"Where Hudson's waves o'er silvery sands
Winds through the hills afar,
And Cro' Nest like a monarch stands
Crown'd with a single star."
Morris.
Hark! the sunrise gun on the plain below hath spoken! How eagerly its loud voice is caught up by echo and carried from hill to hill! The Sugar Loaf answers to Redoubt Mountain, and Anthony's Nose to Bear Mountain and the Dunderberg, and then there is only a soft whisper floating away over the waters of the Haverstraw. The reveille is beating; the shrill notes of the fife, and the stirring music of the cornet-players, come up and fill the soul with a martial spirit consonant with the place and its memories. Here, then, let us sit down upon the lip of this rock-fountain, within the ruins of the fort, and commune a while with the old chronicler.
The importance of fortifying the Hudson River at its narrow passes among the High-
* It was here that the general inoculation of the soldiers of the Continental army was performed by Doctors Cochrane, Thacher, Munson, and others, as mentioned on page 307, vol. i.
** This, in plain English and common parlance, is Bull Hill. I feel very much disposed to quarrel with my countrymen for their want of taste in giving names to localities. They have discarded the beautiful "heathenish" names of the Indian verbal geographies, and often substituted the most commonplace and inappropriate title that human ingenuity, directed earthward, could invent—Bull Hill! Crow's Nest! Butter Hill!! Ever blessed be the name and memory of Joseph Rodman Drake, whose genius has clothed these Highland cones, despite their vulgar names, with a degree of classic interest, by thus summoning there with the herald voice of imagination,
"Ouphe and goblin! imp and sprite!
Elf of eve and starry fay!
Ye that love the moon's soft light,
Hither, hither wend your way.
Twine ye in a jocund ring;
Sing and trip it merrily;
Hand to hand and wing to wing,
Round the wild witch-hazel tree!"
The Culprit Fat, canto xxxvi. *