=The Brooklyn Annex.=--The Brooklyn tourist is especially happy in this delightful preface and addenda to the Hudson River trip. The effect of morning and evening light in bringing out or in subduing the sky-line of Manhattan is nowhere seen to greater advantage. In the morning the buildings from the East River side stand out bold and clear, when lo! almost instantaneously, on turning the Battery, they are lessened and subdued. On the return trip in the evening, the effect is reversed--a study worth the while of the traveler as he passes to and fro on the commodious "Annex" between Desbrosses Street Pier and Brooklyn. Surely no other city in the world rises so beautiful from harbor line or water front as "Greater New York," with lofty outlines of the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn reminding one of Scott's tribute to Edinburgh: "Piled deep and massy, close and high, Mine own romantic town!" * * * Down at the end of the long, dark street, Years, years ago, I sat with my sweetheart on the pier, Watching the river flow. _Richard Henry Stoddard._ * * * [Illustration: STATUE OF LIBERTY] =NEW YORK TO ALBANY.= =Desbrosses Street Pier to Forty-Second Street.= Our historic journey fittingly begins at Desbrosses Street, for here, near the old River-front, extending from Desbrosses along Greenwich, stood the Revolutionary line of breastworks reaching south to the Grenadier Battery at Franklin Street. Below this were "Jersey," "McDougall" and "Oyster" batteries and intervening earthworks to Port George, on the Battery, which stood on the site of old Fort Amsterdam, carrying us back to Knickerbocker memories of Peter Stuyvesant and Wowter Van Twiller. The view from the after-deck, before the steamer leaves the pier, gives scope for the imagination to re-picture the far-away primitive and heroic days of early New York. =Desbrosses Street Pier.=--On leaving the lower landing a charming view is obtained of New York Harbor, the Narrows, Staten Island, the Bartholdi Statue of Liberty, and, in clear weather, far away to the South, the Highlands of Nevisink, the first land to greet the eye of the ocean voyager. As the steamer swings out into the stream the tourist is at once face to face with a rapidly changing panorama. Steamers arriving, with happy faces on their decks, from southern ports or distant lands; others with waving handkerchiefs bidding good-bye to friends on crowded docks; swift-shuttled ferry-boats, with hurrying passengers, supplying their homespun woof to the great warp of foreign or coastwise commerce; noisy tug-boats, sombre as dray horses, drawing long lines of canal boats, or proud in the convoy of some Atlantic greyhound that has not yet slipped its leash; dignified "Men of War" at anchor, flying the flags of many nations, happy excursion boats _en route_ to sea-side resorts, scows, picturesque in their very clumsiness and uncouthness--all unite in a living kaleidescope of beauty.