The Hudson Part 13

Columbia! Columbia! to glory arise, The queen of the earth and the child of the skies.

_Timothy Dwight._

Far up the Hudson's silver flood I hear the Highlands call With whispering of leafy boughs And voice of waterfall.

_Minna Irving._

=Beverley House.=--Pa.s.sing Cohn's Hook, p.r.o.nounced Connosook, where Hendrick Hudson anch.o.r.ed on his way up the river September 14, 1609, we see before us on the right bank a point coming down to the sh.o.r.e marked by a boat house. This is Beverley Dock, and directly up the river bank about an eighth of a mile stood the old Beverley House, where Benedict Arnold had his headquarters when in command of West Point. The old house, a good specimen of colonial times, was unfortunately burned in 1892, and with it went the most picturesque landmark of the most dramatic incident of the Revolution. It will be remembered that Arnold returned to the Beverley House after his midnight interview with Andre at Haverstraw, and immediately upon the capture of Andre the following day, that Colonel Jamison sent a letter to Arnold, advising him of the fact. It was the morning of September 4th. General Was.h.i.+ngton was on his way to West Point, coming across the country from Connecticut. On arriving, however, at the river, just above the present station of Garrison, he became interested in examining some defenses, and sent Alexander Hamilton forward to the Beverley House, saying that he would come later, requesting the family to proceed with their breakfast and not to await his arrival.

Alexander Hamilton and General Lafayette sat gayly chatting with Mrs.

Arnold and her husband when the letter from Jamison was received.

Arnold glanced at the contents, rose and excused himself from the table, beckoning to his wife to follow him, bade her good-bye, told her he was a ruined man and a traitor, kissed his little boy in the cradle, rode to Beverley Dock, and ordered his men to pull off and go down the river. The "Vulture," an English man-of-war, was near Teller's Point, and received a traitor, whose miserable treachery branded him with eternal infamy on both continents. It is said that he lived long enough to be hissed in the House of Commons, as he once took his seat in the gallery, and he died friendless and despised. It is also said, when Talleyrand arrived in Havre on foot from Paris, in the darkest hour of the French Revolution, pursued by the bloodhounds of the reign of terror, and was about to secure a pa.s.sage to the United States, he asked the landlord of the hotel whether any Americans were staying at his house, as he was going across the water, and would like a letter to a person of influence in the New World.

"There is a gentleman up-stairs from Britain or America," was the response. He pointed the way, and Talleyrand ascended the stairs. In a dimly lighted room sat a man of whom the great minister of France was to ask a favor. He advanced, and poured forth in elegant French and broken English, "I am a wanderer, and an exile. I am forced to fly to the New World without a friend or home. You are an American. Give me, then, I beseech you, a letter of yours, so that I may be able to earn my bread." The strange gentleman rose. With a look that Talleyrand never forgot, he retreated toward the door of the next chamber. He spoke as he retreated, and his voice was full of suffering: "I am the only man of the New World who can raise his hand to G.o.d and say, 'I have not a friend, not one, in America!'" "Who are you?" he cried--"your name?" "My name is Benedict Arnold!"

Wayne, Putnam, Knox and Heath are there, Steuben, proud Prussia's honored son; Brave Lafayette from France the fair, And chief of all our Was.h.i.+ngton.

_Wallace Bruce._

Andre's fate on the other hand was widely lamented. He was universally beloved by his comrades and possessed a rich fund of humor which often bubbled over in verse. It is a strange coincidence that his best poetic attempt on one of Anthony Wayne's exploits near Fort Lee, ent.i.tled "The Cow Chase," closed with a graphically prophetic verse:

"And now I've closed my epic strain, I tremble as I show it, Lest this same Warrior-Drover Wayne Should ever catch the poet."

By a singular coincidence he did: General Wayne was in command of the Tarrytown and Tappan country where Andre was captured and executed. It is also said that these lines were published by one of the Tory papers in New York the very day of Andre's capture. One of the old-time characters on the Hudson, known as Uncle Richard, has recently thrown new light on the capture of Andre by claiming, with a touch of genuine humor, that it was entirely due to the "effects" of cider which had been freely "dispensed" that day by a certain Mr. Horton, a farmer in the neighborhood.

In view of all he lost,--his youth, his love, And possibilities that wait the brave, Inward and outward bound dim visions move Like pa.s.sing sails upon the Hudson's wave.

_Charlotte Fiske Bates._

It is impossible even in these later years, not to speak of twenty-five or fifty years ago, to travel along the sh.o.r.es of Haverstraw Bay or among the pa.s.ses of the Highlands, without hearing some old-time stories about Arnold and Andre, and it would be strange indeed if a little romance had not here and there become blended with the real facts. Uncle Richard's account is undoubtedly the best since the days of Knickerbocker. "Benedict Arnold, you know, had command of West Point, and he knew that the place was essential to the success of the Continental cause. He plotted, as everybody knows, to turn it over to the enemy, and in the correspondence which he carried on with General Clinton, young Andre, Clinton's aid, did all the writing.

Things were coming to a focus, when a meeting took place between Arnold and Clinton's representative, Andre, at the house of Joshua Hett Smith, near Haverstraw. Andre came on the British s.h.i.+p "Vulture,"

which he left at Croton Point, in Haverstraw Bay. Well," so runs Uncle Richard's story, "it took a long time to get matters settled; they 'confabbed' till after daybreak. Then Arnold started back to the post which he had plotted to surrender. But daylight was no time for Andre to return to the "Vulture," so he hung round waiting for night.

