of a district before some approaching danger:  vast swarms of cat-fish, white and yellow perch and striped bass were en route for the fresh water farther north.  When the people along shore made the discovery, they turned out as they do in the rural districts when the pigeons appear, and, with small gill-nets let down through holes in the ice, captured them in fabulous numbers.  On the heels of the retreating perch and cat-fish came the denizens of the salt water, and codfish were taken ninety miles above New York.  When the February thaw came and brought up the volume of fresh water again, the sea brine was beaten back, and the fish, what were left of them, resumed their old feeding-grounds.

* * *

    Still on the Half-Moon glides:  before her rise swarms
    of quick water fowl, and from her prow the sturgeon
    leaps, and falls with echoing splash.

    Alfred B. Street.

* * *

  Beneath—­the river with its tranquil flood,
  Around—­the breezes of the morning, scented
  With odors from the wood.

  William Allen Butler.

* * *

“It is this character of the Hudson, this encroachment of the sea upon it, on account of the subsidence of the Atlantic coast, that led Professor Newberry to speak of it as a drowned river.  We have heard of drowned lands, but here is a river overflowed and submerged in the same manner.  It is quite certain, however, that this has not always been the character of the Hudson.  Its great trough bears evidence of having been worn to its present dimensions by much swifter and stronger currents than those that course through it now.  To this gradual subsidence in connection with the great changes wrought by the huge glacier that crept down from the north during what is called the ice period, is owing the character and aspects of the Hudson as we see and know them.  The Mohawk Valley was filled up by the drift, the Great Lakes scooped out, and an opening for their pent-up waters found through what is now the St. Lawrence.  The trough of the Hudson was also partially filled and has remained so to the present day.  There is, perhaps, no point in the river where the mud and clay are not from two to three times as deep as the water.  That ancient and grander Hudson lies back of us several hundred thousand years—­perhaps more, for a million years are but as one tick of the time-piece of the Lord; yet even it was a juvenile compared with some of the rocks and mountains which the Hudson of to-day mirrors.  The Highlands date from the earliest geological race—­the primary; the river—­the old river—­from the latest, the tertiary; and what that difference means in terrestrial years hath not entered into the mind of man to conceive.  Yet how the venerable mountains open their ranks for the stripling to pass through.  Of course, the river did not force its way through this barrier, but has doubtless found