Day Line Steamers.—As the cradle of successful steam navigation was rocked on the Hudson, it is fitting that the Day Line Steamers should excel all others in beauty, grace and speed. There is no comparison between these river palaces and the steamboats on the Rhine or any river in Europe, as to equipment, comfort and rapidity. To make another reference to the great tourist route of Europe, the distance from Cologne to Coblenz is 60 miles, the same as from New York to Newburgh. It takes the Rhine steamers from seven to eight hours (as will be seen in Baedeker's Guide to that river) going up the stream, and from four and a half to five hours returning[page 35] with the current. The Hudson by Daylight steamers en route to Albany make the run from New York to Newburgh in three hours; to Poughkeepsie in four hours, making stops at Yonkers, West Point and Newburgh. Probably no train on the best equipped railroad in our country reaches its stations with greater regularity than these steamers make their various landing. It astonishes a Mississippi or Missouri traveler to see the captain standing like a train-conductor, with watch in hand, to let off the gang-plank and pull the bell, at the very moment of the advertised schedule.
Southward the river gleams—a snowy sail
Now gliding o'er the mirror—now a track
Tossing with foam displaying on its course
The graceful steamer with its flag of smoke.
Alfred B. Street.
One of the most humorous incidents of the writer's journeying up and down the Hudson, was the "John-Gilpin-experience" of a western man who got off at West Point a few years ago. It was at that time the first landing of the steamer after leaving New York.