North of Rhinebeck comes Lower Red Hook Landing or Barrytown, North Bay where the _Clermont_ was built by Robert Fulton, and then Tivoli.
The next point of interest on the west side is Catskill Landing, just above the mouth of the Kaaterskill Creek. On the east bank is the city of Hudson; on the west bank Athens. Nearly opposite Four Mile Point Lighthouse is Kinderhook River or Creek on whose banks Martin Van Buren lived. Opposite Kinderhook is Coxsackie and above this New Baltimore and Coeymans. On the eastern bank are Schodack Landing, Castleton and Greenbush or East Albany. A bridge leads across to Albany on the west bank of the river. Six miles above Albany is the city of Troy, on the east bank. Above Cohoes on the west bank the Hudson receives the Mohawk, its largest tributary (150 miles long). Above Troy navigation is interrupted by many rapids and falls.
During the winter the river constantly freezes and it is not uncommon in the upper reaches to see skaters and sleighs crossing the ice. The breaking up of the ice is a marvellous spectacle.
In her _Memoirs of an American Lady_, Mrs. Grant of Laggan has vividly described this “sublime spectacle.” She notes that the whole population of Albany was down at the riverside in a moment when the first sound was heard like a “loud and long peal of thunder.” She writes:
“The ice, which had been all winter very thick, instead of diminishing, as might be expected in spring, still increased, as the sunshine came, and the days lengthened. Much snow fell in February, which, melted by the heat of the sun, was stagnant for a day on the surface of the ice, and then by the night frosts, which were still severe, was added, as a new accession to the thickness of it, above the former surface. This was so often repeated, that, in some years, the ice gained two feet in thickness, after the heat of the sun became such as one would have expected should have entirely dissolved it. So conscious were the natives of the safety this accumulation of ice afforded, that the sledges continued to drive on the ice when the trees were budding, and everything looked like spring; nay, when there was so much melted on the surface that the horses were knee-deep in water while travelling on it, and portentous cracks on every side announced the approaching rupture. This could scarce have been produced by the mere influence of the sun till midsummer. It was the swelling of the waters under the ice, increased by rivulets, enlarged by melted snows, that produced this catastrophe; for such the awful concussion made it appear. The prelude to the general bursting of this mighty mass, was a fracture, lengthways, in the middle of the stream, produced by the effort of the imprisoned waters, now increased too much to be contained within their wonted bounds. Conceive a solid mass, from six to eight feet thick, bursting for many miles in one continued rupture, produced by a force inconceivably great, and, in a manner, inexpressibly sudden. Thunder is no adequate image of this awful explosion, which roused all the sleepers, within reach of the sound, as completely as the final convulsion of nature, and the solemn peal of the awakening trumpet might be supposed to do. The stream in summer was confined by a pebbly strand, overhung with high and steep banks, crowned with lofty trees, which were considered as a sacred barrier against encroachments of this annual visitation. Never dryads dwelt in more security than those of the vine-clad elms, that extended their ample branches over this mighty stream. Their tangled roots, laid bare by the impetuous torrents, formed caverns ever fresh and fragrant; where the most delicate plants flourished, unvisited by scorching suns, or snipping blasts; and nothing could be more singular than the variety of plants and birds that were sheltered in these intricate and safe recesses. But when the bursting of the crystal surface set loose the many waters that had rushed down, swollen with the annual tribute of dissolving snow, the islands and lowlands were all flooded in an instant; and the lofty banks, from which you were wont to overlook the stream, were now entirely filled by an impetuous torrent, bearing down, with incredible and tumultuous rage, immense shoals of ice; which, breaking every instant by the concussion of others, jammed together in some places, in others erecting themselves in gigantic heights for an instant in the air, and seeming to combat with their fellow-giants crowding on in all directions, and falling together with an inconceivable crash, formed a terrible moving-picture, animated and various beyond conception; for it was not only the cerulean ice, whose broken edges, combating with the stream, refracted light into a thousand rainbows, that charmed your attention; lofty pines, large pieces of the bank torn off by the ice with all their early green and tender foliage, were driven on like travelling islands, amid this battle of breakers, for such it seemed. I am absurdly attempting to paint a scene, under which the powers of language sink.”
