Voyage of the Paper Canoe

It was upon the Hudson that the first successful steamboat, built by Robert Fulton, made its voyage to Albany, the engine having been built by Watt & Bolton, in England.

From Mr. Lossing we obtain the following.

"The Clermont was one hundred feet long, twelve feet wide, and seven feet deep. The following advertisement appeared in the Albany Gazette on the 1st of September, 1807:

"The North River steamboat will leave Paulus Hook (Jersey City) on Friday, the 4th of September, at 9 in the morning, and arrive at Albany on Saturday at 9 in the afternoon. Provisions, good berths, and accommodations are provided. The charge to each passenger is as follows:

The trip, which was made against a strong head wind, was entirely successful. The large steamers can now make the trip from New York to Albany in about twelve hours.

As I pulled easily along the banks of the river, my eyes feasted upon the gorgeous coloring of the autumnal foliage, which formed a scene of beauty never to be forgotten. The rapid absorption of oxygen by the leaves in the fall months produces, in northern America, these vivid tints which give to the country the appearance of a land covered with a varied and brilliant garment, "a coat of many colors." A soft, hazy light pervaded the atmosphere, while at the same time the October air was gently exhilarating to the nervous system. At six o'clock p. m. the canoe arrived at Hudson City, which is on the east bank of the river, and I completed a row of thirty-eight statute miles, according to local authority; but in reality forty-nine miles by the correct charts of the United States Coast Survey. After storing the Maria Theresa in a shed, I repaired to a dismal hotel for the night.

At seven o'clock the next morning the river was mantled in a dense fog, but I pushed off and guided myself by the sounds of the running trains on the Hudson River Railroad. This corporation does such an immense amount of freighting that, if their freight trains were connected, a continuous line of eighty miles would be constructed, of which sixteen miles are always in transit day and night. Steamboats and tugs with canal-boats in tow were groping about the river in the misty darkness, blowing whistles every few minutes to let people know that the pilot was not sleeping at the wheel. There was a grand clearing up at noon; and as the sun broke through the mist, the beautiful shores came into view like a vivid flame of scarlet, yellow, brown, and green. It was the death-song of summer, and her dying notes the tinted leaves, each one giving to the wind a sad strain as it softly dropped to the earth, or was quickly hurled into space.

A few miles south of Hudson City, on the west bank, the Catskill stream enters the river. From this point the traveller may penetrate the picturesque country of the Appalachian range, where its wild elevations were called Onti Ora, or "mountains of the sky," by the aborigines.

Rondout, on the right bank of the Hudson, is the terminus of the Delaware and Hudson Canal, which connects it with Port Jervis on the Delaware, a distance of fifty-four miles. This town, the outlet of the coal regions, I passed after meridian. As I left Hudson on the first of the flood-tide, I had to combat it for several hours; but I easily reached Hyde Park Landing (which is on the left bank of the stream and, by local authority, thirty-five miles from Hudson City) at five o'clock p. m. The wharf-house sheltered the canoe, and a hotel in the village, half a mile distant on the high plains, its owner. I was upon the river by seven o'clock the next morning. The day was varied by strong gusts of wind succeeded by calms. Six miles south of Hyde Park is the beautiful city of Poughkeepsie with its eighteen thousand inhabitants, and the celebrated Vassar Female College. Eight miles down the river, and on the same side, is a small village called New Hamburg. The rocky promontory at the foot of which the town is built is covered with the finest arbor vitæ forest probably in existence. Six miles below, on the west bank, is the important city of Newburg, one of the termini of the New York and Erie Railroad. Four miles below, the river narrows and presents a grand view of the north entrance of the Highlands, with the Storm King Mountain rising fully one thousand five hundred feet above the tide. The early Dutch navigators gave to this peak the name of Boter-burg (Butter-Hill), but it was rechristened Storm King by the author N. P. Willis, whose late residence, Idlewild, commands a fine view of Newburg Bay.

When past the Storm King, the Crow-Nest and the almost perpendicular front of Kidd's Plug Cliff tower aloft, and mark the spot where Kidd (as usual) was supposed to have buried a portion of that immense sum of money with which popular belief invests hundreds of localities along the watercourses of the continent. Now the Narrows above West Point were entered, and the current against a head-wind made the passage unusually exciting. The paper canoe danced over the boiling expanse of water, and neared the west shore about a mile above the United States Military Academy, when a shell, from a gun on the grounds of that institution, burst in the water within a few feet of the boat. I now observed a target set upon a little flat at the foot of a gravelly hill close to the beach. As a second, and finally a third shell exploded near me, I rowed into the rough water, much disgusted with cadet-practice and military etiquette. After dark the canoe was landed on the deck of a schooner which was discharging slag or cinder at Fort Montgomery Landing. I scrambled up the hill to the only shelter that could be found, a small country store owned by a Captain Conk who kept entertainment for the traveller. Rough fellows and old crones came in to talk about the spooks that had been seen in the neighboring hills. It was veritable "Sleepy Hollow" talk. The physician of the place, they said, had been "skert clean off a bridge the other night."

