N the midst of wild mountain scenery, picturesque but not magnificent when compared with the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the Adirondack and Catskill range in New York, or the Alleghanies in Western Pennsylvania and Virginia, is a bold promontory called West Point, rising more than one hundred and fifty feet above the waters of the Hudson, its top a perfectly level and fertile plateau, and every rood hallowed by associations of the deepest interest. West Point! What a world of thrilling reminiscences has the utterance of that name brought to ten thousand memories in times past, now, alas! nearly all slumbering in the dreamless sleep of the dead! How does it awaken the generous emotions of patriotic reverence for the men, and things, and times of the Revolution, in the bosoms of th*e present generation! Nor is it by the associations alone that the traveler is moved with strong emotions when approaching West Point; the stranger, indifferent to our history and of all but the present, feels a glow of admira-
* Mrs. Faugeres was the grand-daughter of Brandt Schuyler, and daughter of Mrs. Anne Eliza Bleeeker, one of the notable sufferers from the invasion of Burgoyne in 1777. Mrs. Bleecker was then living, with her husband, about eighteen miles from Albany. Mr. Bleecker went to that city to make arrangements for moving his family thither. While absent, Mrs. Bleeeker heard of the approach of Burgoyne and his horde of savages, and, leading her eldest child by the hand, and bearing her youngest in her arms, she started on foot for Albany. After a wearisome journey of a day, and a night passed in a wretched garret, she started forward with her precious charge, and soon met her husband, with whom she returned to the city. Her babe died a few days afterward, and within a month her mother expired in her arms, at Red Hook, in Dutchess county. Her husband was afterward captured by a party of Tories. This event, and his sudden restoration when she thought him dead, so overpowered her, that her constitution sunk beneath the shocks, and she died in the autumn of 1783. Margaretta (afterward Mrs. Faugeres) was the "sweet sister" alluded to in the following lines, extracted from a poem written by Mrs. Bleecker on the death of her child:
"Rich in my children, on my arms I bore
My living treasures from the scalper's power.
When I sat down to rest beneath some shade,
On the soft grass how innocent she play'd,
While her sweet sister from the fragrant wild
Collects the flowers to please my precious child."
Scenery around West Point—The Military Establishment.—Wood's Monument.—Interesting Relics.
tion as he courses along the sinuous channel of the river or climbs the rough hills that embosom it. The inspiration of nature then takes possession of his heart and mind, and
"When he treads
The roek-encumbered crest, and feels the strange