"In love to the deep-bosomed stream of the West,
I fling this loose blossom to float on its breast;
Nor let the dear love of its children grow cold,
Till the channel is dry where its waters have rolled."
THE PALISADES.
In ascending the Hudson from New York, there are passed on either hand the heights which were covered in early Revolutionary days with the defenses of New York, Fort Washington and Fort Lee, but beyond the names no trace of either fort remains. The British captured both in the latter part of 1776, and afterwards held them. Fort Lee is now a favorite picnic ground. Above it rises the great wall of the Palisades, the wonderful formation built up of columned trap rock that extends along the western river bank for twenty miles up to Piermont, this rocky buttress making the northern limit of New Jersey on the Hudson River. Occasionally a patch of trees grows upon the tops or sides of the Palisades, while the broken rocks and débris that have fallen down make a sloping surface from about half-way up their height to the water's edge. These columns rise in varying heights from three to five hundred feet. This grand escarpment of the Palisades is a giant wall along the river bank, sometimes cut down by deep and narrow ravines, through which the people behind them get brief peeps at the picturesque stream far below. Their general surface makes a sort of long and narrow table-land, barely a half-mile to a mile wide, dividing the Hudson from the valley of the Hackensack to the westward, the top being usually quite level, and in most cases having a growth of trees. These desolate-looking Palisades are a barrier dividing two sections of country seeming in sharp contrast. To the westward, the inhabitants lead simple pastoral lives in a region of farm land and dairies. To the eastward, the opposite shore of the Hudson is a succession of villas and fashionable summer resorts, whither the New York people come out, seeking a little rest and freshness after the season's dissipation. From the tops of the Palisades are admirable views both east and west, displaying some of the finest sunrises and sunsets seen along the great river. Extensive blasting operations, to get the building-stone and paving material for which they form valuable quarries, are marring the beauty of the Palisades, but legal arrangements are maturing for their preservation. Their highest elevation, the Indian Head, not far above Fort Lee, rising five hundred and ten feet, has been ruined by these blasts, which at times will break off many thousand tons of rock at a single explosion.
Palisades of the Hudson