iver is Hendricks Spring, so named
in honor of Hendricks Hudson. We found Hendricks Spring in the edge of
a swamp, cold, shallow, about five feet in diameter,--shaded by trees,
shrubbery, and vines, and fringed with the delicate brake and fern. Its
waters, rising within half a mile of Long Lake, and upon the same
summit-level, flow southward to the Atlantic more than three hundred
miles; while those of the latter flow to the St. Lawrence, and reach
the same Atlantic a thousand miles away to the far northeast."

Since Dr. Lossing visited the western head of the Hudson River, the
true and highest source of the stream has probably been settled by a
gentleman possessing scientific acquirements and inflexible purpose.
On the plateau south of Mount Marcy, State-Surveyor Colvin found the
little Lake Tear-of-the-Clouds to be the loftiest sheet of water in
the state,--four thousand three hundred and twenty-six feet above the
sea,--and proved it to be the lake-head of the great river Hudson. A
second little pond in a marsh on a high plateau, at the foot of Mount
Redfield, was also discovered,--"margined and embanked with luxuriant
and deep sphagnous moss,"--which was named by the party Moss Lake. It
was found to flow into the Hudson. A beautiful little bivalve shell,
three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, of an undescribed species, was
found in the pellucid water, and thus a new shell was handed over to
conchology, and a new river source to geography, in the same hour. This
pool is four thousand three hundred and twelve feet above tide-water,
and only a few feet lower than its sister, Tear-of-the-Clouds--the
highest source of the Hudson.

Should the state of New York adopt Mr. Colvin's suggestion, to reserve
six hundred square miles of the Adirondack region for a public park, the
pool Tear-of-the-Clouds will be within the reservation. The waters of
these baby fountains are swollen by contributions from the streams,
ponds, and lakes of the Adirondack wilderness, until along the banks of
Fishing Brook, a tributary of the Hudson, the water is utilized at the
first saw-mill. A few miles lower down the forests are vexed by the axe
of the lumbermen, and logs are floated down the river one hundred miles
to Glens Falls, where the State Dam and Great Boom are located. Half a
million logs have been gathered there in a single spring.

It was upon the Hudson that the first successful steamboat, built by
Robert Fulton, made its voyage to