For many years the Island was the home of the Misses Anna and Susan Warner, authors of "The Wide, Wide World," and other stories popular with children. Through the generosity of Miss Susan Warner, who survived her sister, and Mrs. Russell Sage, the island was presented to the government a few years ago, and is now part of West Point.
We pass on the west bank Crow's Nest Mt. (1,396 ft.) associated with Joseph Rodman Drake's fanciful poem, The Culprit Fay. Two M. farther we leave the Highlands through the "Golden Gate," where Storm King Mt. rises to a height of 1,340 ft. on the west side of the Hudson, and Breakneck Mt. to a height of 1,365 ft. on the other. Near Storm King a tunnel of the great new Catskill aqueduct, carrying water to N.Y.C., passes under the Hudson at a depth of 1,100 ft.—a depth made necessary to reach solid rock at the bottom.
N.Y. City's Catskill Mt. water supply system is the greatest of waterworks, modern or ancient. Three-quarters of the project has been completed. The waters of the Esopus Creek in the Catskills are stored in the Ashokan reservoir, an artificial lake twelve miles long, situated about 14 miles west of the Hudson River at Kings Mt. From this reservoir the aqueduct extends 92 M. to the city's northern boundary, and supplies about 375,000,000 gallons daily. From the Croton watershed New York receives a supply almost as large—336,000,000 gallons daily. Construction on the Catskill supply system was begun in 1907, and the total cost will be about $177,000,000.
The river now widens and turns to the west; on the further bank is Cornwall, near which is the estate of E. P. Roe, the writer, and "Idlewild," the former home of N. P. Willis, likewise a writer of importance in his day. The home of Lyman Abbott, editor of the Outlook is also here. The proprietor of Bannerman's Island, which we now pass, is a dealer in obsolete war material; he has built on the island a number of castle-like store-houses of old paving stones taken from the streets of New York.
58 M. BEACON, Pop. 10,996 & NEWBURGH, Pop. 30,366.
(Train 51 passes 9:56; No. 3, 10:17; No. 41, 2:29; No. 25, 4:10; No. 19, 7:06. Eastbound: No. 6 passes 7:50; No. 26 8:09; No. 16, 2:22; No. 22, 3:48.)
Beacon was incorporated in May, 1913, by merging the villages of Matteawan and Fishkill Landing, the latter of which lay closer to the west. The first settlement in the township was made in 1690. During the Revolutionary War it was an important military base for the Northern Continental Army. At Fishkill Landing on May 13, 1783, Gen. Knox organized the Society of the Cincinnati.
The Society of the Cincinnati was an organization of U.S. officers who had served in the Revolutionary War. Besides the general society of which Washington was president, another was organized for each state. (The name is in reference to Cincinnati, the Roman patriot who left the plough to serve his country.) Membership was limited to officers, native or foreign, of the Continental army who had either served with honour for three years or had been honorably discharged for disability, and to their descendants.
Because it included several European nobles, such as Lafayette and Steuben, and because it was founded on the principle of heredity the new society was denounced as the beginning of an aristocracy and therefore a menace, by such Revolutionary leaders as Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson, who were ineligible for membership because they had not been in the army. There was perhaps a real fear that it might become a military hierarchy which would appropriate the important offices of the new republic. At any rate, several states adopted resolutions against it and so great was the antagonism at the first general meeting in 1784 Washington persuaded the members to abolish the hereditary feature. In spite of this condition, the excitement did not die, and in 1789 the Tammany Society was founded in N.Y.C. in opposition to the Cincinnati, and as a wherein "true equality" should govern. This was the origin of Tammany Hall, which became conspicuous in N.Y. politics.
Alexander Hamilton succeeded Washington as president, but by 1824 most of the state branches of the Cincinnati and the general society itself were dead or dying. For a long time little was left but a traditional dinner held each year in N.Y.C. In 1893 the general society made an effort to revive the state organizations, with some little success. The hereditary feature has been restored and the living members number about 980. The motto is "Omnia relinquit servare rem publicam." (He abandons everything to serve the republic.)