Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer;
Dying, to leave a memory like the breath
Of summer, full of sunshine and of showers,
A grief and gladness in the atmosphere."
Only a short distance from the church is the old bridge made famous in the legend describing the escapade of the schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, with his "soft and foolish heart toward the sex." In his love he had a rival in the stalwart and muscular Brom Bones. The legend tells us that Ichabod taught the Dutch urchins of these parts, and at the same time paid court to old farmer Van Tassel's daughter, the fair Katrina. Brom Bones, otherwise Brom Van Brunt, determined to drive him away. One dismal night Ichabod left the Van Tassel mansion in very low spirits. In the hush of midnight he could hear the watchdog bark, distant and vague, from the far opposite shore of the Hudson. Irving tells us a belief existed in a spectre—the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow—supposed to be the spirit of a Hessian trooper whose head had been carried off by a cannon-ball. Nearing the old church, this horrid ghost appeared in pursuit of Ichabod, who was bestride an inflexible old horse called Gunpowder. The terrified schoolmaster made all haste to reach the bridge, having passed which, he would be beyond the power of his pursuer. He spurred Gunpowder forward, but looking back, beheld the spectre close behind him, and in the very act of hurling its horrid head at him. The crash came; Ichabod rolled to the ground; the spectre and Gunpowder rushed past him in a whirlwind. Next day, we are told, a shattered pumpkin was found in the road, and not long afterwards Brom Bones led Katrina to the altar, but the luckless Ichabod was never heard of again.
In the hills behind Point-no-Point, on the western verge of the Tappan Zee, at one hundred and sixty feet elevation, is Rockland Lake, a crystal sheet of water which gives New York much of its ice supply, the blocks being sent from the top of the hill on a long slide to the barges that carry it down the river. As they glide along, they look in the distance, under the sunlight, like a string of diamonds. Hook Mountain, separating the lake from the river, is over six hundred feet high, and out of the lake flows the Hackensack River behind the Palisades, through the Jersey meadows to Newark Bay. Just above Tarrytown, on the eastern shore, is Sing-Sing Village, on a pretty slope, the name coming from the Indian Ossining, meaning "a stony place." Here, just back from the shore, is the famous Sing-Sing Prison, the long, low tiers of white stone buildings having the railway tunnelled through them, and the pleasant village rising on the hillside behind. The convicts built their own prison many years ago, with stone hewn out of an adjacent marble ridge, called Mount Pleasant. Just above, the long forest-covered projection of Teller's or Croton Point, thrust for two miles, or more than half-way across the broad river, from the eastern bank, makes the northern boundary of the Tappan Zee. The West Shore railway, which has come up through the Hackensack Valley from Jersey City, emerges high on the western hills and runs gradually down to the river bank, so that the Hudson above has a railway on either shore. Alongside the Point, the Croton River flows in, the Reservoir being about six miles up that stream. It was off Teller's Point the British sloop "Vulture" anchored, when she brought André up from New York for his interview with Arnold.
ENTERING THE HIGHLANDS.
Beyond Teller's Point is another broadened expanse of the Hudson, Haverstraw Bay, spreading in parts five miles wide, its western shore lined with brickmaking establishments, lime-kilns and the factories which break up the stone quarried in the neighboring hills into Belgian blocks for New York street paving. Far in front, over the spacious bay, looms up the distant range of Hudson River Highlands, an outcrop of the great Kittatinny ridge, stretching broadly across the country, a part of the same deep blue-gray mountain wall we have already penetrated farther south. Its changing hues and appearance, as approached, remind of Campbell's couplet in the Pleasures of Hope:
"'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue."