The village, including Upper Nyack, West Nyack and South Nyack, has many fine suburban homes and lies in a semi-circle of hills which sweep back from Piermont, meeting the river again at the northern end of Tappan Zee.  Tappan is derived from an Indian tribe of that name, which, being translated, is said to signify cold water.  The bay is ten miles in length, with an average breadth of about two miles and a half.

Nyack grows steadily in favor as a place for summer residents.  The hotels, boarding-houses and suburban homes would increase the census as given to nearly ten thousand people.  The West Shore Railroad is two and a half miles from the Hudson, with (a) station at West Nyack.  The Northern Railroad of New Jersey, leased by the New York, Lake Erie and Western (Chambers Street and 23d Street, New York), passes west of the Bergen Hills and the Palisades.  The Ramapo Mountains, north of Nyack, were formerly known by ancient mariners as the Hook, or Point-no-Point.  They come down to the river in little headlands, the points of which disappear as the steamer nears them. (The peak to the south, known as Hook Mountain, is 730 feet high.) Ball Mountain above this, and nearer the river, 650 feet.  They were sometimes called by Dutch captains Verditege Hook.

* * *

  The sails hung idly all night long,
    I dreamed a dream of you and me;
  ’Twas sweeter than the sweetest song,—­
    The dream I dreamed on Tappan Zee.

  Wallace Bruce.

* * *

[Illustration:  STONY POINT]

Perhaps it took so long to pass these illusive headlands, reaching as they do eight miles along the western bank, that it naturally seemed a very tedious point to the old skippers.  Midway in this Ramapo Range, “set in a dimple of the hills,” is—­

=Rockland Lake=, source of the Hackensack River, one hundred and fifty feet above the Hudson.  The “slide way,” by which the ice is sent down to the boats to be loaded, can be seen from the steamer, and the blocks in motion, as seen by the traveler, resemble little white pigs running down an inclined plane.  As we look at the great ice-houses to-day, which, like uncouth barns, stand here and there along the Hudson, it does not seem possible that only a few years ago ice was decidedly unpopular, and wheeled about New York in a hand-cart.  Think of one hand-cart supplying New York with ice!  It was considered unhealthy, and called forth many learned discussions.