The Hudson River Highlands in some peaks rise nearly sixteen hundred feet. The river, coming from the north, breaks through them in a series of short bends, making narrow reaches, and in the fifteen miles required for the passage presents some of the most attractive American scenery. Beyond Verplanck's Point is the town of Peekskill, with the mountain range trending far away to the northeast, the river flowing along its base, and from the view ahead seeming to come from the lowlands beyond Peekskill. It was not strange, therefore, that in the early seventeenth century one of the Dutch skippers who braved the goblin of the Donderberg, in his explorations should have sailed his sloop up there, got into a shallow creek, and run aground. This was the misfortune of the honest Dutch mariner Jan Peek; but he made the best of it, and seeing that the soil of the valley was fertile, settled there, and the creek became Peek's Kill, and thus named the town. The rich Canopus Valley is to the northeastward, and the mountains blend so well that the sharp right-angled bend the river makes into the Highlands is completely hidden. ANTHONY'S NOSE. Thus rise, high over the valley, "the rough turrets of the Highland towers." The Indians believed this mountain region was created by the mighty spirit Manetho, to protect his favorite abodes from the unhallowed eyes of mortals. Their tradition was that the vast mountains of rock were raised before the Hudson poured its waters through them, and within them was a prison where the omnipotent Manetho confined rebellious spirits. Here, bound by adamantine chains, jammed in rifted pines, or crushed under ponderous crags, they groaned for ages. At length the mighty Hudson burst open their prison-house, rolling its overwhelming tide triumphantly through the stupendous ruins. Entering the pass, it really seems as if the Hudson River channel ought to run up where Jan Peek went, but instead it goes sharply around the ponderous base of the Donderberg Mountain. This is a very narrow gateway, where the swift tidal current makes the "Race," and in an instant the contracted passage is opened between the Donderberg on the left and Anthony's Nose on the right, entering this beautiful Highland district, which Chateaubriand has likened to "a large bouquet tied at its base with azure ribbon." As the narrow strait is traversed, Iona Island, tree-clad and attractive, appears ahead, and the winds usually blow a lively gale, buffeted from one mountain side to the other. The tide runs swiftly around the base of Anthony's Nose, and the romantic Brocken Kill pours down his sloping side, while through the jutting point of the Nose the railway has pierced a tunnel, making on either side a veritable nostril. The huge tree-covered mountain rises grandly to the clouds, while just over the tunnel at the point, a mass of protruding rocks and timber makes a first-class pimple to ornament the Nose. This is one of the prominent