Probably since its creation, in no two hundred and seventy years which have rolled over the world has a greater change been effected in the condition of a country than that which has taken place on the banks of the Hudson since the intrepid and unfortunate Englishman from whom it derives its name explored its waters and anchored opposite Pigskill. "This is a very good land to fall in with, a pleasant land to see," he says, under the date of September 2nd, 1609, "the waters abound with salmons, mullets and rayes, very great. The people of the country came aboard of us, seeming very glad of our coming, and brought green tobacco and gave us of it for knives and beads. They go in loose deer-skins, well dressed, and mantles of feathers, skins and divers sort of good furs. They have yellow copper, and use red copper tobacco pipes." And when his men landed he says they found "great store of men, women and children, and good oysters, grapes and pumpkins, beaver and other skins." Then out of the grossness of the time and of the race the Whites wrought the great wrong which, ever continuing, has marked the course of civilisation on their side and of degradation on that of the Red men. Captain Waymouth, who had been on the coast four or five years before, kidnapped natives as a matter of course. Verazzano, the Italian, who really discovered the Hudson eighty-five years before "Hendrick" entered it, had also kidnapped natives, but Hudson's men made them drunk, and the memory of the carouse is still perpetuated, they say, in the word Manhattan.[7] On the shores of this river, now so populous with many towns and villages and joyous country seats, there is not a trace of the Red man, and at West Point there is the great Military Academy for the education of officers whose principal military service will probably consist in the extermination of the few Red men left within the borders of the Great Republic, thousands of miles to the west. There was but a glimpse of West Point as the train flew past. Places less known to fame, or to us, were seen and carried off down the river ere we could well learn their names and the number of the population; but Newburgh fixed itself on my notes, and Poughkeepsie on my memory; for I saw on the platform of the last-named station the wisest-looking woman I ever beheld. I was informed she was a famous Professor at Vassar College, where young ladies are fitted to be the mothers of heroes by a long course of study--a prodigy of learning, and especially versed in dangerous isms and ologies--so men told me. She had curls, steel-like and lustrous, "an eye like Mars to threaten and command," scarce adumbrated by the light-blue glasses of a pair of spectacles, a Roman nose, and straight-cut lips, and wore a severely classical garment which seemed to have been cut out of Minerva's peplum, and as she moved I expected to hear the clatter of armour beneath her surcoat of lutestring. And yet she was single!