It is forty years since the telegraph abandoned this abandoned highway, and the tramps left with the telegraph poles. One old inhabitant says it used to take a considerable part of her time each day to feed the gentry who applied, for she, being afraid of them, never refused. To-day, over this part of the road, the tramp is as scarce as the stage coach. To be sure the law may have something to do with it, for any one who lodges information against a tramp gets $15, and the gentleman of leisure presumably suffers accordingly, as the farmer is not likely to assess himself merely for the pleasure of housing lazy humanity.
Just beyond the fifty-fourth mile-stone stands one of the old inns which is put down by Christopher Colles as Travers's Tavern. It still offers shelter to him who will seek, as I discovered when caught by a sudden shower.
From the last hilltop, before Nelson's Mill is reached, is a glorious view of the "Golden Gate," the notch between Storm King and Breakneck, through which the Hudson flows, and, in summer floods of gold from the setting sun. On all sides are hills and valleys. It seems as though the whole world is on edge.
Here stands sentinel a tall old mile-stone by the road side demanding of every one that passes the countersign—Wonderful!
Down the steep hillside the road now lunges to Nelson's Mill or Corner, once a relay station for the stage coach horses, and a mill site for many generations, and now we are looking up at the mountains instead of down on them. The road floats up and down the gentle swells of the valley's floor, each bend bringing into line another view of the Fishkill Mountain with a new foreground or a different framing of leaves and branches, and each calling aloud to the camera which gorges itself on trees and rocks and mountains.
CLOVE CREEK VALLEY.
We are in the valley of the Clove Creek, under the shadow of the Fishkill Mountain, in a hollow where the dusk of evening comes early, and the gloom and solitude of the shortened day make one readily understand why travelers of old halted at this north entrance to the Highlands, rather than run the chance of being overtaken by the dark in the depths of its loneliness. Cooper could hardly have hit on a more fitting place for the adventures of the Spy than these woods and mountains offered.
WICCOPEE PASS.
About four miles south of Fishkill, in Wiccopee Pass, a bronze tablet by the roadside announces that:—
ON THE HILLS BACK OF THIS STONE STOOD THREE
BATTERIES GUARDING THIS PASS, 1776-1783.