=College Hill=, 365 feet in height, commanding a wide and extensive prospect.  The city lies below us, fully embowered as in a wooded park.  To the east the vision extends to the mountain boundaries of Dutchess County, and to the north we have a view of the Catskills marshalled as we have seen them a thousand times in sunset beauty along the horizon.  This property, once owned by Senator Morgan and his heirs, was happily purchased by William Smith of Poughkeepsie, and given to the city as a public park.  There is great opportunity here to make this a thing of beauty and a joy forever, for there are few views on the Hudson, and none from any hill of its height, that surpass it in extent and variety.  The city reservoir lies to the north, about one hundred feet down the slope of College Hill.

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  My heart is on the hills.  The shades
    Of night are on my brow;
  Ye pleasant haunts and quiet glades,
    My soul is with you now!

  Robert C. Sands.

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The South Drive, a part of the Old Post Road, passes the gateway of the beautiful rural cemetery, Locust Grove and many delightful homes.  Another interesting drive from Poughkeepsie is to Lake Mohonk and Minnewaska, well-known resorts across the Hudson, in the heart of the Shawangunk (pronounced Shongum) Mountains, also reached by railway or stages via New Paltz.  There are also many extended drives to the interior of the county recommended to the traveler who makes Poughkeepsie for a time his central point; chief among these, Chestnut Ridge, formerly the home of the historian Benson J. Lossing, lying amid the hill country of eastern Dutchess.  Its mean altitude is about 1,100 feet above tide water, a fragment of the Blue Ridge branch of the Appalachian chain of mountains, cleft by the Hudson at West Point, stretching away to the Berkshire Hills.  It is also easy of access by the Harlem Railroad from New York to Dover Plains with three miles of carriage drive from that point.  The outlook from the ridge is magnificent; a sweep of eighty miles from the Highlands to the Helderbergs, with the entire range of the Shawangunk and the Catskills.  Mr. Lossing once said that his family of nine persons had required during sixteen years’ residence on Chestnut Ridge, only ten dollars’ worth of medical attendance.  Previous to 1868 he had resided in Poughkeepsie, and throughout his life his form was a familiar one in her streets.

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  Thy waves are old companions, I shall see
  A well-remembered form in each old tree
  And hear a voice long-loved in thy wild minstrelsy.

  Joseph Rodman Drake.

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