I might give a long, and even interesting, account of my journey up the Hudson; but such is not my intention. There are already numerous books of travel extant, which describe the Hudson as well as it can be described in words. My object is to amuse; and if I relate all the funny things that happened to me, I shall succeed. I might describe the view of the Catskill Mountains, the towns of Hudson, Peekskill, Newburg, West Point, etc., but will leave that to tourists, as already hinted. But I must not pass by without mentioning one or two points on the Hudson. The Catskill Mountains, viewed from the river, present so lovely a picture that neither pen nor brush can convey any adequate idea of them. No one should live and die without viewing such scenery as this. A few miles above West Point, and on the same shore of the river—the western—rises a mountain peak called the Crow Nest. Joseph Rodman Drake, an American poet who died in 1820, at the age of twenty-five, thus exquisitely depicts this delightful region, in his poem entitled, “THE CULPRIT FAY:” “’Tis the middle watch of a summer’s night— The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright; Nought is seen in the vault on high, But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky, And the flood which rolls its milky hue, A river of light on the welkin blue. The moon looks down on old Crow Nest, She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast, And seems his huge gray form to throw In a silver cone on the wave below; His sides are broken by spots of shade, By the walnut bough and the cedar made, And through their clustering branches dark, Glimmers and dies the fire-fly’s spark— Like starry twinkles that momently break Through the rifts of the gathering tempest’s rack. “The stars are on the moving stream, And fling, as its ripples gently flow, A burnished length of wavy beam In an eel-like spiral line below: The winds are whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid, And nought is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket’s chirp, and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katy-did; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who moans unseen and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail and woe, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky in her glances glow. “’Tis the hour of fairy ban and spell; The wood-tick has kept the minutes well; He has counted them all with click and stroke Deep in the heart of the mountain oak, And he has awakened the sentry elve, Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree, To bid him to ring the hour of twelve, And call the fays to their revelry.”