I had never imagined that any thing half so grand and so picturesque awaited us on our up-river jaunt. The half had not been told. Besides the splendor of the scenery,—the tremendous hills and ravines on one side, and the gently levelling upland and lowland fields and meadows, full of fertility and the promise of rich harvests, on the other,—there were a thousand associations with the early history of our Republic, especially with that interesting period, when “men's souls were tried,” which rendered it a continuous and uninterrupted scene of thrilling and exciting interest. _Stony Point_ and old Wayne, Forts _Montgomery_ and _Clinton_ with Gates, Sir Henry Clinton, and “Old Put,” Independence, Bloody Pond, General Vaughan, James Clinton, and a thousand other places and names throng upon the memory, and tell the tale over again of a most interesting part of that glorious struggle for freedom by our brave fathers. On one of the boldest and most commanding of those highland eminences, the traveller soon perceives the moss-grown battlements of Fort Putnam, over-hanging the barracks of the Military Academy at _West Point_. As the steamboat passes this headland, Kosciusko's monument, erected by order of government, is discerned, and then the hotel comes in sight. Intending to stop at mine host _Cozzens'_ on our way down the river, we did not land, but went on to _Catskill_ landing, where we debarked, and took stage for the celebrated Mountain House, at Pine Orchard. This is a grove situated on the table land near the summit of one of the most lofty of the Catskills, and is more than two thousand feet above the level of the Hudson. We found there a most commodious hotel, the view from the front piazza of which is exceedingly picturesque. We experienced a great change in the weather upon reaching the Mountain House, having left an almost torrid climate at the foot of the hill, and finding it cold enough at the top for a fire. We therefore retired to rest, after this, our first day's journey, with great expectation for the morn. Salvator Rosa alone could do justice to the scenery around Pine Orchard. The pencil of modern artists may find much here to furnish a fitting subject for their attempts, and they may succeed in giving pleasing sketches from its inexhaustible sources of picturesque and romantic illustration. But it requires the hand of that great painter of the grand, the sublime, the stupendous, fitly to _illustrate_ that scenery.