Embarking the following morning from this weird and hilly country, that prominent natural feature, Anthony's Nose, which was located on the opposite shore, strongly appealed to my imagination and somewhat excited my mirth. One needs a powerful imagination, I thought, to live in these regions where the native element, the hill-folk, dwell so fondly and earnestly upon the ghostly and mysterious. Three miles down the river, Dunderberg, "the thundering mountain," on the west bank, with the town of Peekskill on the opposite shore, was passed, and I entered Haverstraw Bay, the widest part of the river. "Here," says the historian, "the fresh and salt water usually contend, most equally, for the mastery; and here the porpoise is often seen in large numbers sporting in the summer sun. Here in the spring vast numbers of shad are caught while on their way to spawning-beds in fresh-water coves." Haverstraw Bay was crossed, and Tarrytown passed, when I came to the picturesque little cottage of a great man now gone from among us. Many pleasant memories of his tales rose in my mind as I looked upon Sunnyside, the home of Washington Irving, nestled in the grove of living green, its white stuccoed walls glistening in the bright sunlight, and its background of grand villas looming up on every side. At Irvington Landing, a little further down the river, I went ashore to pass Sunday with friends; and on the Monday following, in a dense fog, proceeded on my route to New York.

Below Irvington the far-famed "Palisades," bold-faced precipices of trap-rock, offer their grandest appearance on the west side of the Hudson. These singular bluffs, near Hoboken, present a perpendicular front of three hundred or four hundred feet in height. Piles of broken rock rest against their base: the contribution of the cliffs above from the effects of frost and sun.

While approaching the great city of New York, strong squalls of wind, blowing against the ebb-tide, sent swashy waves into my open canoe, the sides of which, amidships, were only five or six inches above water; but the great buoyancy of the light craft and its very smooth exterior created but little friction in the water and made her very seaworthy, when carefully watched and handled, even without a deck of canvas or wood. While the canoe forged ahead through the troubled waters, and the breezes loaded with the saltness of the sea now near at hand struck my back, I confess that a longing to reach Philadelphia, where I could complete my outfit and increase the safety of my little craft, gave renewed vigor to my stroke as I exchanged the quiet atmosphere of the country for the smoke and noise of the city. Every instinct was now challenged, and every muscle brought into action, as I dodged tug-boats, steamers, yachts, and vessels, while running the thoroughfare along the crowded wharves between New York on one side and Jersey City on the other. I found the slips between the piers most excellent ports of refuge at times, when the ferry-boats, following each other in quick succession, made the river with its angry tide boil like a vortex. The task soon ended, and I left the Hudson at Castle Garden and entered the upper bay of New York harbor. As it was dark, I would gladly have gone ashore for the night, but a great city offers no inducement for a canoeist to land as a stranger at its wharves.

A much more pleasant reception awaited me down on Staten Island, a gentleman having notified me by mail that he would welcome the canoe and its owner. The ebb had ceased, and the incoming tide was being already felt close in shore; so with tide and wind against me, and the darkness of night settling down gloomily upon the wide bay, I pulled a strong oar for five miles to the entrance of Kill Van Kull Strait, which separates Staten Island from New Jersey and connects the upper bay with Raritan Bay.

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1

Heights of mountains of Lake George, New York state, obtained by Rev. George M. Searle, C. S. P.Finch, between Buck and Spruce, 1595 feet.Cat-Head, near Bolton, 1640 feet.Prospect Mountain, west of Lake George village, 1730 feet.Spruce, near Buck Mountain, 1820 feet.Buck, east shore, south of Narrows, 2005 feet.Bear, between Buck and Black, 2200 feet.Black, the monarch of Lake George, 2320 feet.From another authority I find that Lake Champlain is ninety-three feet above the Atlantic tide-level, and that Lake George is two hundred and forty feet above Lake Champlain, or three hundred and thirty-three feet above the sea.

2

Note to Page 72. – The author has been criticised by technical canoeists for using oars on a canoe. On this cruise, experience proved that the paddle could be used effectively only two miles out of every three. Head winds and seas frequently drive the paddler into camp, while the adaptive cruiser pushes on with oar and outrigger, and avoids the loss of many hours. Many canoeists exploring our broad watercourses have adopted the oar as an auxiliary, – the paddle properly taking the precedence. We are progressing. The canoeist of 1882 may follow the teachings of common-sense vs. unauthorized technical criticisms. Oars on a light paddling canoe are out of place; but are a most effective power on a heavy cruising canoe, insuring a successful voyage.