In high spirits Harriet laughed and chatted as she had not done for days, pausing ever and anon to admire the beauties of the river, uttering exclamations of delight at some particularly imposing view. Before them lay West Point with Crow’s Nest Mountain, Butter Hill and the two Beacon mountains; on the southwest, Pollopel’s Island, in use at this time as a military prison, lay at the northern entrance to the Highlands; on the east were the fertile valleys of the Mattewan and Wappinger’s Creeks, and the village of Fishkill Landing; behind them was Newburgh Bay with the little village of the same name upon its shores, beyond which lay a broad champaign country.
“Father and Clifford must see this before we sail for home,” cried Harriet. “Oh, if I were king I’d never let the Americans deprive me of such a river!”
“If it affects thee like that, lass, perchance then thee has a slight idea of how we, who are natives of the country, feel toward those invaders who try to wrest it from us.”
“I don’t wonder at your feelings, Cousin David,” she said. “’Tis only, being English, that it seems to me a mistake to give these colonies up.”
“We have demonstrated by force of arms that we are no longer colonies, Harriet,” he reminded her quietly.
“Oh, I know, Cousin David,” she replied gaily. “But, until peace is declared, I cannot but regard you as belonging to us.”
At this David Owen laughed heartily, but his daughter’s cheeks flushed, and her eyes sparkled.
“Thee amuses me, lass. Thy attitude is England’s precisely. The king and his counselors know that they are beaten, but are loath to sign articles of peace, acknowledging our independence, because by so doing they surrender their last hold upon what they are pleased to still term ‘colonies.’ But it must come.”
“A truce, a truce,” she cried laughing. “How can we acknowledge that we are beaten? When did England ever confess such a thing? At any rate you never could have been victorious had you not been English yourselves.”