Since the days of the old Dutch settlers the Hudson has witnessed all the triumphs of modern ship-building and navigation. It was on the Hudson that Robert Fulton made his first experiments in steam navigation and into the Hudson have come the new turbine steamships that have crossed the Atlantic in five days; and beneath its waters tunnels have lately been opened.
Many changes have taken place on its banks since Washington Irving wrote: “I thank God that I was born on the banks of the Hudson. I fancy I can trace much of what is good and pleasant in my own heterogeneous compound to my early companionship with this glorious river. In the warmth of youthful enthusiasm, I used to clothe it with moral attributes, and, as it were, give it a soul. I delighted in its frank, bold, honest character; its noble sincerity and perfect truth. Here was no specious, smiling surface, covering the shifting sand-bar and perfidious rock, but a stream deep as it was broad and bearing with honourable faith the bark that trusted to its waves. I gloried in its simple, quiet, majestic, epic flow, ever straight forward, or, if forced aside for once by opposing mountains, struggling bravely through them, and resuming its onward march. Behold, thought I, an emblem of a good man’s course through life, ever simple, open and direct, or if, overpowered by adverse circumstances, he deviate into error, it is but momentary; he soon resumes his onward and honourable career, and continues it to the end of his pilgrimage.”
THE TIBER
STROTHER A. SMITH
Though the Tiber is insignificant in size, compared with the great rivers of the world, it is one of the most famous, and even its tributaries, down to the smallest brook, have some historical or poetic association connected with them, or exhibit some singular natural peculiarity. Its stream is swelled by the superfluous waters of the historic Thrasymene; its affluents, the Velino and the Anio, form the celebrated Cascades of Terni and Tivoli; the Clitumnus and the Nar are invested with poetic interest by the verses of Virgil, Ovid, and Silius Italicus; while the Chiana presents the singular phenomenon of a river which, within the historic period, has divided itself into two, and now forms a connecting link between the Arno and the Tiber, discharging a portion of its waters into each. The smaller streams, also, the Cremera, the Allia, and the Almo, have each their legend, historical, or mythological; while the rivulet of the Aqua Crabra, or Marrana, recalls the memory of Cicero and his litigation with the company which supplied his establishment at Tusculum with water from the brook.
[Illustration: THE TIBER]
The Tiber rises nearly due east of Florence, and on the opposite side of the ridge which gives birth to the Arno. It issues in a copious spring of limpid water, which at the distance of a mile has force enough to turn a mill. If we are to believe Bacci, it exhales so warm a vapour that snow, notwithstanding the elevation of the region, will not lie along its course within half a mile. For a distance of fifty-six miles it flows in a south-easterly direction through an elevated valley, in the upper part of which the cold, according to Pliny the younger, who had a villa there, was too great for the olive, and where the snow often accumulates to a considerable depth. Not far from Perugia it turns to the south, and about fourteen miles lower down by the windings of the stream, receives its first affluent, the Chiascia, which brings with it the Topino (anciently Tineas), and the waters of the classic Clitumnus, known to the readers of Virgil, Propertius, and Silius Italicus as the river on whose banks were bred, and in whose stream were washed, “the milk-white oxen which drew the Roman triumphs to the temples of the gods,” and the same which is so picturesquely described by the younger Pliny. At a place called La Vene, one of the sources of the Clitumnus rises at the foot of a hill. Like the fountain of Vaucluse, it issues a small river from the earth, and according to Pliny, had sufficient depth of water to float a boat. It is clear as crystal, delightfully cool in summer, and of an agreeable warmth in winter. Near it stands a temple once sacred to the river god, but now surmounted by the triumphant cross. It seems to have been a favourite place of resort for the Romans, as far as their limited means of locomotion would permit; since even the ferocious Caligula, as Suetonius tells us, attended by his body-guard of Batavians, was among the visitors to these celebrated springs. The beauty of the scenery appears to have been the attraction; for there were no mineral sources, and a refined superstition would have prevented the Romans from availing themselves of the agreeable temperature of the water to indulge in the luxury of bathing, rivers near their sources being accounted sacred, and polluted by the contact of a naked body. Of all the misdeeds of Nero none, perhaps, contributed more to his unpopularity than his swimming, during one of his drunken frolics, in the source of the Aqua Marcia, the same which is brought by the aqueduct to Rome, and which rises in the mountains of the Abruzzi, where Nero was staying at the time.