When Hendrick Hudson came up the river he found sand-bars above the Catskills, and anchored his "Half Moon" near Mount Merino, at what is now the head of ship navigation upon the Hudson, one hundred and fifteen miles from New York. Just beyond, a high plateau sloping to the shore is covered by the city of Hudson, having a green island in front, and over opposite the little town of Athens, with a lighthouse in midstream between them. Hudson has ten thousand people, a picturesque city sloping up Prospect Hill, which rises five hundred feet for a noble background, and it once had more ships and commerce than the city of New York. A colony of thrifty Quakers from New England started the settlement, which had many fishermen and whalers, and a large fleet of ships sailing to Europe and the Indies, fifteen loaded vessels having cleared from its wharves in a single day. But Napoleon's wars swept away its fleet and commerce, and the last ship was sold in 1845, so that its commercial greatness is only a tradition; although it has become a seat of considerable manufactures. Its most noted citizen was General Worth, a hero of the Mexican War, whose monument stands on Fifth Avenue, New York. Both sides of the river here are inhabited by the Dutch, and in fact theirs is the universal language of the Hudson from Kingston up to Albany. These Dutch of New York have given the country some notable men, among them General Philip Schuyler, Colonel Van Rensselaer, General Stryker and others of the Revolution, and President Martin Van Buren. They view with pardonable pride the important share they have had in founding and building up the Empire State, and Rev. Dr. Henry A. Van Dyke has poetically and ingeniously described the "Typical Dutchmen" of New York: "They sailed from the shores of the Zuyder Zee Across the stormy ocean, To build for the world a new country According to their notion: A land where thought should be free as air And speech be free as water; Where man to man should be just and fair, And Law be Liberty's daughter. "When the English fleet sailed up the bay, The small Dutch town was taken; But the Dutchmen there had come to stay; Their hold was never shaken. They could keep right on, and work and wait For the freedom of the nation; And we claim to-day that New York State Is built on a Dutch foundation."