At seven o'clock the next morning the river was mantled in a dense fog, but I pushed off and guided myself by the sounds of the running trains on the Hudson River Railroad. This corporation does such an immense amount of freighting that, if their freight trains were connected, a continuous line of eighty miles would be constructed, of which sixteen miles are always in transit day and night. Steamboats and tugs with canal-boats in tow were groping about the river in the misty darkness, blowing whistles every few minutes to let people know that the pilot was not sleeping at the wheel. There was a grand clearing up at noon; and as the sun broke through the mist, the beautiful shores came into view like a vivid flame of scarlet, yellow, brown, and green. It was the death-song of summer, and her dying notes the tinted leaves, each one giving to the wind a sad strain as it softly dropped to the earth, or was quickly hurled into space. A few miles south of Hudson City, on the west bank, the Catskill stream enters the river. From this point the traveller may penetrate the picturesque country of the Appalachian range, where its wild elevations were called Onti Ora, or "mountains of the sky," by the aborigines. Roundout, on the right bank of the Hudson, is the terminus of the Delaware and Hudson Canal, which connects it with Port Jervis on the Delaware, a distance of fifty-four miles. This town, the outlet of the coal regions, I passed after meridian. As I left Hudson on the first of the flood-tide, I had to combat it for several hours; but I easily reached Hyde Park Landing (which is on the left bank of the stream and, by local authority, thirty-five miles from Hudson City) at five o'clock P. M. The wharf-house sheltered the canoe, and a hotel in the village, half a mile distant on the high plains, its owner. I was upon the river by seven o'clock the next morning. The day was varied by strong gusts of wind succeeded by calms. Six miles south of Hyde Park is the beautiful city of Poughkeepsie with its eighteen thousand inhabitants, and the celebrated Vassar Female College. Eight miles down the river, and on the same side, is a small village called New Hamburg. The rocky promontory at the foot of which the town is built is covered with the finest arbor vitae forest probably in existence. Six miles below, on west bank, is the important city of Newburg, one of the termini of the New York and Erie Railroad. Four miles below, the river narrows and presents a grand view of the north entrance of the Highlands, with the Storm King Mountain rising fully one thousand five hundred feet above the tide. The early Dutch navigators gave to this peak the name of Boter-burg (Butter-Hill), but it was rechristened Storm King by the author N. P. Willis, whose late residence, Idlewild, commands a fine view of Newburg Bay.