Gertrude was anxious to climb the richly decorated campanile that rises two hundred and twenty-five feet, which commands an unrivalled bird's-eye view of lower New York, the bay, Brooklyn, Long Island, and the mountains of New Jersey. All hoped to catch a glimpse of the "Majestic," but she was down the Narrows and out of sight.
Mr. Searles desired to see Trinity Church, so he was driven up Broadway to the head of Wall Street. Its spire is graceful and two hundred and eighty-four feet high. The land on which it stands was granted in 1697 by the English government. There were also other magnificent endowments. Trinity Parish, or Corporation, is the richest single church organization in the United States, enjoying revenues of over five hundred thousand dollars a year. In Revolutionary times the royalist clergy persisted in reading prayers for the king of England till their voices were drowned by the drum and fife of patriots marching up the center aisle.
It was now past two o'clock and the Harris party was driven to the Hotel Windsor for lunch. Promptly at six o'clock the conductor of the fast Western Express shouted, "All aboard," and Colonel Harris, Gertrude, and Mr. Searles in their own private car, left busy New York for Harrisville.
The Express creeps slowly along the steel way, under cross-streets, through arched tunnels, and over the Harlem River till the Hudson is reached, and then this world-famed river is followed 142 miles to Albany, the capital of the Empire State. This tide-water ride on the American Rhine is unsurpassed. The Express is whirled through tunnels, over bridges, past the magnificent summer houses of the magnates of the metropolis that adorn the high bluffs, past wooded hill and winding dale, grand mountains, and sparkling rivulets. Every object teems with historic memories. This ride, in June, is surpassed only when the forests are in a blaze of autumnal splendor.
For twenty miles in sight are the battlemented cliffs of the Palisades. Mr. Searles was familiar with the facile pen of Washington Irving, and from the car caught sight of "Sunny Side" covered with nourishing vines, grown from slips, which Irving secured from Sir Walter Scott at Abbottsford.
Passing Tarrytown Colonel Harris said, "Here Major Andre was captured, and the treachery of Benedict Arnold exposed, otherwise, we might to-day have been paying tribute to the crown of Great Britain."
"Yes," replied Mr. Searles, "George Washington, patriot, hung Major Andre, the spy. You made Washington president, and we gave Andre a monument in Westminster Abbey."
Sing Sing and Peekskill were left behind, and the Express was approaching the picturesque Highlands, a source of never failing delight to tourists. West Point, the site of the famous United States Military Academy, is on the left bank of the Hudson in the very bosom of the Highlands.
The sun set in royal splendor behind the Catskills;
"And lo! the Catskills print the distant sky,
And o'er their airy tops the faint clouds driven
So softly blending that the cheated eye
Forgets or which is earth, or which is heaven."