The gray and tufted Palisades.
Henry T. Tuckerman.
Haverstraw, 37 miles from New York. Haverstraw Bay is sometimes said to be five miles wide. Its widest point, however, from Croton Landing to Haverstraw, is,[page 76] according to United States Geological Survey, a little over four miles. The principal industry of Haverstraw is brick-making, and its brick yards reaching north to Grassy Point, are of materal profit, if not picturesque. The place was called Haverstraw by the Dutch, perhaps as a place of rye straw, to distinguish it from Tarrytown, a place of wheat. The Indian name has been lost; but, if its original derivation is uncertain, it at least calls up the rhyme of old-time river captains, which Captain Anderson of the "Mary Powell" told the writer he used to hear frequently when a boy:
"West Point and Middletown,
Konnosook and Doodletown,
Kakiak and Mamapaw,
Stony Point and Haverstraw."
Quaint as these names now sound, they all are found on old maps of the Hudson.
High Torn is the name of the northern point of the Ramapo on the west bank, south of Haverstraw. According to the Coast Survey, it is 820 feet above tide-water, and the view from the summit is grand and extensive. The origin of the name is not clear, but it has lately occurred to the writer, from a re-reading of Scott's "Peveril of the Peak," that it might have been named from the Torn, a mountain in Derbyshire, either from its appearance, or by some patriotic settler from the central water-shed of England. Others say it is the Devonshire word Tor changed to Torn, evidently derived from the same source.