s source in Indian Pass, at the base of Mount McIntyre;
the eastern branch, in a little lake poetically called the "Tear of
the Clouds," 4,321 feet above the sea under the summit of Tahawus,
the noblest mountain of the Adirondacks, 5,344 feet in height. About
thirty miles below the junction it takes the waters of Boreas River,
and in the southern part of Warren County, nine miles east of Lake
George, the tribute of the Schroon. About fifteen miles north of
Saratoga it receives the waters of the Sacandaga, then the streams of
the Battenkill and the Walloomsac; and a short distance above Troy its
largest tributary, the Mohawk. The tide rises six inches at Troy and
two feet at Albany, and from Troy to New York, a distance of one
hundred and fifty miles, the river is navigable by large steamboats.

* * *

Of grottoes in the far dim woods,
Of pools moss-rimmed and deep,
From whose embrace the little rills
In daring venture creep.

_E.A. Lente._

* * *

The principal streams which flow into the Hudson between Albany and
New York are the Norman's Kill, on west bank, two miles south of
Albany; the Mourdener's Kill, at Castleton, eight miles below Albany,
on the east bank; Coxsackie Creek, on west bank, seventeen miles below
Albany; Kinderhook Creek, six miles north of Hudson; Catskill Creek,
six miles south of Hudson; Roeliffe Jansen's Creek, on east bank,
seven miles south of Hudson; the Esopus Creek, which empties at
Saugerties; the Rondout Creek, at Rondout; the Wappingers, at New
Hamburgh; the Fishkill, at Matteawan, opposite Newburgh; the Peekskill
Creek, and Croton River. The course of the river is nearly north and
south, and drains a comparatively narrow valley.

It is emphatically the "River of the Mountains," as it rises in the
Adirondacks, flows seaward east of the Helderbergs, the Catskills, the
Shawangunks, through twenty miles of the Highlands and along the base
of the Palisades. More than any other river it preserves the character
of its origin, and the following apostrophe from the writer's poem,
"The Hudson," condenses its continuous "mountain-and-lake-like"
quality:

O Hudson, mountain-born and free,
Thy youth a deep impression takes,
For, mountain-guarded to the sea,
Thy course is but a chain of lakes.

=The First Settlement of the Hudson.=--In 1610 a Dutch ship visited
Manhattan to trade with the Indians and was soon followed by others
on like enterprise.