A little higher up on the west side is the important military station of West Point. This place, as well as being most charmingly situated, is also famous as the great military training school of the United States. Probably you have noticed, in reading the accounts of the war now raging between North and South, that this or that general or officer was a "West Point man." General George M'Clellan received his military education at West Point; but, whatever military knowledge he gained at this college, strengthened by experience and observation at the Crimea, he was not allowed to make much use of while he held command of the army of the Potomac. His great opponent, General Lee, was also a "West Point man," and it does not require much consideration to determine which of the "Pointsmen" was the smarter. Washington has also made West Point famous in the time of the war for independence. Benedict Arnold held command of this point and other places in the neighbourhood, when he made overtures to Sir Henry Clinton to hand over to the British, for a pecuniary consideration of £10,000, West Point and all its outposts. A little higher up is Cold Spring, on the east side of the Hudson; but we will pass that by, and now we are off Newburg on the west bank. This is a large and flourishing town also at the foot of high hills--indeed, we are now in the highlands of the Hudson, and it would be difficult to find a town or a village that is not _backed up_ by hills. At the time I first visited these scenes there was a large photographic apparatus manufactory at Newburg, where they made "coating boxes," "buff wheels," "Pecks blocks," &c., on a very extensive scale, for the benefit of themselves and all who were interested in the "cleaning," "buffing," and "coating" of Daguerreotype plates. Opposite Newburg is Fishkill; but we shall pass rapidly up past Poughkeepsie on the right, and other places right and left, until we come to Hudson, on the east side of the river. Opposite Hudson are the Catskill Mountains, and here the river is hemmed in by mountains on all sides, resembling the head of Ullswater lake, or the head of Loch Lomond or Loch Katrine; and here we have a photographic curiosity to descant upon.