The most famous locality in the Highlands is West Point. "In this beautiful place," wrote Charles Dickens, "the fairest among the fair and lovely Highlands of the North River; shut in by deep green heights and ruined forts, and looking down upon the distant town of Newburg, along a glittering path of sunlit water, with here and there a skiff, whose white sail often bends on some new tack as sudden flaws of wind come down upon her from the gullies in the hills, hemmed in besides, all around, with memories of Washington and events of the Revolutionary war: is the Military School of America." Opposite Anthony's Nose, Montgomery Creek flows in, its mouth broadened into a little bay. Upon the high rocks at the entrance, on either side, stood the great defenders of the lower Highlands during the early Revolution, Forts Clinton and Montgomery, considered impregnable then, and to bar the river passage a ponderous iron chain on timber floats was stretched across the channel to Anthony's Nose. The Continental Congress spent $250,000 on these obstructions, but the British in 1777 surprised and captured the forts, destroyed the chain and burnt the gunboats guarding it. This was a great victory, but barren of results, for Burgoyne's surrender soon afterwards compelled them to abandon this region and retire down towards New York. There are traces of the forts, and a flagstaff on the hill north of the creek marks the site of Fort Montgomery. Just above, on the eastern bank, is the charming and symmetrical cone of the Sugar Loaf Mountain, with several smaller companions, and the vista views along the river, and through some of the deep valleys between these mountains, are magnificent. The little town of Garrison's fringes the shore, the school of the Sisters of St. Francis, formerly a popular hotel, is perched high on the cliff on the western bank; while in front the dome of the West Point Library and the barracks rise in view upon the Point itself, which stretches completely across the view, its extremity hidden by the jutting headlands of the eastern bank. Here comes down in rainy weather the frothy current of the beautiful Buttermilk Falls, for a hundred feet over the rocks into the river, and the West Shore Railroad, winding along the edge of the cliffs, cuts or goes through their extended points, and finally darts into a long tunnel bored right under the West Point Academy.