an opening there of which it has availed itself, and which it has enlarged.  In thinking of these things, one only has to allow time enough, and the most stupendous changes in the topography of the country are as easy and natural as the going out or the coming in of spring or summer.  According to the authority above referred to, that part of our coast that flanks the mouth of the Hudson is still sinking at the rate of a few inches per century, so that in the twinkling of a hundred thousand years or so, the sea will completely submerge the city of New York, the top of Trinity Church steeple alone standing above the flood.  We who live so far inland, and sigh for the salt water, need only to have a little patience, and we shall wake up some fine morning and find the surf beating upon our door-steps.”

* * *

A sloop, loitering in the distance, dropped slowly with the tide, her sail hanging loosely against the mast; and as the reflection of the sky gleamed along the still water, it seemed as if the vessel was suspended in the air.

    Washington Irving.

* * *

How strange it seems in these brief years since 1880 to read of “Trinity Church steeple standing alone above the flood” as the rising tide of New York skyscrapers has long since overtopped the old landmark and is sweeping higher and higher day by day.

The Frothingham residence and Frothingham dock are south of the Burroughs cottage.  The late General Butterfield’s house immediately to the north.  The old Astor place (once known as Waldorf), is also near at hand.  In our analysis of the Hudson we refer to the hills above and below Poughkeepsie as “The Picturesque.”  Any one walking or driving from Highland Village to West Park will feel that this is a proper distinction.  The Palisades are distinguished for “grandeur” which might be defined as “horizontal sublimity.”  The Highlands for “sublimity” which might be termed “perpendicular grandeur;” the Catskills for “beauty,” with their rounded form and ever changing hues, but the river scenery about Poughkeepsie abides in our memories as a series of bright and charming “pictures.”  North of Waldorf is Pelham, consisting of 1,200 acres, one of the largest fruit farms in the world.  Passing Esopus Island, which seems like a great stranded and petrified whale, along whose sides often cluster Lilliputian-like canoeists, we see Brown’s Dock on the west bank at the mouth of Black Creek, which rises eight miles from Newburgh on the eastern slope of the Plaaterkill Mountains.  Flowing through Black Pond, known by the Dutch settlers as the “Grote Binnewater,” it cascades its way along the southern slope of the Shaupeneak Mountains to Esopus Village, a cross-road hamlet, and thence carries to the Hudson its waters dark-stained by companionship with trees of hemlock and cedar growth.  The Pell property extends on the west bank to Pell’s Dock, almost opposite the Staatsburgh ice houses.  Mrs. Livingston’s