With odors from the wood.
William Allen Butler.
It is this character of the Hudson, this encroachment of the sea upon it, on account of the subsidence of the Atlantic coast, that led Professor Newberry to speak of it as a drowned river. We have heard of drowned lands,[page 133] but here is a river overflowed and submerged in the same manner. It is quite certain, however, that this has not always been the character of the Hudson. Its great trough bears evidence of having been worn to its present dimensions by much swifter and stronger currents than those that course through it now. To this gradual subsidence in connection with the great changes wrought by the huge glacier that crept down from the north during what is called the ice period, is owing the character and aspects of the Hudson as we see and know them. The Mohawk Valley was filled up by the drift, the Great Lakes scooped out, and an opening for their pent-up waters found through what is now the St. Lawrence. The trough of the Hudson was also partially filled and has remained so to the present day. There is, perhaps, no point in the river where the mud and clay are not from two to three times as deep as the water. That ancient and grander Hudson lies back of us several hundred thousand years—perhaps more, for a million years are but as one tick of the time-piece of the Lord; yet even it was a juvenile compared with some of the rocks and mountains which the Hudson of to-day mirrors. The Highlands date from the earliest geological race—the primary; the river—the old river—from the latest, the tertiary; and what that difference means in terrestrial years hath not entered into the mind of man to conceive. Yet how the venerable mountains open their ranks for the stripling to pass through. Of course, the river did not force its way through this barrier, but has doubtless found an opening there of which it has availed itself, and which it has enlarged. In thinking of these things, one only has to allow time enough, and the most stupendous changes in the topography of the country are as easy and natural as the going out or the coming in of spring or summer. According to the authority above referred to, that part of our coast that flanks the mouth of the Hudson is still sinking at the rate of a few inches[page 134] per century, so that in the twinkling of a hundred thousand years or so, the sea will completely submerge the city of New York, the top of Trinity Church steeple alone standing above the flood. We who live so far inland, and sigh for the salt water, need only to have a little patience, and we shall wake up some fine morning and find the surf beating upon our door-steps."
A sloop, loitering in the distance, dropped slowly
down with the tide, her sail hanging loosely against the
mast; and as the reflection of the sky gleamed along
the still water, it seemed as if the vessel was suspended
in the air.