"During that day, some men who were working for James Horton, a farmer on the ridge overlooking the river, who gave his men good rations of cider, drank a little too much of the hard stuff. They felt good, and thought it would be a fine joke to load and fire off an old disabled cannon which lay a mile or so away on the bank. They hauled it to the point now called c.o.c.kroft Point, propped it up, and then the spirit of fun--and hard cider--prompted them to train the old piece on the British s.h.i.+p "Vulture," lying at anchor in the Bay. The "Vulture's"

people must have overestimated the source of the fire, for the s.h.i.+p dropped down the river, and Andre had to abandon the idea of returning by that means. He crossed the river at King's Ferry, and while on his way overland was captured at Tarrytown.

"Of course, the three brave men who refused to be bribed deserve all the glory they ever had; if it were not for them, who knows but the revolutionary war would have had a different ending. But they never would have had a chance to capture Andre if it had not been for James Horton's men warming up on hard cider. Hard cider broke the plans of Arnold, it hung Andre, and it saved West Point." A boy misguided Grouchy _en route_ to Waterloo. On what small hinges turn the destinies of nations!

A slanting ray lingered on the woody crests of the precipices that overhung the river, giving greater depth to the dark-gray and purple of the rocky sides.

_Was.h.i.+ngton Irving._

All the way from Anthony's Nose to Beverley Dock, where we have been lingering over the story of Andre, we have been literally turning a kaleidoscope of blended history and beauty, with scarcely time to note the delightful homes on the west bank, just above Fort Montgomery.

Among them J. Pierpont Morgan's and the Pells', John Bigelow's and "Benny Havens'," or on the east bank of Hamilton Fish, just above Beverley Dock, Samuel Sloan and the late William H. Osborn, just north of Sugar Loaf Mountain; the mountain being so named as it resembles, to one coming up the river, the old-fas.h.i.+oned conical-shaped sugar-loaf, which was formerly suspended by a string over the centre of the hospitable Dutch tables, and swung around to be occasionally nibbled at, which in good old Knickerbocker days, was thought to be the best and only orthodox way of sweetening tea.

=b.u.t.termilk Falls=, so christened by Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, is a pretty little cascade on the west bank. Like sparkling wit, it is often dry, and the tourist is exceptionally fortunate who sees it in full-dress costume after a heavy shower, when it rushes over the rocks in floods of snow-white foam. Highland Falls is the name of a small village a short distance west of the river, on the bluff, but not seen from the deck of the steamer.

The large building above the rocky channel is Lady Cliff, the Academy of Our Lady of Angels, under the Franciscan Sisters at Peekskill, opened September, 1900. It was originally built for a hotel, and widely known as Cranston's Hotel and Landing. As the steamer is now approaching the west bank we see above us the Cullum Memorial Hall, completed in 1899, a bequest of the late George W. Cullum of the cla.s.s of 1833. The still newer structure to the south is the officers'

messroom, crowning the crest above the landing.

Then, as you nearer draw, each wooded height Puts off the azure hues by distance given!

And slowly breaks upon the enamored sight, Ravine, crag, field and wood in colors true and bright.

_Theodore S. Fay._

=West Point=, taken all in all, is the most beautiful tourist spot on the Hudson. Excursionists by the Day Boats from New York, returning by afternoon steamer, have three hours to visit the various places of history and beauty. To make an easy mathematical formula or picturesque "rule of three" statement, what Quebec is to the St.

Lawrence, West Point is to the Hudson. If the citadel of Quebec is more imposing, the view of the Hudson at this place is grander than that of the St. Lawrence, and the ruins of Fort Putnam are almost as venerable as the Heights of Abraham. The sensation of the visitor is, moreover, somewhat the same in both places as to the environment of law and authority. To get the daily character and quality of West Point one should spend at least twenty-four hours within its borders, and a good hotel, the only one on the Government grounds, will be found central and convenient to everything of interest. The parade and drills at sunset hour can best be seen in this way.

=The United States Military Academy.=--Soon after the close of the War of the Revolution, Was.h.i.+ngton suggested West Point as the site of a military academy, and, in 1793, in his annual message, recommended it to Congress, which in 1794 organized a corps of artillerists to be here stationed with thirty-two cadets, enlarging the number in 1798 to fifty-six. In 1808 it was increased to one hundred and fifty-six, and in 1812 to two hundred and sixty.

Up to 1812 only 71 cadets had been graduated. The roll of graduates now numbers about 5,000.

Each Congressman has the appointment of one cadet, supplemented by ten appointed by the President of the United States. These cadets are members of the regular army, subject to its regulations for eight years, viz: during four years of study and four years after graduating. The candidates are examined in June, each year, and must be physically sound as well as mentally qualified. The course is very thorough, especially in higher mathematics. The cadets go into camp in July and August, and this is the pleasantest time to visit the point.

Enchanted place, hemmed in by mountain walls, By bristling guns and Hudson's restful sh.o.r.e.

_Kenneth Bruce._

The plans furnished by the architects of the new building will entirely change the appearance of the river front. The proposed ma.s.sive structure crowning the cliff will "out-castle" the most ma.s.sive fortifications of the walled cities of Europe. $7,500,000 has been appropriated to the work by Congress and the next generation will behold a new West Point.

In the rebuilding of the Post the Cadet Chapel, the Riding Hall, the Administration Building and some of the Officers' Quarters will be removed. Most of the old important buildings, however, will not be disturbed, and the Chapel will be placed as it were "intact" on another site. The plan leaves untouched the Cadet Barracks, the Cadet Mess, the Memorial Hall, the Library and the Officers' Mess. The tower of the new Post Headquarters will rise high and ma.s.sive several stories above the other structures and present in enduring symbol the republic standing four square and firm throughout the ages.

In the "West Point Souvenir," prepared by W. H. Tripp, which every visitor will prize, are many suggestions and descriptions of value.

From many visits and many sources we condense the following brevities: