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One Hundred and Twenty-Ninth Street to Yonkers.
This upper landing of the Hudson River Day Line has a beautiful location and is a great convenience to the dwellers of northern Manhattan. On leaving the pier the steel-arched structure of Riverside Drive is seen on the right. The valley here spanned, in the neighborhood of 127th Street, was once known as "Marritje Davids' Fly," and the local name for this part of New York above Claremont Heights is still known as "Manhattanville." The Convent of the Sacred Heart is visible among the trees, and
Trinity Cemetery's Monuments soon gleam along the wooded bank. Among her distinguished dead is the grave of General John A. Dix whose words rang across the land sixty days before the attack on Fort Sumter: "If any man attempts to pull down the American flag shoot him on the spot." The John A. Dix Post of New York comes hither each Decoration Day and garlands with imposing ceremonies his grave and the graves of their comrades.
Near Carmansville was the home of Audubon, the ornithologist, and the residences above the cemetery are grouped together as Audubon Park. Near at hand is the New York Institute for the Deaf and Dumb, and pleasantly located near the shore the River House once known as West-End Hotel.
Washington Heights rise in a bold bluff above Jeffrey's Hook. After the withdrawal of the American army from Long Island, it became apparent to General Washington and Hamilton that New York would have to be abandoned. General Greene and Congress believed in maintaining the fort, but future developments showed that Washington was right. The American troops, so far as clothing or equipment was concerned, were in a pitiable condition, and the result of the struggle makes one of the darkest[page 50] pages of the war. On the 12th of November Washington started from Stony Point for Fort Lee and arrived the 13th, finding to his disappointment that General Greene, instead of having made arrangements for evacuating, was, on the contrary, reinforcing Fort Washington. The entire defense numbered only about 2000 men, mostly militia, with hardly a coat, to quote an English writer, "that was not out at the elbows." "On the night of the 14th thirty flat-bottomed boats stole quietly up the Hudson, passed the American forts undiscovered, and made their way through Spuyten Duyvil Creek into Harlem River. The means were thus provided for crossing that river, and landing before unprotected parts of the American works."
Faith's pioneers and Freedom's martyrs sleep
Beneath their shade: and under their old boughs
The wise and brave of generations past