It is not the fault of the Rhine with its nine hundred miles of
rapid flow that it looks tame compared with the Hudson. Even the
Mississippi, draining a valley three thousand miles in extent, looks
insignificant at St. Louis or New Orleans contrasted with the Hudson
at Tarrytown. The Hudson is in fact a vast estuary of the sea; the
tide rises two feet at Albany and six inches at Troy. A professor of
the Berlin University says: "You lack our castles but the Hudson is
infinitely grander." Thackeray, in "The Virginians," gives the Hudson
the verdict of beauty; and George William Curtis, comparing the Hudson
with the rivers of the Old World, has gracefully said: "The Danube
has in part glimpses of such grandeur, the Elbe has sometimes such
delicately penciled effects, but no European river is so lordly in its
bearing, none flows in such state to the sea."
* * *
I have been up and down the Hudson by water. The entire river is
pretty, but the glory of the Hudson is at West Point.
_Anthony Trollope._
* * *
Baedeker, a high and just authority, in his recent Guide to the United
States says: "The Hudson has sometimes been called the American Rhine,
but that title perhaps does injustice to both rivers.
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