How graphically the poet Willis has put the picture in musical prose:  “Fancy the bold Englishman, as the Dutch called Hendrick Hudson, steering his little yacht the ‘Haalve Maan,’ for the first time through the Highlands.  Imagine his anxiety for the channel forgotten, as he gazed up at the towering rocks, and round the green shores, and onward past point and opening bend, miles away into the heart of the country; yet with no lessening of the glorious stream before him and no decrease of promise in the bold and luxuriant shores.  Picture him lying at anchor below Newburgh with the dark pass of the Wey-Gat frowning behind him, the lofty and blue Catskills beyond, and the hillsides around covered with lords of the soil exhibiting only less wonder than friendliness.”

If Willis forgot the season of the year and left out the landscape glow which the voyager saw, Talmage completed the picture in a rainbow paragraph of color:  “Along our river and up and down the sides of the great hills there was an indescribable mingling of gold, and orange and crimson and saffron, now sobering into drab and maroon, now flaring up into solferino and scarlet.  Here and there the trees looked as if their tips had blossomed into fire.  In the morning light the forests seemed as if they had been transfigured and in the evening hours they looked as if the sunset had burst and dropped upon the leaves.  It seemed as if the sea of divine glory had dashed its surf to the top of the crags and it had come dripping down to the lowest leaf and deepest cavern.”

* * *

  So fair yon haven clasped its isles, in such a sunset gleam,
  When Hendrick and his sea-worn tars first sounded up the stream.

  Robert C. Sands.

* * *

On such a day in 1883 it was the privilege of the writer to stand before 150,000 people at Newburgh on the occasion of the Centennial Celebration of the Disbanding of the Army under Washington, and, in his poem entitled “The Long Drama,” to portray the great mountain background bounding the southern horizon with autumnal splendor: 

  October lifts with colors bright
    Her mountain canvas to the sky,
  The crimson trees aglow with light
    Unto our banners wave reply.

  Like Horeb’s bush the leaves repeat
    From lips of flame with glory crowned:—­
  “Put off thy shoes from off thy feet,
    The place they trod is holy ground.”

Such was the vision Hendrick Hudson must have had in those far-off September and October days, and such the picture which visitors still compass long distances to behold.

“It is a far cry to Loch Awe” says an old Scottish proverb, and it is a long step from the sleepy rail of the “Half Moon” to the roomy-decked floating palaces—­the “Hendrick Hudson,” the “New York” and the “Albany.”  Before beginning our journey let us, therefore, bridge the distance with a few intermediate facts, from 1609, relating to the discovery of the river, its early settlement, its old reaches and other points essential to the fullest enjoyment of our trip, which in sailor-parlance might be styled “a gang-plank of history,” reaching as it does from the old-time yacht to the modern steamer, and spanning three hundred years.